Batajnica (Serbian Cyrillic: Батајница, pronounced [bǎtaːjnitsa]) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia.

The entire plateau was formed when during the colder, Ice Age periods, strong winds from the Alps and the Carpathians would bring and deposit yellowish loess.

During the warmer, interglacial phases, the lush vegetation would develop on loess, forming different fossilized soils, like red and brown earth.

In May 2020, during the construction of the Batajnica interchange on the Belgrade bypass, remains from the 1st century BC (Later Iron Age) were discovered.

Discovered pottery artifacts were large, nicely preserved and made using potter's wheel, a technology brought by the Celts in these areas, so it is believed that the find was Celtic settlement or place of worship, built before the Roman conquest of the region.

The locality is situated in the territory surrounded by the discoveries of Celtic settlements from that period, in both downtown and wider Belgrade area (Singidunum, Rospi Ćuprija, Karaburma, Jakovo, Stari Slankamen).

A movement for re-creating the old Batajnica municipality was very active in 2002, when Surčin also (and successfully) campaigned, but was not much in the public media.

[6] Coalition Moramo, during the campaign for the April 2022 local elections in Belgrade, opted for creating a new Batajnica municipality.

Batajnica was declared a part of the Belgrade City proper (uža teritorija grada) in the early 1970s, losing the status of the separate settlement.

Batajnica was a target of NATO airstrikes during its bombing of Yugoslavia, conducted in the form of Operation Allied Force, lasting from March 24, 1999, until June 10, 1999.

A special bust to the neighborhood's population was given in the mid-1990s with a large influx of refugees from the Yugoslav Wars, especially the Oluja military action which forced almost 250,000 Serbs from Croatia into Serbia, and many of them settled at the outskirts of Belgrade.

The money from the EU IPA funds was secured, but the pending adoption of the new city general urban plan, which was to determine the details of the project, and the political dispute between the construction minister Velimir Ilić and Belgrade mayor Dragan Đilas, halted the project.

By January 2019 city purchased the privately owned parcels and it was announced that the project was green-lighted, including the FIDIC-ruled bidding for the contractor.

[21][22] Batajnica is located on the Belgrade-Novi Sad railway and a place where one line of the railway separates and through the Belgrade's part of the Syrmia crosses the Sava river at Ostružnica and continues through the southern outskirts of the Belgrade, forming an internal city's freight rail beltway.

Two other important regional roads split from Batajnica: one to the south-west, to Ugrinovci and the other one to the north, to Novi Banovci.

Batajnica Airbase, with a limited civil traffic, was heavily bombarded on a daily basis in 1999 during the NATO bombing of Serbia.

Later, some heavy industry began to develop (bridge construction facilities) and today almost 400 privately owned small companies, repair shops, stores, etc.

In August 2023, Pošta Srbije, Serbian national postal office service, announced construction of a massive logistics center on this bank.

The neighborhood at the exit from Batajnica in direction of the airport is called Oficirska Kolonija ("officers colony").

Area, which previously consisted of corn fields, was slowly urbanised from the 1960s and 1970s and especially growing in the 1990s with the influx of the refugees from Croatia.

With additional role in the continued development of education in the southeast part of Syrmia, it has been declared a cultural monument in January 2019.

[35] Batajnica cemetery, just east of downtown and next to the farmers market, was completely surrounded by the urban tissue by the 2020s.

[37] In 2005 Serbian Ministry of Defence arranged a previously unattended green area across the new Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the memorial-park "Little Milica Rakić".