Once exchange liquidity and cross-border capacity are understood, the decisive question in South-East Europe becomes operational rather than theoretical: who controls flows at the margin, on which borders, and during which hours. The answer is not uniform across the region. Dominance shifts by corridor, by time block, and by whether a market is deep enough

By early 2026, South-East Europe’s electricity market is no longer best understood through national supply–demand balances alone. The decisive variable has become where liquidity concentrates, how effectively it travels across borders, and how deeply intraday markets absorb volatility. Power exchanges in SEE are no longer merely trading venues; they are price transmission engines whose depth,

South-East Europe’s power market is often described through exchanges and interconnectors, but the day-to-day reality is that liquidity is delivered by trading houses. They determine whether price spreads close quickly or persist for hours, whether intraday volatility becomes an opportunity or a penalty, and whether industrial buyers are offered tight index-based supply or contracts loaded

Cross-border electricity flows are the hidden engine of price formation in South-East Europe. While power exchanges provide the visible price signal, it is interconnector availability, congestion patterns and directional flow economics that determine whether those prices converge or fragment. By early 2026, SEE no longer behaves as a collection of isolated national markets, but neither

January 2026 confirmed that South-East Europe’s electricity markets have entered a structurally different phase from the crisis years of 2022–2024. Prices remained elevated by historical standards, but the defining change was the return of tradable liquidity. Volumes increased, cross-border flows intensified, and professional trading activity reasserted itself across organised exchanges and interconnector corridors. The region