Derby of Serbia () refers to any match between professional Serbian clubs Red Star Belgrade or Partizan Belgrade from Belgrade and Vojvodina from Novi Sad. A Serbian derby match must involve Vojvodina and either one of the Belgrade clubs; matches between Partizan and Red Star are referred to as the Eternal Derby. One of the main reasons for the rivalry is the fact that Vojvodina, Red Star, and Partizan are the three most successful clubs in Serbia and the three most successful Serbian clubs in former Yugoslavia. Belgrade and Novi Sad are also the two largest cities in the country, so the derby is viewed as a manifestation of the rivalry between the two cities. They were also the only three Serbian clubs to win the Yugoslav championship, and all three clubs are in the Top 5 of the Yugoslav First League all-time table, with Red Star Belgrade at 1st, Partizan Belgrade at 2nd, and Vojvodina Novi Sad at 5th.
In the last few years, Vojvodina have become a serious competitor with the two Belgrade clubs for the Serbian Championship and Serbian Cup, which they have historically been dominant in. In recent years, Vojvodina have defeated Partizan and Red Star both home and away several times. Due to their constant recent success, Vojvodina are now considered the third absolute power, after Red Star and Partizan, in Serbian football, comparable to the "big three" dominance in other countries in domestic football, such as Portugal. Besides the Eternal derby, the Derby of Serbia is often considered the most important rivalry in Serbian football.
History
Early years
Vojvodina was founded on 6 March 1914 by a group of Serbian students of the Serbian Orthodox high school with the support of Serbian intellectuals and craftsman in Novi Sad. The club took the name Vojvodina, in order to emphasize the memory of the political-territorial unit of the Serbs in the Serbian Vojvodina. FK Vojvodina in the period between the two world wars had a fierce rivalry with NAK Novi Sad competing with them regularly for the title of the Novi Sad Football Subassociation.
31 years later, at the end of the Second World War, Red Star and Partizan were founded in Belgrade, while the dominant clubs from the royal era, BSK Belgrade and SK Jugoslavija were disbanded. The origin of Red Star and Partizan went out of political institutions. Red Star was formed on 4 March 1945 by "United alliance of anti-fascist Youth" of Serbian new civil authorities in Yugoslavia. A few months later, specifically on 4 October 1945, Partizan was founded by Serbian Partizans as a club of Yugoslav People's Army. From the beginning, the two Belgrade clubs won championships and cups and took over the dominance as the strongest Serbian clubs in the Yugoslav First League. Red Star and Partizan should remain this until the dissolution of the league in 1993. In 1951, Vojvodina reached for the first time the Yugoslav Cup final and during the 1950s, Vojvodina finished the seasons regularly in the top half of the table and developed slowly as third most successful Serbian club in the Yugoslav First League behind Red Star and Partizan.
1960s
During the 1960s, Partizan and Red Star was the dominated teams in the Yugoslav First League. On the international stage, the 1965–66 European Cup campaign of Partizan was the crown, where they achieved the greatest success in their history, a place in European Cup Final. Red Star achieved also good results on the international stage, where they achieved the semifinals of the 1961–62 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. Besides, Red Star received its own stadium with a capacity for more than 100,000 viewers in 1963, that should get the reputation of being a very tough ground for visiting teams. But finally the dominance was broken through Vojvodina for a short time. In 1966, Vojvodina won, as the third Serbian team, the Yugoslav first league for the first time. In the following season, Vojvodina has continued to be successful also on the international scene. In the 1966–67 European Cup season, Vojvodina achieved the quarter-finals, and lost narrowly against the eventual winner of the competition, Celtic Glasgow. These successes brought the Belgrade clubs another rival for titles, and the matches against the club from Novi Sad received more prestigious.