This essay presents a range of better- and lesser-known forms of civil society in the contemporary post-Yugoslav space. It shows how interest associations, student unions, religious groups and online communities can all contribute to vibrant civil society, even if their work seems distant from the post-war area’s current problems. This civil society, the essay argues, creates an environment in which the people of the Western Balkans can enact their citizenship and, little by little, ‘build bridges’, across ethnic lines and beyond.