Serbians will vote for a new parliament on Sunday in a snap election that many see as a referendum on the country’s future. Rallies took place across Serbia on Thursday, the last day of campaigning. The vote comes after two years of student protests that pose the most serious threat so far to populist leader Aleksandar Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics for 12 years.
The student movement, which runs under the name “Student List-Students Win”, has drawn anti-government voters from across the country. It has no obvious leaders and its members have little experience of politics. The list’s lead candidate, cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, joined students marching towards Belgrade and said history was being rewritten, adding: “The energy is unstoppable.”
How a station collapse sparked a national movement
The movement traces its origins to 1 November 2024, when a concrete canopy outside the train station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, fell without warning. The collapse killed 16 people. Many saw the disaster as a symbol of corruption and negligence, and critics tied the station’s badly flawed renovation to a president who had closely linked himself to the project.
Weekly protests demanding justice began on university campuses and city streets. They soon grew into a wider movement, often organised at local level, that drew in many other groups, including farmers, actors and judges. The Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which Vučić founded, was badly shaken, and the prime minister resigned within weeks. In March 2025, Belgrade saw one of the largest protests in its history.
Even as the movement grew, it had no central leadership and organised itself through student assemblies, known as plenums. At the 2023 election, Vučić’s SNS faced a loose coalition of pro-EU parties, which later broke apart. This time, he faces a clearer threat from a student movement that has avoided the mainstream opposition parties.
Vučić’s grip on power and his response to protesters
Vučić has been prime minister or president since 2014 and served as deputy prime minister for two years before that. He has completed two terms as president and is barred from seeking a third. Instead, he is leading his party with the aim of returning to the prime minister’s post, which he left in 2017.
The right-wing populist has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that his opponents are not really students and professors but “mighty great powers” trying to overthrow Serbia. He has also promised to end what he describes as the politicisation of schools and universities. Vučić has tried to keep a careful balance with the West, backing Serbia’s bid to join the European Union while refusing to impose sanctions on Russia over its full-scale war in Ukraine. Several government ministers attended the Belgrade funeral of Ratko Mladić, a war criminal, which prompted anger from the EU over what it called his “glorification”.
Helena Ivanov of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, said in an interview from Belgrade that the students have been able to mobilise people in a way traditional opposition parties have not. In her view, this is the biggest challenge Vučić has faced since he came to power. “He’s been running in all elections Serbia has had since the introduction of multi-party election system – so obviously defeating him isn’t going to be easy, but this time around President Vučić isn’t going to have an easy time either,” she said.
Who is on the Student List and what it promises
The candidates are not students. They include teachers and university professors, actors and doctors, farmers and scientists. Srdanović, who tops the list, is a cardiology professor in Novi Sad. Other names include former basketball star Dejan Bodiroga, well-known actor Tihomir Stanić and former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Šoškić. Several opposition parties have withdrawn their own candidates in favour of the Student List.
The movement has set out an 11-point programme. Among its main demands, it says it wants to:
- eradicate corruption by forming a police unit to arrest those responsible for it
- purge officials in the internal affairs ministry of anyone who broke rules on cracking down on protesters, or anyone linked to organised crime
- reform Serbia’s skewed media scene and free the public broadcaster of political control
- stop recruiting party loyalists to head public enterprises
Vučić and the SNS deny allegations of corruption and of trying to influence the media.
Concerns over the fairness of the vote
Voting runs from 07:00 (06:00 GMT) until 20:00 on Sunday. Serbia has 6.45 million registered voters, and anyone aged 18 or over can choose which party list to support. The 250 seats in parliament are filled through a single national constituency under proportional representation. Eighteen lists are on the ballot, but only seven are fielding the full 250 candidates. A list must win more than 3% of the vote to gain seats, and seats are allocated according to the level of support each list receives.
European observers will monitor the vote. Even before polling day, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) described a “tense and divisive electoral climate” and a “referendum-like atmosphere”. Serbia’s election commission has said the elections are free and that the ballot is secret. However, the independent watchdog CRTA has warned of a campaign marked by threats and physical violence, as well as surveillance of opposition activists.
In a pre-election report, CRTA said that instead of ensuring equal conditions for candidates, “a range of institutions, from ministries to local governments, became involved in electoral engineering”. The watchdog also complained that almost three-quarters of television coverage went to government representatives. According to the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, some 160 attacks on media outlets and journalists have been recorded in Serbia this year.
