On Sunday night Aleksandar Vucic, the populist and nationalist who has dominated Serbian politics as prime minister or president since 2014, stood before television cameras and conceded defeat. “It is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won,” he said. Within moments, tens of thousands of people filled Belgrade’s main boulevards, with cars honking, people dancing and students shouting “victory” and “he’s done.” The result ends one of the longest periods of dominance by a single politician in the region and starts a new political era in a country of some 6 million people. It also raises hard questions: who will govern, how the new movement will handle the machinery of the state, and where Serbia will stand between Brussels, Moscow and Beijing.
The origins of the victory lie in a tragedy. In 2024, a station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people. The disaster set off almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism. The protests began small but became the biggest in a generation, and they called for Vucic to step down. Rights groups and activists say repression worsened in the period that followed. Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) repeatedly denied accusations of repression, corruption and spying on opponents, and he claimed that the students were funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, a charge the students reject.
In September, Vucic called snap elections. He had resigned from his second term as president to run again for prime minister, a sign of how much he wanted to stay at the centre of power. Preliminary results, as he described them, give the students between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-seat parliament and the SNS 105. That would be a clear majority for the student list, not a narrow plurality that needs coalition partners. The scale of participation helps explain the result. Pollsters and the election commission put turnout close to 70%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992. Lines snaked from polling stations in cities and towns across the country, and even Vucic waited nearly two hours to vote in Belgrade. One voter, Katarina Petrovic, said the turnout did not surprise her “because there was a large and strong mass that has formed throughout the past two years.”
High turnout is a classic sign of a movement that has turned street energy into voting power. In systems where an incumbent controls much of the media and the administrative apparatus, a surge of participation can overwhelm the advantages of office. It also suggests that many people who had previously stayed home, or who had accepted the status quo, decided that this election was different. Vucic was a strong incumbent, and few in the protest movement dared believe that he would concede so quickly. His supporters credit him with modernising Serbia’s economy and building new highways, railways, schools and hospitals, and that record remains an asset for his party in opposition. In his speech he sounded defiant as well as resigned: “Some businessmen, some people will leave us but our structure is firm, we are very united, very strong, we are used to being in the opposition.”
The speed of the concession matters for stability. It reduces the risk of a disputed result and of confrontation in the streets, and it sets a precedent for the peaceful transfer of power. The SNS remains a large force with 105 seats and an organised structure, so the new government will face a substantial opposition from the outset.
The student victory is much clearer than the student government. The list of 250 candidates is largely unknown to the public and includes university professors, actors and farmers. It is led by Ilija Srdanovic, a cardiologist, who was in tears after Vucic’s announcement. Other figures include Dejan Soskic, a former central bank governor, who urged people to keep order and peace and thanked voters for their civilised conduct. Several basic questions are unanswered. The first is who will be prime minister. The movement grew out of protests that deliberately avoided a single leader, and that decentralised character helped it to resist pressure, but governing requires named ministers and a clear chain of responsibility. As the election consultant Radivoje Grujic put it, “the biggest uncertainty is…who is going to lead the government, who will be the key ministers, and how they will operate based on the promises they made.”
The second is the domestic agenda. The students’ stated aims are to root out graft and improve schooling. Political analysts expect some kind of purge of Vucic allies in the police, security services and ministries. This is both necessary and risky: dismantling networks of patronage is central to restoring the rule of law, but a purge that looks like political retaliation could undermine the movement’s claim to legitimacy and deepen polarisation. The third unknown is foreign policy, where the students have been quieter. Serbia has long balanced three relationships. China is a major investor. Russia is Serbia’s traditional ally and principal supplier of natural gas. The European Union is Serbia’s largest trading partner and the destination of its stated membership ambitions. As Vucic did for years, the new government will have to juggle all three.
European leaders moved quickly to signal their preferences. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X that “we stand ready to…work together to advance Serbia’s future in the European Union,” and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos also congratulated the Student List. Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar assured the students of his country’s support. The welcome from Brussels suggests that the EU sees an opening, though it will want evidence of rule-of-law reform and alignment on foreign policy, which are difficult for a country dependent on Russian gas.
The Serbian result is reminiscent of the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in April, and it may offer a blueprint to other student movements across Europe. In recent weeks young people have taken to the streets, in some cases violently, to protest against poor education standards and a lack of prospects. The Serbian case shows one way such discontent can be turned into electoral success: a long period of sustained protest, a clear symbolic grievance, a unified list and exceptional turnout. Caution is warranted, however. Serbia’s movement had a specific trigger, a deadly failure that crystallised anger over corruption, and a concrete target in a long-serving leader. Protests elsewhere often lack such a focus, and street energy does not always translate into organisation. The Serbian students also faced a long and difficult test of discipline over almost two years, which not all movements can sustain.
Several developments will show whether the victory becomes durable change. The first is the formation of the government: the choice of prime minister and ministers will reveal how the movement handles the shift from protest to administration. The second is the treatment of the security services, courts and public media, where reform must be credible and lawful. The third is the SNS’s behaviour in opposition, including whether it accepts the new rules of competition. The fourth is Serbia’s course on Russia, China and the EU, including energy supply and any movement on accession talks. The fifth is the response of ordinary citizens: the energy of the celebration will have to survive the first compromises of government.
The students’ own words capture the shift: “Tonight we celebrate victory, tomorrow we build the future.” Building is harder than celebrating. But by securing a record turnout, a clear parliamentary majority and a peaceful concession, Serbia has already crossed a threshold that seemed distant only a few months ago.
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