Serbia Votes in Election Pitting Longtime Leader Vucic Against Student Movement
Serbia held parliamentary elections on October 25, 2026, a contest that set longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic against the student anticorruption movement. Al Jazeera reported the vote on the day it took place.
Vucic was prime minister and then president for more than a decade before the election. In September 2026 he resigned as president to run again for prime minister, and he called the vote, a snap election, which is an early contest held before the regular date.
The student protests began after a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024, killing 16 people. Over almost two years, the demonstrations grew into an anti-corruption movement, and the Student List emerged from them. NPR reported that the students accuse Vucic of presiding over endemic corruption.
The Student List fielded 250 candidates, led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic. On the Thursday before the vote, about 150,000 supporters rallied in central Belgrade. BBC described the Student List as the biggest challenge to Vucic's rule.
An Ipsos poll published on the Thursday before the election gave Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party 47 percent and the Student List 40 percent.
In the days before the vote, Vucic said the student protest movement is trying to destroy Serbia. He also accused foreign agents from Croatia of involvement with the movement, according to Reuters. Serbian authorities arrested six people suspected of plotting election-day violence, Reuters reported in a separate report.
The Republic Electoral Commission, the body that runs national elections, recorded 6,450,523 voters in Serbia as of October 9, 2026. Printing of ballots was scheduled to begin on October 12.
