Aleksandar Vučić, who has ruled Serbia for 12 years as prime minister and president, acknowledged his defeat in the early parliamentary elections on Sunday against the Lista Estudiantil, a civic movement that has shaken the Balkan country for nearly two years with the largest protests in its modern history.
"It's clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won; they will have between 135 and 140 seats, and we will have 105. No one else has entered Parliament," declared Vučić in a televised speech from the headquarters of his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
According to Politico, upon learning the results, tens of thousands of people flooded the main avenues of Belgrade shouting Gotov je! («It’s over!»), the same chant that accompanied the fall of the dictator Slobodan Milošević in October 2000.
Electoral participation was nearly 70%, the highest since the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1992, according to independent electoral monitors CRTA and the electoral commission.
The trigger for it all was the collapse of the marquee at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, which resulted in 16 deaths.
The students linked the tragedy to systemic corruption in infrastructure works and demanded the resignation of Vučić, who called for early elections in September 2026, unable to withstand the pressure.
The Student List —formally registered as "Studentska lista – Studenti pobeđuju" ("Students Win")— presented 250 candidates, mostly unknown: doctors, engineers, university professors, actors, and athletes.
The team is led by the cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, 56 years old, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Novi Sad, who reacted with tears upon learning the results.
“Never again tyranny in our country! We are advancing towards a civilized and better Serbia,” declared Srdanović to the media.
The student victory is part of a trend that has been transforming the European political landscape: in April 2026, Viktor Orbán lost the Hungarian elections after 16 years in power; in May 2025, the pro-Russian candidate George Simion was defeated in Romania by the pro-European Nicușor Dan.
Vučić, a right-wing populist who kept Serbia out of European sanctions against Russia and in May 2025 visited Putin in Moscow for the Victory Day celebrations, also fostered close ties with the Cuban regime.
In June 2023, he received Miguel Díaz-Canel in Belgrade and signed agreements for visa exemption and agricultural cooperation, stating that "in the heart of Europe, Cuba has a people that supports it."
Just weeks before the elections, in September 2026, he met with the Cuban Deputy Minister Gerardo Peñalver Portal, envoy of Díaz-Canel, to discuss bilateral cooperation, according to a statement from MINREX.
Under his mandate, Serbia was classified as an "electoral autocracy" by the V-Dem Institute and as only "partially free" by Freedom House, while Reporters Without Borders described it as a "predator of press freedom" in 2025 and ranked the country 104th globally, the lowest among the 40 countries of the EU and the Balkans.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, immediately congratulated the Student List and expressed her willingness to move forward with Serbia's accession to the EU, whose candidacy has been frozen since 2012 due to democratic deficits and Belgrade's refusal to join the sanctions against Moscow.
The major uncertainty now is governance: the Student List has not clearly defined its foreign policy and will need to manage complex relationships with Russia—its natural gas supplier—China—a key investor—and the European Union, the country's main trading partner.
"The greatest uncertainty is who will lead the government, who the key ministers will be, and how they will operate based on the promises they made to fight against corruption, to restore the rule of law, but also to reposition Serbia in foreign policy," warned Radivoje Grujic, an electoral consultant based in Warsaw.
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