Rallies have been taking place across Serbia on Thursday, the final day of campaigning ahead of a snap election billed as a referendum on the country's future. After two years of student protests, Serbians vote for a new parliament on Sunday in elections that threaten populist leader Aleksandar Vučić's 12 years in power. The main threat to Vučić's dominance in Serbian politics comes from a two-year-old student movement, but there are concerns surrounding the fairness of the vote.
They have no obvious leaders and are not used to politics, but the "Student List-Students Win" movement has attracted anti-government voters across Serbia. The Student List is fielding candidates from across Serbian society - and as he joined students marching towards Belgrade, lead candidate and cardiologist Ilija Srdanović said history was being rewritten: "The energy is unstoppable." It all began on 1 November 2024, when the concrete canopy collapsed outside Novi Sad train station, in Serbia's second biggest city, killing 16 people. The tragedy was seen as emblematic of corruption and negligence in Serbia.
Critics linked the station's fatally flawed renovation to a president who had closely associated himself with the project. What started as weekly student protests demanding justice on university campuses and city streets soon became a national movement, often at a local level, that encompassed far more sections of Serbian society, including farmers, actors and judges. The Serbian Progressive party (SNS), founded by Vučić, was shaken and within weeks the prime minister resigned.
Belgrade saw one of its biggest ever protests in March 2025, and while the leaderless student movement increased in strength, they organised themselves through student assemblies or plenums. At the last election in 2023, Vučić's SNS was challenged by a loose coalition of pro-EU parties, that later fell apart. This time he faces a far clearer threat from a student movement that has shunned the mainstream opposition parties.
Anger lingers in Serbia after train station tragedy Vučić has spent two terms as president and cannot seek a third term, so he is now leading his party with the aim of returning to the post of prime minister, which he left in 2017. The right-wing populist leader has doubled down on unfounded allegations that his opponents are not so much students and professors, but "mighty great powers" seeking to overthrow Serbia. And he has vowed an end to what he sees as the politicisation of schools and universities.
Vučić has steered a careful path with the West, continuing to back Serbia's candidacy for the European Union, while refusing to impose sanctions on Russia for its full-scale war in Ukraine. Several government ministers attended the Belgrade funeral of war criminal Ratko Mladić, prompting EU anger at his "glorification". Helena Ivanov of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, says the students have been able to mobilise the masses in a way traditional opposition parties have not been able to - and this is Vučić's biggest challenge since he came to power.
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