Serbia’s Vučić concedes defeat after tense parliamentary elections

 

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Serbia’s Vučić concedes defeat after tense parliamentary elections

 

The Serbian leader lost in a landslide to a protest-backed student movement.

 

October 25, 2026 10:18 pm CET

By Una Hajdari

https://www.politico.eu/article/serbia-aleksandar-vucic-concedes-defeat-after-tense-parliamentary-elections/

 

BELGRADE — Aleksandar Vučić announced the end of his 12-year reign as the most powerful man in Serbia on Sunday following a pivotal election that swept the Student List protest movement to victory.

 

“I want to inform you that, based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we lost these elections,” Vučić said in an address to journalists and party members at the headquarters of his Serbian Progressive Party in the capital.

 

Vučić said the Student List had secured a majority of between 135 and 140 mandates in the country’s 250-seat parliament, while his own party won 105.

 

As the minutes ticked by after the polls closed at 8 p.m. local time, the Central Election Commission and election observers remained silent instead of publishing their customary exit results. An hour later, Vučić’s abrupt statement was carried simultaneously on all TV channels in Serbia.

 

The moment the news landed, euphoric residents started streaming into central Belgrade, dancing, hugging and chanting Gotov je! (“He’s finished!”), a refrain popularized a quarter century ago, the last time the country saw this level of voter participation. That October 2000 ballot toppled Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosević following a punishing decade of wars in the Balkans.

 

“Never again to tyranny in our country!” said the leader of the Student List candidates roster, Ilija Srdanović. “We are moving toward a civilized and better Serbia,” he told journalists in an address at the party’s headquarters.

 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also released a statement after Vučić’s concession, noting that “today, the people of Serbia turned out in record numbers to shape their country’s future” and congratulating the Student List on its victory.

 

“We stand ready to support reforms on the rule of law, media freedom, the fight against corruption and strong democratic institutions, and to work together to advance Serbia’s future in the European Union,” she added.

 

While Serbia has been an official EU candidate country since 2012, its candidacy remains frozen over rule-of-law and democracy concerns and Belgrade’s refusal to join EU sanctions on Russia.

 

Tense hours precede euphoria

Turnout hit a near-record 67.8% by 7 p.m., according to independent election monitors CRTA, up from 58.8% in the 2023 general elections.

 

Voters queued for hours on Sunday, including diaspora voters in cities across the world with large Serb populations such as Chicago, Toronto, Vienna and Zurich.

 

Tensions were particularly high in Belgrade after the main street leading to the Central Election Commission was closed off by metal police barriers before noon and armored riot control vehicles rolled into the center.

 

“For the first time in Serbia, access to the CEC by voters was blocked. Average citizens were denied the right to report any kind of irregularity, or even approach the building,” Raša Nedeljkov, program director at CRTA, said after polling stations closed.

 

After the vote ended, the main thoroughfares in front of City Hall and the parliament were also barricaded, and groups of hooded men in dark clothing appeared in front of key institutions along with black police vans. The Student List called on voters not to gather in the center and to avoid physical confrontation.

 

Election observers from the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament were on the ground to provide an independent assessment of the electoral process, with the latter being escorted by police.

 

“We’re sad that it’s come to a point where European Parliament representatives need police protection while going around Belgrade and Serbia,” Nedeljkov added.

 

“Imagine what it’s like for voters.”

 

Vučić served as prime minister from 2014 to 2017 and then held the presidency until resigning in September to lead the progressives into the election. Under his rule Serbia was classed as an electoral autocracy by the Sweden-based V-Dem research institute and only “partly free” by the Washington-based Freedom House advocacy NGO.

 

Reporters Without Borders, which named Vučić a “press freedom predator” in 2025, now ranks Serbia 104th in the world for press freedom, last among the 40 countries in the EU and the Balkans.

 

Sunday’s elections capped two years of protest in Serbia, in which the largest movement in the country’s modern history drew unprecedented support nationwide. The trigger for the unrest was the collapse of a railway station canopy in the northern Serbian metropolis of Novi Sad in November 2024 that killed 16 people.

 

A group of university students announced in May last year that they would run in Sunday’s elections and put forward a list of experts to lead the ballot, largely doctors, engineers and other professionals.

 

Vučić’s right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party has repeatedly been criticized by independent watchdogs for overseeing a significant democratic decline in Serbia, including limiting press freedoms and the operation of an independent judiciary.

 

This article is being updated.