Serbia election: student-led opposition wins majority as Vučić concedes

Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat on Sunday, October 25, 2026, in Serbia's snap parliamentary elections, telling supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade that preliminary results showed the Student List winning between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-member parliament against 105 for his list. "It is clear that we have lost these elections," he said.

The result, if it holds, ends 14 years of Vučić's dominance in Serbian politics. He had spent two terms as president and could not seek a third, so he was leading his Serbian Progressive Party with the aim of returning to the prime minister's post he had previously left. He rose to prominence in the 1990s as an ally of Slobodan Milošević, serving as information minister in 1998.

The election followed two years of protests triggered by the collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people. The disaster was widely seen as emblematic of corruption and negligence, and it became the catalyst for a movement that grew from street demonstrations into an electoral force. Preliminary figures from Serbia's election commission indicated record turnout, which commentators had suggested would favor the student movement.

Celebrations erupted in Belgrade and other Serbian cities after the concession. Crowds flooded the streets in what was described as an outburst of euphoric celebration.

Vučić had denounced the student movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him and was endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The result is described across outlets as a seismic political shift in a Balkan country that has long balanced between Moscow and Brussels.

Final results were not yet available. So does the fate of Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party and whether the new majority will pursue accountability for the Novi Sad collapse and the corruption allegations that fueled two years of protest.

What happens when protesters become the government is now the central question in Serbian politics.