Serbia votes in snap election that tests Vučić's 12-year grip

Belgrade — Serbians go to the polls on Sunday in a snap election that will decide whether Aleksandar Vučić extends his 12 years in power. Final campaign rallies were held across the country on Thursday, with the vote billed as a referendum on Serbia's future — and, unusually, the main challenge to Vučić coming not from the established opposition but from a two-year-old student movement, according to the BBC.

The movement, running as the "Student List-Students Win" ticket, grew out of the collapse of a concrete canopy outside Novi Sad train station on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people. Critics linked the fatally flawed renovation to corruption and negligence under a president who had closely associated himself with the project. Weekly campus protests demanding justice became a national movement drawing in farmers, actors and judges; within weeks the prime minister resigned, and Belgrade saw one of its biggest ever protests in March 2025.

The candidates are not students themselves. The list is topped by Ilija Srdanović, a cardiology professor in Novi Sad, alongside actor Tihomir Stanić, ex-basketball star Dejan Bodiroga and former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Šoškić. Its 11-point programme promises a police unit to arrest those responsible for corruption, a purge of interior ministry officials, reform of a media scene skewed towards the government and an end to party loyalists running public enterprises. The SNS party denies corruption and seeking to influence the media.

Vučić, barred from a third presidential term, is aiming to return as prime minister, a post he left in 2017. He has doubled down on unfounded claims that his opponents are "mighty great powers" seeking to overthrow Serbia. Helena Ivanov of the Henry Jackson Society told the BBC the students had mobilised voters in a way traditional opposition parties could not — but cautioned that defeating him would not be easy. Several opposition parties have withdrawn in the Student List's favour.

How fair the vote will be is the sharper question. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has spoken of a "tense and divisive electoral climate", while watchdog CRTA warned of threats, physical violence and surveillance of opposition activists, saying institutions from ministries to local governments had engaged in "electoral engineering". The election commission insists the ballot is free and secret; European observers will monitor on the day.

Polling stations in the single nationwide constituency of 250 seats open at 07:00 (06:00 GMT) and close at 20:00, with 6.45 million registered voters choosing among 18 lists. The next decision point is the count itself on Sunday night — and whether the observers' verdict matches the result.