Serbia election: Vucic concedes as student-led Student List projects a parliamentary majority

What happened on 25 October

Serbia held snap parliamentary elections on Sunday, 25 October 2026, and President Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat that evening, according to reporting of his address. He was quoted as saying, on the basis of a sample, that it was clear his side had lost, that the Student List had won, and that no other party besides the two main blocs and minority parties had entered parliament.

The concession is important, but it should not be read as a certified result. Vucic himself said final results were not yet available, and the seat figures he gave were projections from sample vote tabulations. Readers should check the official election commission count before treating any seat total as final.

The projected numbers, and who they came from

Both reports opened for this article agree on the central projection: the Student List at between 135 and 140 seats, and Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party at around 105 seats. Vucic also said the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians had won three seats and ethnic Albanian parties one, and that he thought another party, the SDA, had also secured a seat, a point he himself framed as uncertain.

Vote-share figures reported via Euronews put the Student List at approximately 2.2 million votes, or about 52 per cent, and the Serbian Progressive Party at around 1.72 million votes, or about 32.3 per cent. Those percentages are reported tabulations, not the final certified count, and they describe the vote at the time of reporting rather than a completed official tally.

Why this election followed two years of protest

The snap election, called by Vucic in September, followed almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism. Reporting links the protests to the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024, an event that became a focal point for demands for accountability.

The students have since gained widespread support, and reporting describes them as the greatest political challenge to Vucic since he became prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017. The protesters accuse the government of corruption and undermining democratic institutions, claims the reporting presents as the protesters' position rather than as established findings against named officials.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated the Student List and said the Commission stood 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. That statement is a political signal about the EU relationship, not a decision on membership, and the next government's record on those issues will be the test of it. No direct effect on India was established in the reports opened for this article.

Editorial disclosure

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