Vucic concedes Serbian election to student-led list

Aleksandar Vucic, who led Serbia for 14 years, conceded defeat on Sunday night after the student-backed Student List won the country’s Oct. 25, 2026 parliamentary election, according to his own televised estimates.

His Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) projected 105 seats in the 250-seat National Assembly, against 135 to 140 for the Student List. A majority needs 126 seats, so the movement that grew out of a deadly 2024 railway-station collapse is on course to govern alone.

“Based on the stratified sample, it is clear that we have lost these elections,” Vucic said, as Euronews and Xinhua reported. He said his party would stay united and work from the opposition benches.

Vucic put the vote count at about 2.2 million for the Student List and about 1.72 million for his party. Xinhua reported that initial Ipsos and CeSID projections gave the Student List 52 per cent and Vucic’s coalition 39.3 per cent. None of these figures are official, and the electoral commission had not published final results when this article was written.

Vucic said only a few smaller parties made it into parliament. By his count, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians won three seats, an Albanian party won one and he believed the SDA won another.

Turnout was not confirmed. Monitors had predicted about 70 per cent, which would be the highest since 2000, the Associated Press reported via PBS. Independent monitors also reported dozens of irregularities, including photographed ballots that suggested voter pressure and attempted vote buying.

The protests began after a concrete canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, killing 16 people. Demonstrators blamed corruption in the station’s renovation. University students led nearly two years of blockades and rallies. None of the students appear on the Student List, which instead fields little-known experts, athletes, farmers and artists. Novi Sad university professor Ilija Srdanovic heads the list, Xinhua reported.

Radomir Saicic, a University of Belgrade professor and Student List candidate, said: “This victory is no one’s personal trophy. It belongs to all of us.” He urged supporters to celebrate peacefully.

Dijana Hrka, the mother of a victim of the Novi Sad collapse, told N1 television she had been waiting for this moment for two years. “Now I expect that they will all be held accountable,” she said, according to the AP.

Vucic, who resigned the presidency on Sept. 27 to lead his party’s campaign, blamed independent media and alleged interference by unnamed European countries and an “American deep state”. He did not provide evidence for those claims. He also called the result a “verification of a revolution”, Xinhua reported.

Serbia is a candidate for European Union membership, and the bloc was watching the vote closely. Euronews said the next government will have to decide how to handle the economy, energy, Kosovo, the EU path and relations with Russia and China. The AP did not report an official EU statement on the result.

For Canada, the most direct link is the Serbian community here, which is concentrated in southern Ontario and also includes many Canadians with family in Serbia. Canadians travelling to Serbia can check current advice at travel.gc.ca.

Several steps follow. The electoral commission must publish final results, the new assembly must convene and elect a government, and Xinhua reported that a presidential election must be held by the end of December 2026. Earlier, we reported on Serbians voting in a tight election.

Via Euronews, the Associated Press and Xinhua.

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