Serbia votes in early parliamentary election as student movement challenges Vučić’s political bloc

The vote turns nearly two years of protests into an electoral challenge to the ruling political bloc. The movement emerged after a canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed in 2024, killing 16 people. The disaster triggered student-led demonstrations focused on corruption, accountability and wider problems in the functioning of state institutions.

The protests initially centred on demands for accountability and the release of documents connected with the station’s reconstruction, according to Euronews reporting. They later broadened into a wider challenge concerning corruption, political responsibility and institutional trust. The demonstrations became one of the strongest challenges to Vučić’s government in more than a decade.

The student-led movement is contesting the election against SNS and has presented itself as seeking to defeat or remove Vučić’s ruling party. Multiple reports describe the race as unusually close, fiercely contested or a referendum on Vučić’s political dominance. The election therefore places the protest movement’s demands directly against the party that has dominated Serbian politics during Vučić’s period in power.

Vučić cut short his presidential term in order to run for prime minister, according to reports from Al Jazeera, Euronews and The Hindu. That move has further tied the parliamentary vote to his political future, while the student movement’s campaign has grown from demands connected to the Novi Sad disaster and broader calls for corruption and accountability to a direct electoral contest with SNS.

The available reports do not establish final election results, the distribution of parliamentary seats, final turnout or whether the student movement entered government. They document the vote and the close contest, but not its final political outcome.