Serbia's Longtime Leader Faces Biggest Political Test as Students Mount Election Challenge

Serbia's longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic faces the biggest political test of his 14-year rule. He resigned from the presidency in September and is now running for prime minister in parliamentary elections, facing a political force founded by student protesters.

Helena Ivanov, associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said this is certainly the biggest challenge for the former president in his 14-year rule. The student protesters, she added, have been able to capture the hearts and minds of people and keep the momentum going in a way that the established opposition was never able to do.

Serbia's Foreign Minister Marko Djuric, by contrast, said he believes the student opposition is highly unlikely to win. The people of Serbia have seen through them, he said: years of criticism have not persuaded the public that they have a credible program or a serious plan for the country's future.

Djuric touted Serbia's economy under Vucic and the Strategic Dialogue with the United States, which he said will foster greater cooperation and new opportunities for Serbs.

In an interview in June, when he was still president, Vucic pointed to economic growth as evidence of transformation. He said GDP was 32 billion euros when he became prime minister, and this year it is going to be over 100 billion euros, about $120 billion. Vucic first became prime minister in 2014 and president in 2017.

In that same interview, he said the improving relationship between Washington and Belgrade was increasingly centred on economics, investment and technological cooperation and mutual conservative values. Serbia is also deepening ties with Washington while balancing relations with Russia and China, standing by Israel and resisting calls to recognise Kosovo.

Concern is also growing in the US Congress. A bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation, known by the acronym SRBIJA, to address democratic backsliding in Serbia, promote the rule of law and accountability and improve the treatment of student-led civic protests. Most importantly, it would condition future aid on a presidential certification that Serbia made significant and sustained efforts toward judicial accountability, press freedom, and alignment with the EU and NATO.

There are growing concerns from Congress and observers that the election will take place in a hostile environment and efforts to discredit and undermine the election are already underway. Others fear the current government might not respect the outcome if the Student List were to win.

Vucic had served as president since 2017 and previously as prime minister from 2014 to 2017, but he was term limited under the constitution. His exit from the presidency created the opportunity for him to remain in power by returning as prime minister. He resigned from the presidency and dissolved parliament in September, setting the stage for the snap election on October 25.

As president, analysts say, he has always straddled the geopolitical line between East and West, seeking European legitimacy and launching EU accession talks in 2014 while also maintaining close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Unlike previous elections, the student-led opposition has garnered significant attention to its cause and mobilised popular support, becoming a legitimate political contender out of a spontaneous protest movement.

Serbia has been roiled by student-led anti-corruption protests since November 2024, demanding justice and accountability after the deaths of 16 people following the collapse of a railway station canopy in the town of Novi Sad. One of the largest protests in Serbia's history took place on March 15, 2025, with nearly 350,000 people gathered in Slavija Square in central Belgrade.

The protesters criticised the Vucic government for failing to hold anyone accountable for the canopy disaster, as the government continued its heavy-handed crackdown on demonstrators. None of the original demands were met, so the students turned to electoral politics to enact the change the Serbian political opposition was never able to achieve.

The Student List, as the opposition is known, consists of a wide swath of civil society actors, many of whom come from the ranks of academia, but does not include anyone from Serbia's traditional opposition parties that struggled to challenge Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party in the past. The group operates in a decentralised manner and does not have an official leader. Its main priorities are to tackle corruption and promote transparency and the rule of law.

Filip Ubovic, a student from the University of Belgrade and protest participant, said he joined the protests because he was fed up with the current state of his country. People had enough for quite some time but fully embraced the students because they are their kids, young, not professional politicians, have no single face representing them, and are very professional and principled, he said.

The test now will be whether the Student List can transition its popular mobilisation in the streets into a viable political option that can win an election and govern a country that has not undergone a political transition in over a decade. It is also unclear, if the Student List were to win, how it might reorient Serbia's foreign policy and relations with the US. Sinisa Vukovic, director of the Global Policy Program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, said the students have so far been remarkably reluctant to define foreign policy goals that would depart from the current government's course, so continuity is for now the most realistic expectation.