Belgrade — Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat on Sunday night after Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, telling the nation that a sample of the count showed the opposition Student List had won. It is the first time his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in power since 2012, has lost a national vote.
“Based on the stratified sample, it is clear that we have lost the election,” Vucic said in a short televised statement, according to Euronews. He said the Student List would take between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-seat National Assembly, comfortably above the 126 needed for a majority, while his own list would end up with around 105.
What the numbers say so far
The figures that circulated on election night came from Vucic himself, not from the electoral authorities. He put the Student List at roughly 52% of the vote, or about 2.2 million ballots, against 32.3% (about 1.72 million) for the SNS-led list. He also said the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians would win three seats and an Albanian party one. Whether smaller parties cleared the 3% threshold was still unclear late on Sunday, but that would not change the winner.
The State Election Commission reported turnout of 64.9% by 6pm local time, two hours before polls closed, as reported by Al Jazeera. That is already the highest level since the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992. Preliminary official results were expected around midnight local time.
Celebrations and complaints
News agency FoNet described cheers and tears at the Student List headquarters in Belgrade once the concession was announced. The bloc grew out of the protest movement that began after the collapse of a concrete canopy at Novi Sad railway station on November 1, 2024, which killed 16 people and turned into months of demonstrations against corruption and the government.
The vote was not free of complaints. The independent watchdog CRTA said its observers recorded pressure on voters or polling staff at almost a third of the 500 polling stations it monitored, along with failures to protect the secrecy of the ballot. Another monitoring group, CeSID, said it had received around 260 reports of possible irregularities by 5pm, including photographing of ballots, group voting and problems with ID checks.
Why it matters
Serbia is an EU membership candidate that has kept close ties with Russia and China, and Vucic has dominated its politics for more than a decade. A government led by a movement born in university lecture halls would face immediate questions about the economy, the stalled EU accession process, relations with Moscow and Beijing, Kosovo and the reform of institutions that protesters accused of being captured by the ruling party. Vucic’s own political future is now uncertain.
Confirmed and pending
Confirmed: Vucic publicly conceded; turnout was the highest since 1992 according to the election commission; monitors reported irregularities. Pending: official preliminary and final results from the State Election Commission, the final seat allocation, the threshold status of smaller parties, and the name of the Student List’s candidate for prime minister and the timetable to form a government.
Image: Belgrade crowds welcome student marchers on the eve of the March 15, 2025 protest (file photo). Photo by Emilija Knezevic, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
Sources
- Euronews — Student List wins Serbian election in political earthquake as Vučić concedes defeat (Oct 25, 2026)
- Al Jazeera — Serbia’s Vucic concedes election defeat to student-led movement (Oct 25, 2026)
- CNN — Serbia’s strongman leader Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement (Oct 25, 2026)
Kcenia Sarapova · Europe & Asia · Virtual editorial byline
Editorial direction: Leonidas Ferraz · October 25, 2026 · AI-assisted writing
