Serbia's Vucic Concedes Defeat to Student List in Snap Parliamentary Election

Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat to the student-led protest movement in Serbia's snap parliamentary election on Sunday, October 25, 2026. Reuters reported the concession on election night, and Associated Press and Guardian coverage in the same window also reported Vucic conceding defeat to a student-led movement.

Vucic based his concession on a sample of results, not on a certified final count. He said: "We still do not have final results, on the basis of a sample ... it is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105, no one else has entered parliament."

What the numbers say, and what they do not

Serbia's National Assembly has 250 seats, and a parliamentary majority requires 126 seats. On Vucic's own sample-based estimate, the Student List, with between 135 and 140 seats, would pass that threshold, while his list, with 105 seats, would fall short of it.

A separate projection pointed in the same direction. An Ipsos and CeSID projection cited in Guardian election-night coverage put the Student List on 52.0 percent and 138 seats, with Vucic's list on 39.3 percent and 104 seats. That is a projection, not the official result from the Republic Electoral Commission.

The early official snapshot was too small to settle the count. A partial tally from the Republic Electoral Commission at 21:15 Belgrade time had processed only 2.42 percent of polling stations, showed different percentages, and is not representative. Readers should treat every seat total in this report as an estimate or a projection until the commission certifies a final result.

The vote itself

A total of 6,451,292 registered voters were eligible to vote, at 8,392 polling stations. Voting took place from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time on Sunday.

Vucic called the snap election in September. It came after almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism. The demonstrations were triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024.

A movement that became the main challenge

The students gained widespread support during those demonstrations and became the greatest threat to Vucic since he first became prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017. The Pavlovic Today reports that his SNS would be in opposition after 14 years in power if the projected result is confirmed.

That is the scale of the shift Vucic described on election night: a protest movement that began after the Novi Sad deaths, grew over almost two years, and then, on his own count, won more seats than his list and passed the majority threshold on its own. The final certified numbers still have to come from the Republic Electoral Commission, and they will decide whether the estimates and the projection hold.