After the Win: What to Expect From Serbia’s Newly Elected Government
Election Night in Serbia; Publika’s photo report from Belgrade, photo by Mariam Qavshbaia, Publika. Source: Instagram.
Celebrations erupted in Belgrade on the night of October 25, 2026, after the Student List, a Student-backed opposition party created after the anti-corruption protests, won Serbia’s parliamentary elections with 53 percent of the vote, ending the fourteen-year rule of Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
Voter turnout reached 70 percent, the highest recorded since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992. The student-backed bloc secured an absolute majority with 141 of the 250 seats in the National Assembly, while the SNS-led coalition claimed 103 seats. Vučić conceded the election that evening, which could signal a peaceful change of power.
The snap election concluded after two years of severe political instability, triggered by the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad railway station, which killed sixteen people and fueled widespread outrage over corruption, lack of transparency, and institutional negligence.
Having secured a popular mandate, the winners now face the complex task of governing and delivering on their promises. United primarily around a shared demand for accountability, the bloc’s members hold a wide range of views. Its members bring a broad mix of political outlooks ranging from liberal pro-EU to Eurosceptic, pro-Russian, and nationalist. The first few months will show whether the party members can find common ground and pull the country out of potential political crisis.
This breadth is visible in the party’s makeup. Newly elected majority members of the Student List comprise delegates from academia, the non-governmental sector, sports, and medicine. This was deliberate: to revitalize Serbian politics, the original 250-candidate list included people with no previous political affiliations. The Student List grew out of a diverse, decentralized protest movement that deliberately avoided establishing a clear leadership or a single unifying ideology. A broad coalition can claim wider legitimacy, but it can also make decision-making harder, especially in the first months when the new government is expected to act swiftly and decisively.
Friction about responsibility has already emerged between the incoming and outgoing majorities. The Students List outlines its priorities. They said, “We are not in power yet. For now, we are only calling on the institutions to do their job, and the only way to do that is to address the public.” The SNS, now in opposition, argues that the responsibility already belongs to the winners.
The new majority’s policy framework rests on an 11-point platform and a 1,200-page governing plan, focused on fighting corruption, strengthening democratic institutions, media freedom, and protecting healthcare and education reforms.
Radomir Saičić, chemistry professor at the University of Belgrade and one of the winning party’s most prominent representatives, emphasized that students will be involved in decision-making, especially when selecting the future president. The prime minister and key cabinet members have not yet been named, but the new majority is confident it can select qualified candidates. For its first one hundred days, Saičić said the government will focus on the “decriminalization of the state, restructuring and professionalization of management.”
Accountability is the coalition’s strongest unifying stance. The new majority came to power promising to investigate corruption and hold those responsible accountable. Talks of the removal of regime loyalists have already begun, with the students calling for the resignations of high-ranking officials in the police, judiciary, and intelligence. According to the latest reports, ten police officers have been arrested for using excessive force during last year’s protests.
Under Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian rule, the state capture hollowed out the media environment. The party’s loyal media outlets played a big role in demonizing the opposition during the protests and election campaign. After Vučić, restoring media freedom is another area of broad agreement in the student-backed coalition, and early changes are visible. The director-general of Serbia’s Public Broadcaster has resigned, and the regional public broadcaster RTV has publicly apologized to viewers for years of one-sided, pro-government coverage.
Foreign policy is where the party’s range of views is most likely to show. The party members have differing views on EU and NATO accession, Kosovo, the war in Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia. For now, the new governing party is expected to largely continue Vučić’s approach of balancing between Russia, China, and the EU. The Student List has confirmed its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but it doesn’t plan to impose sanctions on Russia, and intends to keep Serbia’s military neutrality.
As for the EU, Serbia’s stalled accession process is expected to regain momentum, at least with expected improvements in judiciary and media freedoms. According to a recent opinion poll, many Student List supporters want closer ties to the EU. However, Serbian protests were never framed around foreign policy, and they cannot be labeled either pro- or anti-EU. As a result, the new majority’s relationship with Brussels is ambivalent. Vučić enjoyed support from senior EU figures, and the controversial Jadar lithium deal between the EU and Vučić’s government reinforced the sense that the EU puts its interests above its values: most Serbians, including students and academics, opposed the project and were disappointed by the lack of support from Brussels during the anti-corruption protests, seeing this as the EU overlooking democratic backsliding in favor of critical raw materials.
The Student List enters government with a historic mandate, a detailed program and a diverse team that ran an impressive campaign. Whether its heterogeneity proves a strength or a constraint will become clearer in the first hundred days, as its promises on accountability, media freedom, and an international balancing act are slowly but surely put into practice.