Serbian President Vucic Concedes as Student-Led List Wins Parliamentary Election

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, after a student-led opposition group, the Student List, won Serbia's snap parliamentary elections and ended more than a decade of rule by him and his Serbian Progressive Party. In an address to the nation, Vucic said that a stratified sample showed his side had lost, though final results were not yet in. The Student List is expected to hold about 140 of 250 parliamentary seats. It has published a program called "The Student Plan," with three priorities: fighting corruption, expanding education and innovation, and economic reforms. It has said it will follow the law rather than pursue revolutionary change. The new majority will not be verified for at least another month, leaving Serbia in institutional limbo. On Tuesday, tennis player Novak Djokovic, speaking in Basel, praised the students' resilience over two years of protests. Ana Brnabic, a vice president of the Progressive Party board, said the Student List had no program or coherent ideology.

The Guardian, representing the left, presents the result as students toppling an increasingly authoritarian strongman. It stresses record turnout and a list in which half the candidates hold PhDs, and it features student activist Tara Blagojević, MP-to-be Milica Jovanović and journalist Ana Milosavljevic. Its open question is how a leaderless movement will choose a prime minister. Fox News, on the right, leads with Vucic's concession quote, calls the result the biggest Balkan shake-up since Milosevic fell in 2000, and headlines the unclear agenda. It quotes Brnabic calling the movement anarchic and anti-establishment. Both sides agree the students won and that governing plans are untested, but they differ on tone and sources: the Guardian centers the winners, while Fox centers the defeated party's critique. They also give different lengths for Vucic's rule, 12 and 14 years. Alternative outlets add Djokovic's praise and the Christian Science Monitor's detail on the plan and the limbo period.