Serbia’s Student Movement: Two Years Of Wins And Losses
From campus occupations to a parliamentary majority in preliminary results, Serbia’s students won concessions while accountability remained contested.
Serbia’s student movement has achieved something far larger than a change in university funding. In the electoral commission’s preliminary parliamentary results declared on 26th October 2026, its Student List received 52.71% of counted votes. The government’s account translated that count into 140 of parliament’s 250 seats. Those were provisional figures. On 28th October, the commission ordered repeat voting at 53 polling stations on 1st November.
That electoral breakthrough changes the movement’s balance sheet. But a preliminary majority, a budget concession and a completed accountability process are different achievements. Following the movement from late 2024 shows where it forced an institutional response, where it sustained public participation and where the people seeking answers were still waiting.
November–December 2024: Mourning becomes organisation
The starting point was 1st November 2024, when a canopy collapsed at Novi Sad railway station. The initial death toll was 14; two more people later died from their injuries. On 22nd November, students of Belgrade’s Faculty of Dramatic Arts were attacked during a commemorative traffic stoppage. Campus occupations turned the demand for answers into a sustained campaign.
Its original demands were specific: publish the reconstruction documents; identify and prosecute people suspected of attacking students and teachers, removing public officials involved; drop criminal complaints against arrested or detained students and discontinue criminal proceedings already started; and increase higher-education funding by 20%. The movement’s own demands page preserves those distinctions. It asked institutions to do identifiable jobs, rather than treating a politician’s departure as sufficient accountability.
Students organised plenums, open assemblies that debated and voted on further action. Their occupations interrupted teaching and examinations, creating both pressure and academic costs. By December, the government was claiming the demands had been met, while students disputed that claim and continued occupying campuses in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš. N1’s contemporaneous reporting records that disagreement, before later election success could colour the account.
January–March 2025: Concessions with limits
The document demand illustrates why an announcement did not settle the dispute. On 25th January, Belgrade’s Faculty of Civil Engineering listed material it considered missing or incomplete, including subcontractor agreements and construction records. The analysis was dated to the documents available on 24th January. It challenged the completeness of that disclosure, not the existence of every subsequent document release.
On 28th January, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević announced his resignation after an overnight attack on a student in Novi Sad. He also announced the resignation of the city’s mayor. These were substantial political consequences. They did not themselves establish who was criminally responsible for the canopy collapse or fulfil the separate demands concerning attacks and detained students.
The funding demand produced a measurable response. On 6th February, the government allocated 12.01 billion dinars, describing it as a 20% increase for higher education and student welfare and fulfilment of the fourth demand. On 6th March, the education ministry said adopted higher-education legislation provided additional funding and reimbursement of half the tuition costs of eligible self-financing students at public institutions. These were concrete policy concessions; they cannot certify every payment or the other demands.
The ministry also said the law arose from a financing working group appointed in July 2024, before the canopy disaster. That chronology limits a sweeping claim that every provision was created by the protests. The narrower, documented victory is that the government expressly connected the 20% increase to the students’ fourth demand. Its own account supplies both the concession and the qualification.
Mobilisation also spread beyond the capital. Novi Sad’s local outlet 021 documented students and professors marching together on 21st February. After Niš’s 1st March “Studentski edikt” rally, Južne vesti reported the cleaned streets and organised departures of visiting students. The practical work of transport and stewarding mattered alongside crowd size: the campaign could reproduce itself across cities.
On 15th March, Belgrade drew an estimated 275,000–325,000 people, according to the Archive of Public Gatherings’ estimate reported by Deutsche Welle’s Serbian service. It was a demonstration of reach, not an immediate transfer of power. The commemorative silence was disrupted by panic, prompting allegations that a sonic weapon had been used.
The European Court of Human Rights said in its announcement of the 29th April interim measure that Serbia must prevent sound devices being used for crowd control, except communication. It explicitly took no position on whether such a weapon had been used on 15th March. In September 2026, prosecutors maintained that the characteristic sound had been added to footage, according to Tanjug’s account of their analysis. The protective order and the contested allegation should not be conflated.
Spring–autumn 2025: The strategy changes
University funding gains coexisted with new pressure. A March decree changed the weekly allocation of academic work from 20 hours each of teaching and research to 35 and five. The Conference of Universities of Serbia condemned the change. On 14th April, Belgrade University requested constitutional review and an interim suspension. A university challenge was an act of resistance, not evidence that the decree had already been overturned.
On 5th May, the movement demanded parliament’s immediate dissolution and an early election, asking citizens to support a list it would endorse. Danas reported the announcement that day. The students were now seeking a route to institutional power because, in their stated assessment, existing institutions were not delivering their demands. That assessment belongs to the movement, rather than constituting a judicial finding about every institution.
The election did not arrive that summer. Following the 28th June Vidovdan demonstration, clashes and arrests brought another phase of street action. On 29th June, Radio Slobodna Evropa documented roadblocks, including Belgrade’s Gazela bridge. Demands included an early election, release of those arrested and removal of the rival camp in central Belgrade. Neighbourhood assemblies helped organise blockades, extending participation beyond university campuses.
YUCOM’s monitoring of the June rally found that the main gathering was peaceful until its formal end, followed by indiscriminate police action and disproportionate force. That is the rights organisation’s documented assessment. Interior Minister Ivica Dačić said 77 people were taken in and 38 detained, as RSE reported. For participants, sustaining the campaign now involved immediate exposure to detention and injury, alongside the longer contest over elections.
On 1st November, the movement returned to Novi Sad for the collapse’s first anniversary. The Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, YUCOM, recorded an entirely peaceful commemoration, with student stewards managing the procession and minimal visible police presence. Its observers found no serious failure of state obligations during that gathering. That qualified finding matters: a particular peaceful event can be recognised without declaring the wider conflict resolved.
2026: From renewed campus conflict to the ballot
The new year showed the movement’s unfinished university struggle. Police removed protesters from Novi Sad’s Faculty of Philosophy on 21st January amid a dispute over professor Jelena Kleut’s employment. Protesters alleged excessive force; police denied it. RSE’s 24th January report also documented continuing signature collection for early elections. At a 27th January Belgrade protest, university autonomy remained a central concern. Novi Sad’s university administration said the employment decision followed its rules; students called it retaliation.
By September, the electoral route had become concrete. The commission recognised “Student List – Students Are Winning” on 15th September for the 25th October vote. Earlier that month, students urged opposition parties to avoid dispersing votes, while different parties offered differing forms of support. Protest solidarity had not automatically produced electoral agreement.
Aleksandar Vučić resigned the presidency on 27th September to campaign, and handed presidential duties to Ana Brnabić the following day. His United Serbia list then finished behind the students in the commission’s dated preliminary count. N1’s report of that declaration corroborated the parliamentary majority indicated by those figures.
The originating accountability question remained distinct. On 24th October, N1 reported that the canopy trial had still not begun, describing pending legal challenges and procedural delays. The movement had secured a funding response and, in preliminary results, an electoral majority. Completing the work demanded after Novi Sad would require decisions by institutions beyond the polling station.
