Polls opened in Serbia on Sunday in what is set to be its most fiercely contested parliamentary election in more than 14 years, as a student-led movement seeks to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic.
The snap vote is the culmination of nearly two years of student-led protests sparked by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people – a tragedy widely blamed on corruption.
The disaster triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
The Students’ List, a selection of candidates backed by the largely leaderless movement, now poses the biggest challenge to Vucic’s right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has dominated politics throughout its tenure.