Thousands at Students' Final Rally Ahead of Serbia Vote as Movement Seeks to End Vucic's 14 Years in Power

Thousands of people have gathered in central Belgrade for the final rally of Serbia's student-led opposition movement ahead of a parliamentary election. In Sunday's vote, the movement hopes to end the long rule of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic's party.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of supporters of the student-led movement filled the centre of the capital. At the same time, Vucic held a rival rally at a sports hall across town.

Waving flags reading 'students are winning' and blowing whistles, the marchers converged on Slavija Square, the site of some of the movement's biggest protests.

Sunday's vote is seen as a chance to end Vucic's longtime rule. Marija Nedeljkovic Radic, 47, who came to the rally, said that for the first time in her life she believed it was possible, and that young people had given her hope of 'a normal country'.

Behind the vote lie nearly two years of student-led protests. The movement was triggered by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people.

The Student List, a leaderless movement of student-backed candidates, is seeking to unseat Vucic's right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has been in power for more than 14 years.

The movement is running 250 candidates for the 250-seat parliament. Many of them are academics or political outsiders, and its platform is centred on fighting corruption.

At the Belgrade rally, university professor Jugoslav Gasic, one of the candidates on the Student List, told the crowd they were putting an end to 14 years of humiliation, chaos and betrayal, and to decades of putting personal and party interests above the people's. The crowd chanted 'Victory, victory!'.

The railway disaster is widely blamed on corruption. It triggered some of Serbia's largest demonstrations since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and demands for transparency grew into calls for an early election.

Over the past week, students marched for days across the country, including in the rural areas that are Vucic's strongholds.

Vucic resigned the presidency in September to run for prime minister and called the snap election last month. He has accused the movement of being a foreign-funded coup attempt. On Thursday he told his supporters to go out and defeat their opponents decisively.

Serbia lacks reliable independent polling. But political scientist Dusan Vucicevic told the AFP news agency he expected the students to win more than 40 percent of the vote, far more than any opposition list since the SNS took power in 2012. The Associated Press reported that polls suggested a close race, raising fears of incidents if both sides claim victory.

Twenty-four Serbian civil society groups warned this week that conditions for 'free and fair elections' were lacking, and a monitoring group cited more than 100 violent incidents during the campaign. On Wednesday, prosecutors questioned six people arrested on suspicion of plotting 'violence, riots and attacks' on election day. All eyes are now on Sunday's vote — and on whether Serbian politics really is about to change hands.