Serbia holds high-stakes parliamentary election amid leaderless student protests

Serbia held a fiercely contested parliamentary election on Sunday, with voters choosing among 18 electoral lists in an unusually high turnout expected from 6.4 million registered voters.

The snap vote follows nearly two years of large-scale, student-led protests sparked by the fatal 2024 Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse that killed 16 people.

The leaderless student movement's candidate selection, the Students' List, posed a major challenge to President Aleksandar Vucic's right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party.