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Polling stations opened across Serbia on Sunday for snap parliamentary elections, with about 6.45 million registered voters eligible to choose 250 members of the National Assembly, Anadolu Agency reported.
Eighteen electoral lists, fielding more than 2,400 candidates, are competing. Voting is taking place at nearly 8,400 polling stations, which opened at 7 am local time and are scheduled to close at 8 pm.
Domestic and international observers are monitoring the vote, including representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.
Serbian citizens abroad can vote at 93 polling stations in 37 countries. More than 102,000 people are registered to vote overseas. Four Serbian municipalities have also designated 60 polling stations for voters registered in neighboring Kosovo, where some areas have large ethnic Serb populations.
Ruling party faces student-backed challengers
The election follows months of student-led protests and a political crisis that led President Aleksandar Vucic to resign in September. Vucic is seeking to return to government as prime minister through the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
The SNS, which has dominated Serbian politics since 2012, is running under the electoral list “Aleksandar Vucic – United Serbia.” Its challengers include the student-backed “Student List – Students Win,” which emerged from protests after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people.
The student movement has called for accountability over the disaster, greater transparency and reforms to strengthen the rule of law and public institutions. Other contenders include the Socialist Party of Serbia, led by Ivica Dacic, the pro-European European Serbia coalition and the nationalist Authentic Right bloc.
Seat allocation and political stakes
Serbia elects its 250 lawmakers through proportional representation, allocating seats to electoral lists using the D’Hondt method. Lists generally need at least 3% of the vote to enter parliament, while those representing national minorities are exempt from the threshold. A party or coalition needs at least 126 seats to secure a majority and form a government.
The Republic Electoral Commission is responsible for compiling and announcing the overall results after receiving reports from polling stations. The new parliament must be constituted within 30 days of the final results being published, and a new government must be formed within 90 days of parliament’s constitution.
The vote is taking place amid divisions over Serbia’s European integration, its relations with Russia and China, and the unresolved dispute over neighboring Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Serbia is an EU candidate country, maintains close ties with Moscow and has declined to join Western sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
The outcome will determine the composition of the next parliament and which parties can secure the support needed to form a new government. Sunday’s vote is Serbia’s 15th parliamentary election since multiparty democracy was introduced in 1990 and its 10th snap parliamentary election. The last parliamentary elections were held in December 2023.
