In June 2025, DSCENE Magazine placed Serbia’s student protesters on the cover of its DEFIANCE issue. Photographed by Riccardo Dubitante, the cover documented a generation demanding accountability, transparency and a different future for their country. On October 25, 2026, that movement achieved an extraordinary electoral victory, defeating the political establishment that had dominated Serbia for more than a decade.
NEWS
The Student List secured a parliamentary majority according to preliminary results, prompting Aleksandar Vučić to concede defeat. Projections indicate that student-backed candidates will hold approximately 135 to 140 seats in Serbia’s 250-member National Assembly. Voter turnout approached 70 percent, reaching its highest level since the breakup of Yugoslavia.
For a movement that began inside occupied university buildings, the result represents a remarkable political transformation.
From the DEFIANCE Cover
to a National Movement
When DSCENE documented the students in spring 2025, their protests had already developed into an extensive network of university occupations, public demonstrations and community initiatives.
The movement emerged following the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, which killed 16 people. Students demanded accountability for the tragedy, transparency surrounding the reconstruction and broader institutional reform.
DSCENE editor Katarina Doric and photographer Riccardo Dubitante spent two weeks documenting the protests and life inside occupied faculties. Their reporting revealed the organisational structures sustaining the movement.
Students established plenums, collective decision-making assemblies where participants discussed proposals and voted. They organised security, food distribution, cleaning and communications while continuing their demonstrations.
Their actions demonstrated an understanding of civic participation that extended beyond conventional protest.
In the interview published alongside DSCENE’s DEFIANCE issue, the students explained:
“We are fighting for a country that is just and fair to everyone.”
They also described their ambitions for the future with remarkable clarity:
“We want a future for ourselves in Serbia, because we want to live in our own country.”
Seventeen months after DSCENE published its cover, those demands have gained an entirely new political significance.
A Historic Election Changes Serbia
Sunday’s election followed nearly two years of demonstrations that expanded across Serbia, drawing support from students, professors, workers and citizens dissatisfied with existing institutions.
Vučić, who had dominated Serbian politics since 2014, acknowledged the Student List’s victory in a televised address. Preliminary projections placed his Serbian Progressive Party-led coalition well behind the student-backed candidates.
The announcement prompted celebrations throughout Belgrade. Tens of thousands gathered in the capital, filling streets that had previously hosted some of the movement’s largest demonstrations.
The electoral result also introduces substantial responsibilities. The student-backed coalition includes candidates from different professional and social backgrounds, whose shared opposition to the previous political order will now face the practical demands of government.
Its ability to deliver institutional reforms, address corruption allegations and maintain public trust will shape the country’s next political chapter.
The Future Is Ours
Looking back at DSCENE’s original photographs, the significance of the student movement becomes particularly clear. The images capture the early stages of an organised civic effort, when participants were still determining how far their collective action could reach.
Their university occupations challenged established ideas about political participation. Their demonstrations connected communities across the country. Their electoral victory has now brought those efforts into parliament.
During our 2025 interview, the students offered a prediction that feels especially relevant today:
“Our fight for a better tomorrow has only just begun.”
The election establishes a new starting point. Final results and the formation of a government will determine the immediate political outcome, while the broader demands that sustained the movement will remain central to its future.
For DSCENE, the story also returns to the photographs that appeared on our DEFIANCE cover: a generation organising around the possibility of change, long before the ballot box confirmed its political influence.
The future they spoke about in 2025 has become a responsibility they must now confront.
