Thousands gather at final student-led rally ahead of Serbia election

Tens of thousands of supporters of Serbia's student-led opposition movement have packed central Belgrade for the final rally of their campaign ahead of Sunday's parliamentary election.

Waving "students are winning" flags and blowing whistles, the marchers converged on Slavija Square on Thursday for the last gathering of the "Student List - Students Win" movement. Sunday's vote is widely seen as a chance to end Aleksandar Vucic's 14 years of rule.

"Really, for the first time in my life, I believe that it is possible," one professor told reporters at the rally.

The election follows nearly two years of student-led protests triggered by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at a Novi Sad railway station, a disaster widely blamed on corruption that sparked some of Serbia's largest demonstrations since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

The Student List, a leaderless movement of student-backed candidates, is running 250 candidates for the 250-seat parliament -- many of them academics or political outsiders -- in a bid to unseat Vucic's ruling party. "You deserve better, and we know how to deliver it. Students are winning!" speakers told the crowd.

Across town, Vucic held a rival rally at a sports hall. Vucic, who resigned the presidency in September to run for prime minister, called the snap election himself. "Let us go out and defeat them! Defeat them decisively!" he told supporters.

Serbia lacks reliable independent polling, though the AP reported surveys suggested a close race. Twenty-four civil society groups warned this week that conditions for "free and fair elections" had not been met.