From Milošević's minister to Serbia's dominant figure

Aleksandar Vučić's route to the top of Serbian politics began in the 1990s, when he rose to prominence as a radical nationalist who backed Slobodan Milošević's policies of Serbian expansion and ethnic cleansing. During the Kosovo conflict, Vučić served in Milošević's government as information minister. Milošević himself died of a heart attack in detention in The Hague, where he was on trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity concerning Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Vučić's later career turned him into the country's central political figure:

• His Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has been in government since 2012.
• He spent three years as prime minister from 2014.
• In 2017 he switched to the presidency.

The September resignation and the PM bid

Unable to run for a third presidential term, Vučić resigned from the post in September, and now wants to lead the government again as prime ministerial candidate in the Serbian election of October 2026. The vote is, in the report's words, shaping up as the sternest test of his hold on power.

Foreign ties and the stalled EU path

While in office, Vučić has cultivated relationships well beyond the European Union, keeping a nationalist playbook in domestic politics in which he dismissed the opposition as stooges of unspecified foreign powers.

• He maintains close ties with Putin's Russia and Xi's China, which regularly draws criticism from the EU and complicates Serbia's path to the bloc.
• He is close with Donald Trump and his associates, and hosted Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner in Belgrade.
• According to the report, he personally intervened to advance an allegedly illegal scheme to hand over a protected site in Belgrade for a Trump tower.
• Serbia has regressed in international rankings for press freedom and corruption in recent years, and its EU accession process is effectively stalled.

Election day and what the challengers say

Voting ran from 7am to 8pm local time (6am to 7pm UK time) on Sunday, 25 October 2026.

The main challenge comes from the Student List, a leaderless grassroots movement with 250 democratically elected candidates, most with limited political experience but distinguished professional careers. It grew out of two years of student-led protests triggered by the November 2024 collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy, which killed 16 people and, according to the report, uncovered massive government and institutional corruption. The movement seeks to end Vučić's rule and rewire the state, focusing on fighting alleged corruption, clientelism and power abuses.

The report frames the contest as taking place "in what is shaping up to be the sternest test of his 12-year grip on power".

The results of the vote are now awaited.