A Captured Field, an Open Contest: Serbia’s Upcoming ElectionsFriday, October 16, 2026

What happens when, on one side, the government holds a high concentration of power, including over the media, and on the other, young people are organizing in novel ways to defeat government control?

That is the question four scholars discussed in the case of Serbia at the panel “A captured field, an Open’s Contest: Serbia’s Upcoming Elections,” organized by Stanford University’s Democracy Action Lab one week before the snap parliamentary elections on October 25.

The challenges facing Serbian youth and society at large are far from minor. According to Raša Nedeljkov of Serbia’s Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), the current government has used public resources to serve its own group interests, with a high degree of impunity, and has co-opted the media to do so.

In addition, a campaign of persecution against opponents has unfolded alongside an early start to the election campaign, according to the real-time documentation CRTA has gathered by deploying dozens of observers.

The goal for Aleksandar Vučić’s government is clear: win the elections at any cost, even by busing in voters from other regions to secure the vote, as happened in the 2023 elections.

This climate of obstruction and persecution of the opposition has gone hand in hand with a strategy of media control, as Dragana Žarkovič Obradovič, director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, explained.

Independent media outlets are not allowed to do their work freely and without fear, and they face pressure, for example, by being blocked from receiving funding or advertising. To withstand this government offensive, strong institutions are needed to ensure that the press has the conditions to exercise freedom of expression.

But all is not lost. Gazela Pudar Draško is optimistic, especially given Serbia’s precedent of the intense mobilization in 2024, when thousands of Gen Z youth took to the streets to protest against the corruption of Aleksandar Vučić’s government.

The political crisis of 2024 has not been fully resolved, which is why today’s youth represent the possibility of toppling the Vučić regime: this is a generation that firmly believes it can change things and already has experience in political organizing.

These are young people who don’t need leaders or individual figures to follow. Rather, they are eager for a community and a collective that truly gives shape to their concerns and anxieties and turns them into democratic action, a safeguard for the rights that have been taken from them.