Djordje David: No One's Seat Is Safe Here

Djordje David is staying on the Zvezde Granda jury. The rocker confirmed it in statements to Kurir and Alo, published on August 24, 2026, and used the occasion to reveal the one condition he set for the production ahead of the new season of the music competition.

Kurir writes that its reporters caught up with David at work and asked him directly about the coming season, namely whether he is keeping his seat on the panel.

“I’ll say that I am, consider this the official version now,” David told Kurir. He added that, according to information from the production, the rest of the lineup will not change, and that the team is already assembling a “critical mass” of around forty candidates for the new generation, people he describes as exceptional even before they go through work with the mentors and everything else the season has in store for them.

Asked by Alo whether the jury’s composition is changing, David gave a short, colorful answer.

“For now everything is as solid as a fortress, but anything can happen before the first day of filming,” he said. He added that he is confident in his own spot and that, in his words, he has earned the seat, one of the most expensive in the country, for this year as well.

David also revealed his only condition for staying on. As he put it, he asked “that I be allowed to work the way I’m used to,” which for him means working with candidates without restrictions. He explained to Kurir that with every candidate he digs into how they live, what their financial circumstances are and how much time they can set aside for rehearsals, which in his case, he says, run long because he is thorough.

Everything else, the money and the time invested during the season, is agreed with the production in advance, he says, as soon as someone becomes a jury member. The seat itself, however, comes with no guarantees.

“No one’s seat is safe here,” David told both outlets. Every jury member, he says, has to prove season after season that they are genuinely putting in the effort and giving candidates everything, since Zvezde Granda, as he puts it, is the most-watched format of its kind in the Balkans.

In his conversation with Kurir, he also touched on his relationship with fellow judge Dara Bubamara, whom he describes as a breath of fresh air on the panel. He recalled a moment from the filming of the third round, when the two of them, while a candidate was singing, started trading sharp jabs at each other as a joke. According to David, the other jury members at one point suspected the clash was real. When the cameras cut, before the next candidate came in, the rest of the jury, as David describes it, jumped up and asked the two of them if they had lost their minds, insisting they never wanted to see something like that on stage again. Only then, he says, did everyone realize it had been a joke arranged between him and Dara.

For now, David says, the jury lineup remains the same as in the previous season. Whether anything will change before the first day of filming, he does not claim to know for certain. The new season of Zvezde Granda is known to be arriving soon, and David, by his own account, will still be sitting in the chair he says he defends season after season.