Vucic announces parliamentary elections for autumn 2026
The Serbian president has narrowed the vote to the window between late September and mid-November; the opposition is pressing for an earlier date.
President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic said in his Sunday address that the snap parliamentary elections will be held between late September and mid-November, finally fixing the framework for the vote after several weeks of uncertainty. The decision was announced a few days after St George’s Day, which had earlier been flagged as the moment when the call would be issued, the Belgrade daily Danas reported on 22 May.
The president had repeatedly shifted the timing in earlier statements. In April he mentioned that elections could be called for 12 July, but after consultations with parliamentary groups the summer option was ruled out. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party prepared its candidate lists in parallel with the consultations, but a concrete date, the Srbija Izbori portal notes, was not public until this weekend.
What is the opposition asking for, and what is the government offering?
The opposition parties involved in the student protest bloc had demanded that the elections be held before the parliament’s summer recess, arguing that any further delay plays into the hands of the authorities. Zoran Lutovac of the Democratic Party said postponing the vote prolongs a vacuum of accountability, while Miodrag Jovanovic of the Alliance for Serbia’s Victory took the view that the president had treated the date as a matter of street, not institutional, agreement.
On the government side, Speaker of Parliament Ana Brnabic judged the schedule to be in line with the constitution and the electoral calendar, with no grounds for pressure. SNS spokesman Vladimir Djukanovic said the party is going into the campaign “ready, with a programme, not with blockades”, adding that the 29 March local elections had shown that the ruling coalition’s candidates retain a majority of voters despite more than a year of continuous protests.
The announcement of the autumn slot comes at a moment when the student blocs and opposition lists are still discussing a joint ticket for the parliamentary vote. Masina, a Belgrade portal tracking the protest movement, reports that some professors and students in blockade have voiced reservations about putting up candidates with a party-political background, which leaves the joint list uncertain.
The current standing of the parliamentary parties, according to the latest Faktor Plus poll from April, shows SNS and its coalition partners holding a majority, while the combined opposition vote crosses the 35 per cent mark. From what we understand, sources close to the party leaderships judge that the gap between the two blocs could be considerably smaller than the polls now suggest, if the opposition manages to merge its lists before the registration deadline.
On the academic side, Faculty of Political Sciences professor Dusan Pavlovic, speaking to the weekly Vreme, took the view that the autumn date gives the authorities ample time to deploy the “classic mechanisms of the state campaign”, from announcements of capital projects to summer-month welfare measures. Tatjana Vojtehovski, an analyst at the Belgrade Centre for Investigative Journalism, echoed the same caution, judging that the opposition bloc, if it wants to seize the moment, would have to consolidate its lists by June, before the authorities more seriously activate their own network of local channels. Either way, the interval between the announcement and the formal call becomes part of the political contest, since both sides have time to prepare their narratives.
The next item on the calendar is the president’s formal decision to call the elections. Under the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, polling day must be no fewer than 45 and no more than 60 days from the call. If Vucic issues the decree in the first half of August, the weekend that fits the stated window falls between 27 September and 9 November.
At the Republic Electoral Commission, chairman Vladimir Dimitrijevic told the daily Politika that administrative preparations for the vote are under way, with the focus on drafting implementing rules for the amendments to the electoral laws now before parliament. The concrete operational burden, he added, will be felt in August, if the call coincides with the end of the parliamentary summer recess.
