Mijailovic Keeps Partizan Basketball Presidency
Partizan basketball club's assembly gave Ostoja Mijailovic a new term at a Thursday special session, even though the leadership question was not originally on the agenda.
None of the thirty members of the Partizan basketball club’s assembly walked in on Thursday evening expecting to vote on the club’s presidency. The question of Ostoja Mijailovic’s mandate was not on the official agenda of the special session, held on September 10, but was added at the last minute after a majority of those present backed a motion to expand the agenda.
According to the club statement, the reasoning behind that move was that Partizan is heading into a period requiring some of its most important strategic and investment decisions in decades, and therefore needs continuity at the top and a president able to take responsibility for projects already underway.
Once that procedural hurdle was cleared, Ilija Drazic took the floor and proposed that Mijailovic continue leading the club. The motion passed easily, though sources differ on the exact vote count. Nova and Telegraf, both citing the club statement, report that 29 of the 30 members present with voting rights backed the motion, with one abstention. Sportska Centrala, which published the news the same day at 5:58 p.m., wrote that all 30 members voted in favor, with one abstention. Both versions point to the same outcome, a mandate renewed almost unanimously, but the sources disagree on exactly how many people were in the room.
After the vote, Mijailovic thanked the assembly members for their trust and announced that once he completes the strategic tasks entrusted to him, he will put his mandate up for a vote again. That pre-empted any objection that the club’s leader is holding the position longer than the regular procedure would allow.
Before the vote, the president briefed the assembly on the process so far regarding the club’s EuroLeague franchise status from the 2027/28 season. He also presented a financial plan for the scenario in which the EuroLeague Board issues a positive decision in early October: Partizan would then have to secure funds for the first and largest installment, 12.5 million euros, within the prescribed deadline.
Also presented was an infrastructure project the club is preparing, a new training center with four courts, two gyms, a medical block and a restaurant. According to the statement, the total long-term investment amounts to roughly 4.5 million euros, and the center is expected to open in June 2027. All of the club’s teams, from the youngest categories to the senior squad, would be brought together under one roof, while the first team would continue playing its games at Belgrade Arena.
The assembly also heard that the club currently has no overdue debts, a detail that is no small thing to state publicly for a traditional club with a history of financial trouble. Members also adopted the budget for the 2026/27 season, up 2.5 percent from the previous year, with no change to the planned spending on first-team salaries. The club’s sporting goals, according to the statement, remain the same: competing for trophies domestically and regionally, and reaching the EuroLeague playoffs.
For the basketball side of the club, that is really the most important message from the entire session, more than the vote’s outcome itself. Partizan is simultaneously pushing its EuroLeague franchise bid, building a training center and defending its sporting goals in the ABA League, and the assembly chose continuity in the boardroom over the risk of a change at the top in the middle of all that. The next test of that continuity comes in early October, when the EuroLeague Board is due to decide on the franchise.
