Belgrade Crowds Dance Through Flare Smoke After Student Election Win

Thousands of people danced and waved Serbian flags through clouds of flare smoke in Belgrade on Sunday night, October 25, after a student-led movement defeated Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling party in parliamentary elections.

Jakub Krzywiecki filmed the vast crowd filling a square late in the evening, as pink and red flares lit up the haze and people jumped and cheered under the streetlights. He captioned the video “Freed from desire.”

Preliminary results from the election commission gave the Students’ List 52.65 percent of the vote and Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party 39.22 percent, with the students on course for around 140 of the 250 seats in parliament.

Vučić admitted defeat soon after polls closed. Crowds celebrated across the capital into the early hours, with a fresh gathering on Slavija Square and honking cars circling the streets, while no incidents were reported along the main routes.

The student movement began after the deadly collapse of a railway station roof in Novi Sad in November 2024.