(Photo by Dejan Krsmanovic via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 DEED)
In late 2024 and early 2025, Serbia experienced a historic wave of youth-led protests as high school and university students, alongside teachers and citizens, mobilized against President Aleksander Vučić and his government.
What emerged was not just a political outcry but a sense of civic solidarity that collective action could rebuild trust between citizens and institutions. Their efforts are not only demanding accountability from public institutions but also building the skills, networks, and structures necessary for lasting democratic renewal.
From Novi Sad to Belgrade, two of the largest cities in Serbia, these students are demonstrating that knowledge paired with action can reshape the future of a country.
From Tragedy to Direct Action
On November 1, 2024, a concrete and glass canopy at the Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing 15 people and injuring several others. Among the deaths was a six-year-old girl from North Macedonia. Four months after the collapse, in March 2025, the death count rose to 16 as 19-year-old Vukašin Crnčević died from his sustained injuries.
Although the official cause of the collapse remains under investigation, the public quickly attributed it to the systemic corruption and mismanagement of construction deals by President Vučić’s government. The station had undergone multiple renovations in recent years, including part of a broader high-speed railway project involving China and Hungary. Despite this, President Vučić insisted that the canopy was not involved in the renovations; rather, the collapse was the result of “political and criminal responsibility”.
Protests and blockades quickly followed Vučić’s remarks, spreading across Serbia from Novi Sad to Belgrade, Niš, and other cities. Tensions escalated on November 24, 2024, when individuals allegedly linked to Vučić’s political party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), assaulted students during a peaceful demonstration at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. A blood-red handprint left on the pavement of Novi Sad’s main square expressed public anger over perceived government negligence. Protesters held banners declaring that Vučić and the SNS had “blood on their hands”.
The collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy catalyzed a nationwide civic awakening, particularly among students. University campuses nationwide became sites of occupation and resistance. Within weeks of the accident, students had occupied more than 80 faculties, demanding justice for the victims, the release of unfairly detained activists, and a 20% increase in state funding for education. Protests rapidly expanded to include high school students, teachers, university professors, researchers, and citizens, showing widespread dissatisfaction with Vučić’s governance after years of institutional corruption.
A Rising Generation of Political Students
These protests come on the back of years of weakening democratic norms in Serbia caused by Vučić’s corruption. Independent observers noted that the Novi Sad station collapse was not an infrastructure failure, but the product of a system in which lucrative public contracts were routinely awarded through political loyalty rather than competence. Over the past decade, President Vučić’s government and the SNS have consolidated control over state institutions, eroding oversight mechanisms and enabling a patronage-based network that channels public funds and politically connected contractors.
In response to the collapse, prosecutors filed charges against 13 individuals, including former government officials, designers, and supervisors of the renovation project. However, the release of some defendants, including the former construction minister, fueled public skepticism about the impartiality of the investigation as the SNS retains control over both police and judicial institutions. The tragedy quickly became a flashpoint for broader political grievances, showing not only infrastructural neglect but also the SNS’s manipulation of state institutions, the consolidation of media control, and the undermining of public trust.
The 2024-2025 protests evolved into a catch-all civic movement, transcending traditional political and socioeconomic divides. Polls conducted by the Centre for Research, Transparency, and Accountability (CRTA) indicated overwhelming support across age and educational groups, with support for the students rising from 52% in December 2024 to 60% by March 2025. This unexpected rise in youth support, an age group that was seen as otherwise disengaged in political discourse, sparked optimism and fueled support in older generations.
The civic awakening in Serbia reflects the confluence of historical student activism, contemporary civic education, and effective grassroots organizing. Students and teachers mobilized a cross-generational movement advocating for transparency and the rule of law. It shows the potential for education and civic engagement to catalyze meaningful social change.
Civic Awakening Power Through Protest
Serbia’s civic education played a pivotal role in awakening this social and political change. Introduced in Serbia in 2001 and 2002, civic education and subsequent curriculum reforms emphasized human rights, democratic society, contemporary social processes, and civic activism, fostering awareness among youth of their rights, and avenues for action.
Students and teachers reported that these educational experiences equipped them with tools for collective organization. One university student highlighted that civic education enabled them to mobilise within the protests to see democracy as a living system requiring citizen engagement and institutional accountability.
Central to this mobilization were plenums, open assemblies based on direct democracy where participants debated, proposed, and voted on collective decisions. These assemblies became hubs for coordination, enabling inclusive and transparent decision-making while minimizing the risk of co-optation by authorities. The movement combined discipline and creativity with a nonviolent strategy, using social media not only to share protest updates but also to circulate civic handbooks and democratic practices, reinforcing trust within the student network.
Teachers and university academics played a pivotal role, mentoring students and participating in plenums, thereby enhancing both the credibility and sustainability of the movement. High school students joined alongside university students, creating an intergenerational coalition that bridged educational levels and professional sectors, from farmers to public sector workers and artists, uniting citizens across generational and geographic divides. Through these collaborations, students challenged not only government policies but also the broader societal structures that sustained authoritarian control, fostering a participatory and active citizenship.
Beyond the Streets, Toward Renewal
The student-led mobilization in Serbia reveals the transformative potential of civic engagement when knowledge, creativity, and collective agency converge. What distinguished this movement is not only its scale, but its deliberate application of democratic principles learned in the classroom to real-world action. Through plenums and decentralized coordination, students and teachers alike turned abstract lessons about rights, responsibilities, and participation into tangible civic practice. In doing so, they demonstrated that civic education achieves its full impact when it becomes a lived experience rather than theoretical knowledge.
The movement’s strength lay not in its numbers but in its discipline and coherence. Students and educators alike resisted the temptation of partisanship, grounding their demands in civic rather than political language. This allowed them to frame their struggle not as opposition to authority, but as an affirmation of democratic integrity itself. For democratic societies elsewhere, Serbia’s experience offers a perspective. It shows that when institutions fail, citizens can still sustain democracy from below.
Edited by Gabrielle Andrychuk, Isaac Code, and Light Naing
