The students win

1. 1

   16 dead under the canopy at Novi Sad station on November 1, 2024. Afterwards, students occupied most of Serbia's public faculties.

2. 2

   52.54% vs 39.29%. The Student List beat Vučić's list on October 25, 2026 (RIK, 8,077 of 8,392 polling stations counted), and he conceded that night.

3. 3

   The engine was the plenums: open assemblies, one vote per student, simple majority, and working groups that carry out decisions and report back.

4. 4

   250 non-student candidates. The plenums spawned citizens' assemblies, that list, campaigning in over a thousand villages and towns, 26,000 donors and monitors at polling stations.

5. 5

   Decide collectively, use symbols anyone can repeat, turn every street peak into contacts and put a trained monitor at every ballot box.

Copy summary

If you're new to this, start with the fundamentals, from the vote goal to what the research says. Read the fundamentals

The movement refused to have a face: it always spoke as a collective, through the Studenti u blokadi accounts and the plenums. These are the participants and organizations whose accounts underpin this playbook. Some agreed to speak only by first name.

• Studenti u blokadi (Students in Blockade)

  Student movement and, from September 2026, the Student List, Studenti pobeđuju (The Students Win)

  Occupied the faculties, decided everything in plenums and published its rules, finances and candidates on its own website, where it states it has no individuals above the community and no personality cult.

  Sources

• Vuk

  Computer science student, 19, Belgrade

  Explained from the inside the no-leader rule, the rotation of moderators and spokespeople, the division of labor by skill and the selection of candidates.

  Sources

• Filip Kovačić and Jovana Ignjatović

  Students organizing the field campaign (Jovana: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Belgrade)

  Described the three parallel efforts of 2026 (Student u svakom selu, A Student in Every Village; Student zove, A Student Calls; and door-to-door) and what voters actually asked about.

  Sources

• Jovan Popović

  Law student, election monitor network

  Said more than 15,000 citizens were in training as monitors, in two stages, online and in person, to cover every polling station.

  Sources

• Aleksandar Milanović

  Student of Cultural and Media Management at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU), Belgrade; organizer of the first blockades

  Described FDU's more than ten working groups and the content strategy of humor and memes to reach people who weren't interested in politics.

  Sources

• Nemanja and Minja (Student u svakom selu)

  Students from Gornji Milanovac and the surrounding region, village campaign

  Explained the format of the visits: a stall in the village center at 10:00 and pairs of students, each covering part of the village, going door to door.

  Sources

• Raša Nedeljkov (CRTA)

  Election observation organization; program director

  Observed the campaign and election day with more than 2,000 observers in a sample of 500 polling stations and published the independent projection on the night of October 25.

  Sources

• Marko Škorić, Jovana Čikić, Jovana Škorić and Aleksej Kišjuhas

  Sociologists at the University of Novi Sad, authors of Anatomy of the Plenum (CNCR, 2026)

  Interviewed 26 students in blockade in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš and reconstructed the rules, conflicts and lessons of the plenums.

  Sources

Paraphrases of interviews and statements by the participants themselves. Short quotes are in quotation marks.

• Every student counts the same as any other: "Not a single voice is louder than another." Staying leaderless was, for him, maybe the movement's biggest battle.

  Vuk, computer science student (Belgrade), To Vima, "From the Novi Sad tragedy to the election", Sep 28, 2026

• When something sensitive is being discussed, phones go in a box outside the room. And if elected representatives stray from the movement's values, first the students tell them; if they persist, the students go to the people.

  Vuk, To Vima, Sep 28, 2026

• No plenum decision is final: anyone who disagrees can come back, argue their position and try to change it. For her, that is what gave the decisions legitimacy.

  Sofija, student at the University of Belgrade (pseudonym), Škorić et al., Anatomy of the Plenum, CNCR, Jan 2026, p. 7

• She has disagreed with decisions, but once they're voted on they become hers too, and the group adapts. Simple majority keeps the movement from grinding to a halt.

  Jelena, student at the University of Novi Sad (pseudonym), Anatomy of the Plenum, p. 29

The collapse of the newly renovated canopy at Novi Sad station killed 14 people on the spot; two more died later. For many Serbians it wasn't an accident but a portrait of public works without transparency. The students started with a minute of silence per victim in the middle of traffic and ended up winning an election.

16

killed in the Novi Sad canopy collapse, Nov 1, 2024official

275,000–325,000

people in Belgrade on Mar 15, 2025, according to the Public Assembly Archive (police: 107,000)estimate

26,408

donors paid for 98% of the campaign's roughly €2 millioncampaign figure

68.78%

turnout, the highest in more than 30 years (RIK, Oct 26, 2026)official

Two years

1. Nov 1, 2024The canopy at Novi Sad station collapses at 11:52. In the following weeks, silent traffic blockades begin: one minute per victim, every day at the same time.
2. Nov 22–25, 2024A vigil at Belgrade's Faculty of Dramatic Arts is attacked. The students occupy the faculty and adopt the plenum; by mid-December, most higher education institutions are under blockade.
3. Jan 2025General strike on January 24; on January 28, after an attack on students in Novi Sad, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigns.
4. Mar 15, 2025"15 za 15" (15 for 15) in Belgrade: the largest gathering in Serbia's recent history. Days later the first zborovi (neighborhood citizens' assemblies) begin, at the students' request.
5. Apr–May 2025Some 80 students cycle 1,300 km to Strasbourg; relay runners (16 in the original plan) cover some 2,000 km and reach Brussels on May 12, carrying letters for EU institutions. On May 5, the central demand becomes early elections.
6. Jun 28, 2025Vidovdan: some 140,000 people in Belgrade and an ultimatum with a countdown to civil disobedience.
7. Nov 1–Dec 28, 2025Some 110,000 in Novi Sad on the anniversary. On December 28, a nationwide signature drive gathers about 400,000 signatures for elections, plus 20,500 in the diaspora, along with the contact details of everyone who signed.
8. May 23, 2026180,000–190,000 at Slavija under the slogan "Ti i ja, Slavija" (You and me, Slavija). The program's principles are presented; in July the Student zove call center gets going.
9. Sep 9–27, 2026Elections are called; the list submits about 70,000 signatures (69,099 valid) and publishes its 250 candidates. Vučić resigns the presidency to run for prime minister.
10. Oct 25, 2026Student List 52.54%, Vučić's list 39.29% (RIK, preliminary). About an hour and a half after polls close, Vučić concedes. In Novi Sad, the celebration stops for 16 minutes of silence at midnight.

Three layers

The same method (open assembly, majority vote, execution by groups and accountability) was copied at three levels.

• Student plenumsOne assembly per faculty and a university assembly of delegates. They decided actions, rules, candidates and vetoes. Only students voted; professors could speak.
• Citizens' zboroviNeighborhood and village assemblies, with a legal basis, that took the model beyond the university and created local meeting points, with uneven results.
• The Student List250 non-student candidates, chosen and vetted by the plenums, headed by cardiologist Ilija Srdanović. Opposition parties withdrew their own lists to back it.

Serbia in 2024–2026 was a regime with elections but with captured media, a state machine working for the ruling party and selective repression. The students built their own channels and went to talk face to face where TV called the shots.

Platforms

Instagram (a central account + more than 50 faculty accounts)

It worked as an alternative news agency: calls to protest, donation appeals, statements. Each faculty had its own account, run by its media group, and the central @studenti_u_blokadi amplified them. With dozens of accounts, taking one down didn't silence the movement.

X and TikTok

A lighter tone: humor, behind the scenes of the blockades, short videos and emotion. Where Instagram informed, these made people want to take part.

Telegram, Instagram, WhatsApp and Viber (coordination)

63.6% of organizers surveyed in one study (a small sample: 11 organizers) named Telegram or Instagram as their main coordination platform. WhatsApp and Viber groups were used to propose plenum agenda items and to organize registration for neighborhood zborovi.

Megaphones, radios and marches

On the street, coordinators with radios and marshals with megaphones led the columns; multi-day walks between cities brought the movement to people who never saw it on TV.

Phone and door-to-door

Older and rural voters, the ruling party's base, are less online. Hence the Student zove call center and the paired visits to villages.

Diaspora network

Groups like Frankfurt za studente (Frankfurt for the Students) and the ukljucise.info initiative helped emigrants confirm their registration and sign up to vote at consulates.

Local conditions

• Captured media: on RTS's Dnevnik 2 newscast, 96% of airtime given to political actors went to the ruling majority (CRTA, 2026); the REM regulator went 22 months without issuing decisions.
• Repression and intimidation: the phones of 14 members of the student movement and the Green-Left Front were reportedly infected with Pegasus and NoviSpy; CRTA recorded 116 incidents of physical violence or threats up to the last week of the campaign.
• University autonomy: students invoked it to argue that police needed the administration's permission to enter faculties, which made the occupations viable.
• Official student parliaments seen as captured (2021 Law on Student Organization), which pushed students toward informal assemblies.
• A closed-list system in a single nationwide constituency, a 3% threshold (waived for minorities) and 250 seats: this allowed a single national list and required 10,000 valid signatures.
• Electoral engineering: CRTA suspected that at least 7 of the 18 lists were fake or satellite lists and found some 30,000 voters missing from voter roll extracts.
• Diaspora: the law provides, "where possible", for polling stations abroad with at least 100 registered voters, and the Foreign Ministry declined to open them in several countries; CRTA estimated some 22,000 voters were effectively blocked by the lack of polling stations.
• The legal basis for zborovi: the Law on Local Self-Government provides for citizens' assemblies whose proposals the authorities must answer within 60 days.
• National calendar and symbols: 11:52 (the time of the collapse), Vidovdan (June 28) and Slavija, a historic Belgrade square.

Nobody wrote it down beforehand: some students started from a handbook from the 2009 Zagreb occupation, the Blokadna kuharica (The Occupation Cookbook), but they quickly wrote their own rules. The method matured on three fronts and in a cycle that repeated from the occupation to the election.

Three fronts

Legitimacy before a face

Decisions in open assembly, by majority, with no leader and no permanent spokesperson. Nobody speaks above the collective, which protected people from persecution and denied the government a target.

Show up where TV calls the shots

The street with simple symbols, then villages, markets, doors and phones. Face-to-face conversation for people who only watched pro-government TV.

Protect the vote

Register the diaspora, explain how to check the voter roll, train monitors for every polling station and have an independent count on election night.

The cycle of a decision

From the first plenum to the campaign, every action followed this loop.

1. Propose Any member suggests an agenda item, ideally in a shared document days in advance.
2. Debate Mandatory discussion, time-limited: 15–30 minutes per item, 1–3 minutes per speaker, hand signals to agree or disagree without interrupting.
3. Vote Show of hands, simple majority of those present. The decision binds everyone, including the delegates to the university assembly.
4. Execute A working group (strategy, media, security, logistics, finance) puts the decision into practice.
5. Show A synchronized gesture that's easy to copy (silence at 11:52, a red hand in the window, a march between cities) and original content across dozens of accounts.
6. Convert Turn attention into contacts: the December 28 signature drive gave the movement a list of about 400,000 people to call later.
7. Talk Stalls, door-to-door and phone calls, starting with each place's local problems.
8. Report back The group reports at the next plenum; after every major action there's an open review of what went well and what didn't.

And again.

What it takes to organize something similar: assembly rules, teams, channels and a field campaign. It works for a student movement, a local cause or a citizens' list, as long as it follows the rules on this page.

Part of the method works anywhere; part of it depended on Serbia in 2024–2026. Separate the two before you copy.

Choose your country

Pick the moves that fit your context and add them to your kit. Each one works on its own or combined with moves from other playbooks.

1. Open plenum with a written rulebook

   Open assemblies where every member has one vote, with a shared agenda, speaking times, rotating moderation and simple majority; working groups carry out the decisions and report back at the next plenum. In Serbia, the model spread from the faculties to neighborhood zborovi (citizens' assemblies) and ended up choosing and vetting the Student List's 250 candidates.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the movement needs collective legitimacy and has to protect people from persecution, with no single face for the government to target.

   Don't use when

   It fails with daily plenums for months on end or without trained moderators: people burn out and an informal inner circle starts deciding for everyone.

   1. Week −52 Pick a space you control and a fixed meeting time
   2. Week −52 Write the rulebook: agenda, speaking times, hand signals, simple majority
   3. Week −50 Assign moderator, assistant and minute-taker, rotating within an experienced group
   4. Week −50 Set up working groups: strategy, media, security, logistics and donations
   5. Week −48 Make reports from groups and delegates a standing agenda item
   6. Week −40 Review every major action at the next plenum: what went well and what didn't
   7. 1 week(s) after After the election, decide in plenum how the base will hold the elected to account

   Team

   • Moderation: runs the plenum impartially and enforces the time limits
   • Minutes: records and publishes decisions, even when nothing is recorded on tape
   • Delegates: carry the plenum's decisions to the larger assembly and bring its decisions back, never deciding alone
   • Working groups: carry out decisions and report at the next plenum

   What to measure: Decisions voted that were carried out and reported at the next plenum; if attendance drops, space plenums out instead of making them daily.

   Risks to watch: Leaderless doesn't mean powerless: rotate moderators and spokespeople, publish the minutes and open the agenda to everyone, to avoid pre-cooked decisions and silenced dissenters.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

2. A time and a gesture anyone can repeat

   A synchronized gesture, easy to copy and tied to the cause itself: silence at 11:52, the time of the collapse, one minute per victim; a red hand painted on a sheet in the window. In Serbia, the silent blockades were repeated every day at 11:52 in many towns and cities.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the cause has a date, a time or a place that tells the story on its own, and there are people who are afraid or short on time but still want to take part.

   Don't use when

   It fails with symbols unconnected to the cause or gestures that require training, risk or vandalism: paint goes on sheets only, never on public walls.

   1. Week −40 Choose a time and a gesture tied to the cause, with one sentence on why
   2. Week −39 Publish simple instructions: materials, place, minimal version and what not to do
   3. Week −38 Open a central account and one account per hub, each with its own media group
   4. Week −36 Repeat the gesture daily at the same time and post original content on every account
   5. Week −30 Prepare a teaser, a name and a countdown before the big action
   6. Week −30 Set up street security: radios, megaphones and safety corridors

   Team

   • Hub media: posts the gesture from their own faculty or neighborhood
   • Central account: amplifies the local accounts and publishes the instructions
   • Street security: coordinates the columns and calls for calm in the face of provocation

   What to measure: Number of places (streets, schools, windows, towns) repeating the gesture at the same time; if it isn't growing, simplify the gesture or the minimal version.

   Risks to watch: Provocations and accusations of violence: stay non-violent, keep safety corridors, use humor instead of insults, and never attack individuals in your copy.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

3. Every street peak becomes a contact

   At the height of mobilization, ask each person to sign and leave a phone number and consent to be contacted; then a team calls back and offers a concrete task. In Serbia, the December 28, 2025 drive collected about 400,000 signatures, plus the contacts that fed the Student zove (Students are calling) call center.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works right after a big spike in attention or turnout, when lots of people want to help and have nowhere to go yet.

   Don't use when

   It fails with bought lists or calls to people who didn't give permission: that breaks data-protection law and discredits the movement.

   1. Week −45 Design the signature sheet with phone number and explicit consent
   2. Week −44 Schedule the drive for the day of a big action or a symbolic date
   3. Week −43 Gather the contacts in a protected database, open only to those who need it
   4. Week −16 Train phone volunteers with a script and one question: how can you help?
   5. Week −14 Call the list and offer tasks: door-knocking, driving, poll monitoring or donating
   6. Week −12 Log every answer and route volunteers to the right groups

   Team

   • Collection: sets up stalls and sheets on the day of the action and secures consent
   • Phone team: calls from home with a script and logs the answers
   • Data and compliance: keeps the database secure and follows data-protection law

   What to measure: Share of contacts who accept a concrete task when they get the call; if it's low, change the script and the offer, not how often you call.

   Risks to watch: A contact database is a target under a regime that surveils: lock down access, collect only what you need and call only people who gave permission.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

4. Door-knocking in pairs, village by village

   Pairs of volunteers, each with their own part of a village or neighborhood, stalls at markets and squares at the busiest hours, and conversations that start with the local problem. In Serbia, the campaign reached more than a thousand villages and towns where pro-government TV ruled.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the decisive audience is offline or only sees hostile media (older and rural voters) and there is time for months of fieldwork.

   Don't use when

   It fails as a flying visit by candidates or with ideology on the doorstep: start with water, roads, sewage.

   1. Week −30 Pick villages and neighborhoods by past results and turnout per polling station; split them among pairs, with a map
   2. Week −28 Print the kit: program leaflet, leaflet on checking the voter roll, vests
   3. Week −26 Run market stalls on Saturday mornings and town-center stalls in the evening
   4. Week −26 Knock on doors on weekdays from 5 p.m. and visit villages on Sunday mornings
   5. Week −26 Log doors, conversations, local problems and who asked to be contacted
   6. Week −6 Bring candidates into the field with the volunteers, not instead of them

   Team

   • Field pairs: cover their part of the village with leaflets and a log book
   • Field coordination: splits the map, sets shifts and collects the logs
   • Stall: holds a fixed spot at a market or square during busy hours

   What to measure: Conversations per pair per shift, and how many people ask to be contacted; door and village counts come from your own log, not estimates.

   Risks to watch: Intimidation and violence in the field: always go in pairs, wear ID vests, log incidents and have legal support on hand.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

5. Two monitors per station and a parallel count

   Monitors trained online and in person, with backups, from opening to the final count, an alert channel for irregularities and an independent count to compare with the official numbers. In Serbia, the list said it covered all of the more than 8,000 polling stations, abroad too (in Leskovac, for example, two trained monitors per station), and CRTA's projection served as the benchmark on election night.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works where electoral engineering is suspected (flawed voter rolls, satellite lists, stations that never open) and the law allows accredited monitors.

   Don't use when

   It fails with monitors improvised on the day or monitors who interfere with voting or photograph ballots.

   1. Week −24 Organize the diaspora to register in time to vote abroad
   2. Week −20 Show voters how to check who is registered at their address
   3. Week −12 Recruit monitors and backups, targeting two per polling station
   4. Week −6 Train online, then in person; submit the list to the election commission
   5. Week −3 Know when independent observers publish their projection, without coordinating with them
   6. D-day week On the day, open an alert channel for irregularities
   7. D-day week Stay to the final count; photograph the signed tally sheet (never ballots) for the hub

   Team

   • Monitor coordination: recruits, trains and assigns people to stations
   • Monitors and backups: observe from opening to close and report through legal channels
   • Alert room: takes the day's reports and brings in legal support

   What to measure: Polling stations with at least two accredited monitors present through the final count, as a share of all stations.

   Risks to watch: Monitors who interfere or photograph ballots hand over grounds to discredit the whole effort: accreditation, training on the law and reports only through legal channels.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

The Serbian sequence, condensed into a checklist. There it took two years; adjust the timing to your calendar. Your progress is saved in this browser.

The Serbian movement earned moral authority by being nonviolent, transparent about money and made of real people.

Nonviolence

Safety corridors, calm in the face of provocation and no attacks on people. Paint only on sheets, never on public walls.

Money in the open

A dedicated account, a legal cap per donor, signed declarations and published reports. No anonymous or corporate donations where the law prohibits them.

The right legal form

Register the candidacy under the legal form the law requires (there, a citizens' group formed after the elections were called) and meet the deadlines and signature requirements.

Consent

Only call or message people who gave you their contact details and said yes. Data protection law (LGPD, GDPR or your local law) applies to movements and campaigns.

Real people only

No fake accounts, bots, bought followers or mass reporting against opponents.

Privacy in assemblies

Banning recordings can protect people, but record decisions in the minutes and publish them.

Monitors within the law

Accredited monitors who observe and report through legal channels; they don't interfere with voting or photograph ballots.

Facts with sources

Numbers with an origin, no innuendo. Crowd estimates cite who made them.

Digital security

Update phones, use encrypted messaging and take spyware alerts seriously; ask digital rights organizations for help.

Local law

Laws on protest, occupation, funding and election observation vary widely. Check with a lawyer before each phase.

Leaderless doesn't mean powerless

A more experienced, more listened-to hard core formed in the plenums; there were accusations of decisions agreed in advance and of dissenters being labeled saboteurs. Critics such as economist Branko Milanović pointed to the secrecy of the process.

It wears people out

Daily plenums are unsustainable; the original core of the blockades largely stepped back due to exhaustion and internal conflict.

It doesn't scale to society on its own

Most of the students interviewed doubted the plenum could be used to run a country. The zborovi saw their demands ignored by local authorities and had less clout than the plenums.

The street isn't the ballot box

After the peak of March 15, 2025, the movement had to change strategy; Vidovdan deepened internal divisions. It took another 19 months of campaigning.

Weak accountability after the election

The candidates' commitment is only moral and political: in Serbia the seat belongs to the MP, not the list, and there's no recall. The precedent of Otpor (1.7% in 2003) shows the risk.

It depends on the regime calling elections

For months, the movement's future was in the hands of whoever set the date. And the election was fought against captured media, violence and the use of state resources.

Real repression

Arrests, prosecutions, physical attacks, spyware and smear campaigns. Anyone copying the method should prepare legal, medical and digital support.

Governing is a different test

Winning the election says nothing yet about the ability to govern, nor does it resolve disagreements over the European Union, Kosovo or the choice of a prime minister.

Five questions, each explained after you answer.

Free materials from organizations that train organizers, linked to this case.

• Posting the protest: Lessons from students in Serbia

  Case study · European Center for Digital Action · 2025-06 · EN

  How Serbian students used social media to break through media control and sustain months of protest. Background reading for the Serbia playbook.

• Grassroots Activism Under Pressure: 10 Creative Practices from Hungary and Serbia

  Case study · The Commons Social Change Library · 2026-04 · EN

  Ten creative practices from movements that pushed back against populist governments in Hungary and Serbia, drawn from ECDA analysis.

• Defending the Vote from Authoritarians: Lessons for Nonviolent Movements

  Report · CANVAS (Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies) · 2025-03 · EN

  CANVAS report on how movements defend elections under authoritarian regimes: monitoring, mobilization and responding to fraud. Background reading for Serbia and Hungary.

Library

This playbook was built from participants' accounts (interviews, statements and interview-based studies), CRTA reports, preliminary official data and news reports published between January 2025 and October 26, 2026. Every page was opened and read on October 26, 2026.

Updated 26 October 2026