Serbia

The collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy on 1 November 2024 killed 16 people and set off student-led protests, after which Prime Minister Miloš Vučević announced his resignation on 28 January 2025.

On 9 September 2026 President Aleksandar Vučić dissolved the Assembly and called early parliamentary elections for 25 October. He announced his resignation as president on 27 September, and Speaker Ana Brnabić became acting president on 28 September, with a presidential election due within three months. Vučić heads the list “Aleksandar Vučić – Ujedinjena Srbija”, submitted by the Serbian Progressive Party on 12 September, and the main challenger is the student list. N1 reported that ODIHR’s 9 October interim report described a prolonged political crisis and deep societal polarisation.

Serbia opened accession negotiations in 2014 and has opened 22 of 35 chapters, but cluster 3, whose opening benchmarks the Commission considers fulfilled, remains unopened. The Commission’s 2025 report recorded backsliding on freedom of expression; in July 2026, N1 reported, the Commission renewed its recommendation to open cluster 3.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Serbia 104th of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index with a score of 50.79, compared with 96th place and a score of 53.55 in 2025. It states that journalists are subject to political pressure and that crimes committed against them go unpunished.

Partners of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) documented 209 press freedom violations in Serbia in 2025, against 84 in 2024, and by 21 October 2026 MFRR had documented 157 incidents affecting 261 journalists and media entities that year.

Parliament elected a new Council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) on 12 November 2025, eight of nine members and more than a year after the previous mandate expired. Four independent members resigned in December 2025 and returned only after the Assembly adopted an authentic interpretation of the Law on Electronic Media in July 2026; sessions on 20 and 30 July and 1 September failed to elect a president, and Stevica Smederevac was elected on 22 September. On 6 October the OSCE Representative said the Council’s credibility had been called into question after it decided not to monitor Informer TV during the campaign, and on 14 October it voted not to penalise six broadcasters for airing an advertisement for Vučić’s list featuring children. Monitoring by the Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI) of five national channels from 9 September to 15 October found that 96 per cent of the 12,878 minutes given to the Vučić list was positive and 95 per cent of the 10,024 minutes given to the student list negative.

United Group said that Telekom Srbija removed N1 and Nova S from Total TV on the day it took over the platform in April 2025. In May 2026 United Group’s parent agreed to sell Adria News Network, which includes N1 and Nova S, to Alpac Capital, which took control of the Serbian outlets on 17 August. On 16 October MFRR partners raised concerns about editorial independence at Nova.rs after new editorial appointments and a severance deadline for staff unwilling to work under the new leadership, warning that a reported request to remove the existing editors’ publishing permissions could disable the newsroom; the letter did not confirm that any change had been made.

State Media Monitor maps nine media organisations in Serbia. Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) and Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV) have been classified Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu) in every review cycle since 2022. In 2024 representatives of the ruling majority received 94 per cent of the airtime devoted to political actors in RTS 1’s main evening news programme, Dnevnik 2, according to CRTA. Since July 2026 only three of the nine members of the RTS Managing Board have unexpired mandates; the others continue under a Ministry of Information and Telecommunications opinion that they may remain until replaced, which the Ministry said does not extend their statutory mandates and which a lawyer of the Journalists’ Association of Serbia contests.

Mondo Inc, publisher of the daily Kurir, moved from Captured Private (CaPr) to CaPu in 2026, after Telekom Srbija, in which the Republic of Serbia holds 58.11 per cent, became its majority owner on 31 December 2025; Business Registers Agency data now show it as the owner of 100 per cent. Six are classified CaPr: the news agency Tanjug; the dailies Politika and Večernje novosti; Kopernikus Corporation, owner of the broadcasters Prva and B92; Pink; and Informer. Politika, classified CaPu from 2022 to 2025, was reclassified CaPr in 2026 as its publisher has been wholly owned since 24 January 2025 by Boban Rajić’s Media 026, which also owns Večernje novosti. The reclassifications of Mondo Inc and Politika reflect changes in ownership, while both retain the assessment of editorial capture.

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