Serbia's 25 October vote sits between a US oil licence and a Russian gas annex that both expire within weeks

Aleksandar Vucic resigned the Serbian presidency on 27 September 2026, a day after telling Vladimir Putin by telephone that he would do so, and on 3 October he opened a campaign to return as prime minister at the 25 October parliamentary election. The sequence is a fair statement of where Belgrade thinks its leverage sits. The question it raises is narrower than the familiar one about whether Serbia faces east or west: both of the arrangements that keep Serbian refineries and boilers running are now written in thirty- and ninety-day increments, and the European offer that might replace them is explicitly conditioned on the foreign-policy alignment Serbia has spent a decade declining to give.

An office change, not a transfer of power

Vucic signed the decree dissolving parliament on 9 September, Balkan Insight reported, saying Serbia needed "election results that will clearly demonstrate and determine the will of the citizens" after "turbulence for more than a year and a half". He is first on the list "Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia" and is the Progressive Party's candidate for prime minister, an office the constitution does not term-limit as it does the presidency.

He submitted the resignation on 27 September, ending his second term early. Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic, a long-standing ally, serves as acting head of state until a presidential election is held; the sources reviewed here do not give a date for that vote. Among his last acts as president, Al Jazeera reported, Vucic pardoned 49 people, 23 of them convicted in connection with the protests that have run since the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse of 1 November 2024 killed 16 people.

The campaign opened at the Belgrade Arena on 3 October. Vucic accused the student-backed list of seeking to "bring Serbia to a halt" and of undisclosed foreign backing, and told supporters: "Absent an intervention of some [foreign intelligence] service, we will defeat them." Al Jazeera reports polls pointing to a tight race with the student list, a coalition of university professors, teachers and other professionals formed out of the protest movement. In 2023 the Progressives took 46.75 per cent, the Serbia against Violence coalition 23.66 per cent and the Socialists 6.55 per cent, on Balkan Insight's figures.

Two clocks, both short

On 30 September the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control extended the operating licence of Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) by a further month, to 31 October, N1 reported. NIS runs Serbia's only refinery, at Pancevo, and was sanctioned in October 2025 because Gazprom and Gazprom Neft together hold 56.2 per cent of it. Hungary's MOL is the prospective buyer of the Russian stake: it reached a shareholders' agreement with the Serbian government in June, N1 reported, while its talks with the Russian owners continue. The refinery has therefore run on short, repeatedly renewed American waivers for about a year, and the current one expires six days after the election.

The gas arrangement works the same way at a different cadence. Also on 30 September, Srbijagas chief executive Dusan Bajatovic told state broadcaster RTS that Gazprom had extended supply for three further months, to the end of 2026, on unchanged terms, N1 reported. That is the latest in a sequence of quarterly annexes: after an earlier one in March, Vucic put the delivered price at "between 320 and 330 dollars" per thousand cubic metres on volumes of six million cubic metres a day.

The price gap is the whole argument. After the call with Putin on 26 September, Vucic said Serbia pays about EUR 318 per thousand cubic metres against EUR 868 on the European TTF market, and that "I am certain that the annex will be extended from Monday", according to N1. He also said he had discussed NIS, Russian Railways and Russian firefighting aircraft, and thanked Putin for cooperation over the previous fourteen years. These are Serbian government figures; no independent verification of the contract price appears in the sources reviewed.

What Brussels is offering, and the condition attached

The Commission's answer to this is gradual integration, and it is not currently aimed at Serbia. Ukrainska Pravda reported on 30 September that the Commission had postponed to 6 October its assessment of how enlargement would affect EU policies, and that accession roadmaps are being prepared for Ukraine, Moldova, Albania and Montenegro. Serbia is named, with North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkiye, among the countries where "the process is dragging on". The case for admitting candidates to the single market early is framed in the EU's own interest - earlier integration would "strengthen European value chains and reduce strategic dependencies" - and access is tied to alignment with EU foreign policy.

That condition is the binding one. A country whose refinery depends on American licences and whose gas price depends on quarterly Russian goodwill has concrete reasons not to align, and each short extension renews them.

The vote will be scored, not just counted

ODIHR opened a full election observation mission in Belgrade on 16 September - its twenty-first in Serbia - headed by Eoghan Murphy, with a core team of 14 experts, 30 long-term observers deployed from 25 September and 300 short-term observers planned. Its remit includes campaign finance, media coverage, social-network campaigning and the arrangements the authorities have set up to detect disinformation. "Elections are a process, not a single day, and our observation begins well before voters go to the polls," Murphy said. An interim report is due two weeks before the vote and preliminary findings the day after.

For Brussels that report, rather than the seat count, is what converts the election into an accession fact. The protests began as a demand for accountability over sixteen deaths, not as a dispute about geopolitics; whether the vote is judged credible will decide how much weight the EU can put on its result either way.

What to watch

• Whether OFAC extends the NIS licence past 31 October or lets it lapse, and whether MOL and the Russian shareholders close.
• Whether the end-2026 gas annex is replaced by a longer contract, and at what price, once the election is over.
• ODIHR's interim report, due two weeks before the vote, and its preliminary findings the day after it.
• Whether the Commission's integration proposals offer Serbia anything not conditioned on foreign-policy alignment.

Vucic has secured the premiership's longer horizon while the arrangements that underwrite Serbian energy have been shortened to weeks. That is less a balance between Brussels and Moscow than a dependence on both being renewed on time.

Sources

• Balkan Insight - Serbia's Vucic Calls Early Parliamentary Elections for October 25
• Al Jazeera - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic resigns amid prolonged protests
• Al Jazeera - Serbian populist leader Vucic launches campaign for prime minister
• N1 - Vucic tells Putin he will resign on Sunday, says Serbia expects low gas price
• N1 - OFAC extends NIS operating license
• N1 - Srbijagas CEO Bajatovic: Gas supply deal with Russia extended through end of year
• N1 - Vucic: Razgovarao sam sa Putinom, dobili smo tri meseca produzenja ugovora za gas
• ODIHR - ODIHR opens election observation mission in Serbia
• ODIHR - Republic of Serbia, Early Parliamentary Elections, 25 October 2026
• Ukrainska Pravda - EU considers opening single market access to candidate countries