Student ProtestsMonitoring

November 2025 – January 2026

Europe’s studentsrespond to pressure and repression

Zero Discrimination Day is a reminder that equality, dignity and inclusion are not
abstract principles, they are rights that must be upheld in everyday student life.
Across Europe, students are still among the first to test whether institutions and
governments protect these rights in practice, especially when discrimination,
exclusion or unequal treatment shape who feels safe, heard and able to
participate.

In the past reporting window, this passion has not wavered. While governments
talk of stability and higher education institutions speak of reputation, students
once again speak a different language, one of equality, safety, justice and peace.
With our Student Protest Monitoring, ESU is systematically mapping this wave of
student protests. What we see is not a series of one off moments, but a
continent-wide pattern. It tells a simple truth: even when they face repression,
students keep aligning themselves with the future, not with the status quo.

What we mapped
This report summarises student protests and related actions recorded in ESU’s
monitoring database that were active within the reporting window (16th
November 2025 to 16th January 2026). In total, we tracked 13 distinct student
protests across the European Higher Education Area.
They stretch across 12 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy,
Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Türkiye. Compared
with the previous monitoring report, this window shows a significant decrease in
the number of reported protests.

Alongside recording protest activity, this report aims to identify recurring patterns
in scale, issues raised, tactics, risks and outcomes.

Some key patterns:
Scale
● 8 of 13 protests are recorded as nationwide, meaning they spread beyond
a single campus or city
● 3 were medium sized actions (around 100 to 1000 participants)
● 2 were small (under 100 participants)
Geography
● At least 8 of 13 actions involved multiple cities or campuses
● Examples include:
○ A nationwide protest wave in Serbia with recurring actions across
many localities as part of a sustained protest cycle
○ Continued campus based actions in the Netherlands linked to wider
national coordination among student groups

Timeline
● 7 of 13 protests started during the reporting window, indicating an ongoing
“new wave” rather than only continuation of older cycles
● 1 case began already in 2024 and continued into this period
● 3 cases began in early 2026 and fall within the window
● 6 protests remain ongoing, while 7 are marked as concluded at the time of
writing

By comparison to the previous window, a significantly greater number of protests
remain ongoing, signifying a more continuous effort in students negotiating to
achieve their demands.

What drove students to act
Whilst there were less reported protests, it has been noted that there was a higher
share of mobilisations with the pattern of “democracy + anti-corruption” drivers.

Out of 13 protests:
Democracy and governance
● 6 cases explicitly reference Political Governance/Democracy
● Most often paired with Government Transparency, as seen in 6 cases
● 4 add Corruption & Nepotism as a cause
● Resignation of Government Officials appears in 3 actions
● End of Authoritarian Practices is also noted in 2 actions
● Political governance and democracy remains the leading category
overall, but in this two month window, corruption and policing related
causes appear proportionally more prominent than across the database
as a whole.

Higher Education Institutions
● 2 cases request Higher Education Funding Increase
● A call for more Transparency in Universities also appears throughout
Material conditions and access
● 3 protests involve Economic & Living Conditions
● 5 mention Access & Safety in Education
● 3 reference Security & Policing
● Together, this tells a story of students who cannot separate tuition, housing
and safety from the wider social model they live in.
International solidarity
● 6 protests include Human Rights & International Solidarity
● 3 cases involved Divestment from Conflict States
● From wars and occupations to global justice struggles, students are
consistently among the first to connect local classrooms with global crises.

How students mobilised
If you only followed headlines, you might believe student activism happens
mainly online and on social media, yet our data says otherwise.
Across the 13 protests:
On the streets:
● Demonstrations appear in 12 of 13 cases
● Rallies in 9
● Marches in 8
● Physical presence remains the backbone of student power.

Disrupting “business as usual”
● Strikes feature in 4 protests
● Occupations and boycotts each appear in 3 cases
● Students are not only sending messages, they are interrupting the normal
functioning of universities and public life to make their message heard.

Hybrid tactics
● Online campaigns are recorded in 6 actions
● Petitions in 4
● These tools complement in-person organising, and remain valuable to the
movement.

This period shows a continued preference for public, visible mobilisation,
complemented by disruptive campus tactics and pressure tactics, depending on
risk levels and institutional openness.

Risks students faced
None of this is cost free.
Our “threats and risks” monitoring show that protests are being met with a mix of
classic repression and more subtle pressure. Out of 13 protests, we logged:
Direct state violence and coercion
● Government Repression in 4 cases
● Police Violence in 6
● Arbitrary Arrests in 3
● Injuries in 4

Criminalisation and control
● Mobility restrictions in 3 protests
Information and narrative warfare
● Intimidation and harassment in 4 cases
● Media Manipulation in 3 cases
● Students are not only fighting for rights, they are fighting against being
misrepresented or silenced.

This window continues the broader trend of students mobilising in politically
charged contexts where protest risk is not limited to disciplinary procedures, but
may include policing, intimidation and reputational attacks.
Behind every number in this section, there are names, families, degrees put at risk.
The message from this is clear, choosing to stand up is still dangerous in today’s
Europe.

Why ESU is watching
ESU is not outside this story. When students move, we are part of that movement.
Our role is to connect national unions, protect them where we can and make sure
the message is shared Europe-wide. Outcomes remain fluid as 6 of 13 actions are
still ongoing.

Within the 13 protests we tracked, our own actions are already visible:
● 5 cases where we regularly collected information and updates
● 2 ongoing cases with explicit NUS support, showing that unions are not
standing alone inside their borders, issuing public statements

By looking at the outcomes, we can see where the pressure is highest and where
the silence is deepest:
● Across all 13 protests, our data records 2 case of agreement reached with
students, with 4 cases of partial success and 1 of full success
● We see 3 cases with no response
● 3 cases where negotiations are still ongoing
● 2 where the situation escalated
● 2 where repression is directly recorded

Two cases of agreement reached and one of full success, in a region that talks
constantly about dialogue and partnership. While there are 4 instances of partial
success, the numbers tell us that when students take risks for democracy,
institutions too often answer with delay, denial or force. Students will not surrender
until the number of agreements is fully reached, anything less than this is not
enough.

Comparison with the full database up to the 16th of January 2026
ESU’s database records 40 actions across 19 countries in total, from 16th of
September 2025 to 16th of January 2026. The current monitoring window shows
only 13 of those 40.

Political governance and democracy remains a leading driver across the full
dataset, and demonstrations remain the most common tactic. We see that
student mobilisation frequently intersects with broader civic space dynamics, rule
of law concerns and public accountability debates.
This two month period shows a higher relative concentration of corruption,
policing and repression linked triggers compared with the overall database, while
education funding demands appear less central than in earlier periods.

What comes next
This monitoring tells us that:
● Students are mobilising at scale, often nationwide.
● Their demands are rooted in democracy, material conditions and global
justice.
● The response they receive is too often repression or indifference, not
dialogue.

History suggests that when students raise these alarms, they are rarely wrong
about the direction. Zero Discrimination Day is not a commemoration of values
that are fulfilled in their entirety, but a checkpoint in the fight for equity, more so
that to education. The map we have started to draw shows a continent where
students are once again stepping forward, often at great personal risk, to pull
Europe towards a more just future.