Research suggests that the effect of emergency remote education on the motivation of gifted students during the COVID-19 pandemic differs from that observed in traditional students. The main aim of the present study was to explore the lived experience of academic motivation among gifted high school students in Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 47 gifted students aged 15 to 18, using the same methodological procedure in the three countries with similar educational backgrounds. Grounded in gifted students' narratives about their academic motivation, we detected three groups of students who experienced decreased, no change in, or increased academic motivation. Furthermore, we identified group-specific patterns based on the most common activities and salient features of students' school context, learning, and leisure time during the pandemic.