2026 Bangladeshi general election

2026 Bangladeshi general election

12 February 2026

299 of the 350 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad
151 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered127,711,793
Turnout59.44% ( +17.64 pp)
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Tarique Rahman Shafiqur Rahman Nahid Islam
Party BNP Jamaat NCP
Alliance BNP+ 11 Parties 11 Parties
Leader since 9 January 2026 12 November 2019 28 February 2025
Leader's seat Dhaka-17 Dhaka-15 Dhaka-11
Last election Boycotted Deregistered Did not exist
Seats won 209 68 6
Seat change 209 68 6
Popular vote 37,468,994 23,825,259 2,286,795
Percentage 49.97% 31.77% 3.05%
Swing 38.24pp 27.06pp 3.05pp
Alliance Seat 212 77 77


Chief Adviser before election

Muhammad Yunus
Independent (interim)

Prime Minister after election

Tarique Rahman
BNP

The 13th National Parliament Election was a general election held in Bangladesh on 12 February 2026 to elect members of the Jatiya Sangsad, as well as the proposed Senate. It was the first general election since the July uprising of 2024 that ended the 15-year-long rule of Sheikh Hasina. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, won a landslide victory in the election, securing two-thirds of seats; Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami secured the second most seats. A constitutional referendum on the July Charter was held alongside the election.

More than 127 million people were eligible to vote in the election, making it the "biggest democratic exercise of the year". 2,028 candidates contested for the 299 seats in the election. Major parties contested; however, Hasina's Awami League—the winner of the previous four elections—was banned and could not participate in the election. This made the election a "bipolar contest" between the BNP and the 11 Party Alliance led by the Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizen Party (NCP). The election took place under the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, which had governed the country since August 2024.

Key campaign issues and agendas included unemployment, corruption, extortion, proportional representation (PR), and promises to the youth and the minority voters. A professor at SOAS University believed that the election was decided "less by ideology and more by promises of governance". For the first time in the country, the votes of expatriates, polling officials and detainees, postal ballots were used. The election was also considered to be the world's first "Gen Z-inspired" election after the series of Gen Z protests around the world.