2026 Nepalese general election
5 March 2026
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All 275 seats in the House of Representatives 138 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 18,903,689 ( 5.09%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 59.08% ( 2.77 pp; FPTP votes) 59.67% ( 1.74 pp; PR votes) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Results by constituency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Early general elections were held in Nepal on 5 March 2026 to elect the 275 members of the House of Representatives as announced on 12 September 2025 by the President of Nepal, on the recommendation of the government of Nepal. The election was called after youth protests in September 2025 led to the resignation of Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli. The Rastriya Swatantra Party, with Balen Shah as their candidate for prime minister, won a landslide victory, gaining a majority in the House of Representatives without the need for a coalition for the first time since 1999.
Voters cast in two separate ballots in the election: one to elect 165 members from single-member constituencies via FPTP, and the other to elect the remaining 110 members from a single nationwide constituency via party-list proportional representation, as mentioned in article 84 of the Constitution of Nepal. Over 18.9 million people were registered to vote in the election. More than 3,400 candidates from 68 parties contested the election.
The Rastriya Swatantra Party secured 182 seats, an almost supermajority, and the second-best showing in Nepal's electoral history, only surpassed by the Nepali Congress in the 1959 elections. The party's proportional vote share of 47.8% was the highest recorded since the system was introduced in 2008.
The Nepali Congress suffered their worst-ever electoral defeat, winning 38 seats with 19.1% of the proportional vote, party president Gagan Thapa being among those who lost their seat.
The two major leftist parties CPN (UML) and Nepali Communist Party; placed third and fourth respectively. CPN (UML) faced their worst-ever election result, winning 25 seats with 13.4% of the proportional vote with party chairman and former prime minister K .P. Sharma Oli also losing his constituency. The Nepali Communist Party, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, won 17 seats and 7.5% of the vote, but party co-cordinator and former prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal lost his seat.
The Shram Sanskriti Party, led by Harka Sampang, qualified as a national party with seven seats and 3.56% of the votes. The Rastriya Prajatantra Party, led by Rajendra Lingden, won five seats and 3.05% of the vote.