Turnout: 59.44%
About this election
Bangladesh held a general election on 12 February 2026 — its first since the 2024 uprising that toppled Sheikh Hasina — to elect the 300 directly contested seats of the Jatiya Sangsad. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies won 209 seats on 49.97% of the vote, a two-thirds supermajority, while an alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami took 68 seats (31.77%) and the new, student-rooted National Citizen Party (NCP) won 6 (3.05%). Turnout was 59.44%. The Awami League, which had governed for fifteen years until 2024, was banned and did not take part, making this a watershed election held under a reshaped political order.
In July and August 2024 a student-led uprising against the long rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League ended in her flight from the country. An interim administration headed by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over, tasked with stabilising the country and organising new elections. In April 2025 the interim government banned the Awami League under anti-terrorism legislation pending the conclusion of legal proceedings, removing the dominant party of the previous era from the ballot.
Bangladesh elects 300 members of the Jatiya Sangsad by first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies, with a further 50 seats reserved for women and allocated to parties in proportion to their elected strength, for a chamber of 350. The party or alliance commanding a majority forms the government and the prime minister leads the executive. As a Westminster-style system, it can convert a plurality of votes into a much larger share of seats, as the BNP's two-thirds majority on roughly half the vote illustrated.
The BNP, led from exile by Tarique Rahman, had been the Awami League's principal rival for decades and was the chief beneficiary of its removal from the scene. Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party heading a multi-party alliance, emerged as the second force, a notable result for a party that had been sidelined under the previous government. The National Citizen Party, formed out of the student movement that brought down Hasina, contested its first election as a new political vehicle for the uprising's energy.
The defining feature of the vote was the absence of the Awami League. Having dominated Bangladeshi politics since 2009 and won the controversial 2014 and 2024 elections that the opposition had boycotted, the party was now itself excluded. Supporters of the new order argued this was necessary accountability after years of authoritarian rule; critics warned that holding an election without one of the country's two historic mass parties raised its own questions of inclusiveness and legitimacy.
The campaign unfolded in the unsettled aftermath of a revolution, with debate centred on accountability for the violence of 2024, the shape of post-Hasina reforms, the economy, and the role of religion in public life. For the BNP it was a long-awaited return from the political wilderness; for the NCP, a test of whether street mobilisation could be converted into electoral support; and for Jamaat, an opportunity to re-enter the mainstream.
The BNP's two-thirds majority gave it the power to govern with a free hand and to shape constitutional and institutional questions, while Jamaat's strong showing confirmed a significant realignment of the opposition space. The NCP's modest tally suggested that the movement which had driven the uprising would, for now, be a smaller parliamentary voice than its street prominence implied.
Tarique Rahman became prime minister, returning the BNP to power for the first time since the mid-2000s and ending the interim period of technocratic government. The new administration inherits the tasks of rebuilding institutions, pursuing accountability for the events of 2024, managing the economy, and resolving the unsettled legal status of the banned Awami League.
Bangladesh is one of the world's largest garment exporters, and its economy — long among the fastest-growing in South Asia — had come under strain amid inflation and pressure on foreign reserves during the final years of the previous government. The interim administration had launched a wide-ranging reform effort covering the constitution, the judiciary, the police and the electoral system. The incoming government inherits both that reform agenda and the day-to-day management of an economy on which tens of millions of livelihoods depend.
The BNP's task is to consolidate an elected government after eighteen months of technocratic interim rule, pursue accountability for the violence of 2024, and decide the long-term fate of the banned Awami League — a question with major implications for national reconciliation. How inclusively the new majority governs, and whether the energy of the 2024 uprising is channelled into lasting institutional change, will shape the next phase of Bangladeshi politics.
Bangladesh Election Commission — ecs.gov.bd.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.