Turnout: 46.46%
About this election
Cape Verde held parliamentary elections on 17 May 2026 to choose all 72 members of the National Assembly. The opposition African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV), led by Francisco Carvalho, won the election with 48.04% of the vote and 37 seats — a gain of seven — narrowly overtaking the governing Movement for Democracy (MpD) of Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva, which fell to 44.75% and 33 seats. The Democratic and Independent Cape Verdean Union (UCID) took 5.20% and two seats, while two smaller parties won none. Turnout was 46.46% of the 416,096 registered voters, with abstention of about 53.3%. The result ended ten years of MpD government and returned the PAICV to power.
The MpD had governed since 2016 and won the previous election, in 2021, with 50.02% and 40 seats, against 39.55% and 30 seats for the PAICV. The opposition's revival became visible in the December 2024 local elections, when the PAICV won 14 municipalities — including the capital, Praia — the first time the party had topped a municipal election since 2000. In May 2025 Francisco Carvalho was elected president of the PAICV and became its prime-ministerial candidate, framing the 2026 contest as a choice for change after a decade of MpD rule. The head of state through this period was President José Maria Neves, himself a former PAICV prime minister, though the presidency is largely ceremonial.
The 72 members of the National Assembly are elected for five-year terms by closed-list proportional representation, with seats allocated in each constituency using the D'Hondt method. Seats are distributed across 13 multi-member constituencies. Notably, three of these represent Cape Verdeans living abroad — one each for the diaspora in Africa, the Americas and Europe — reflecting the unusually large emigrant population relative to the roughly half a million residents of the islands themselves. The party or coalition that commands a majority in the Assembly forms the government and selects the prime minister, who holds executive power; the directly elected president is a largely ceremonial head of state.
Cape Verdean politics has long been dominated by two parties. The PAICV, a centre-left party that led the independence movement and governed as the sole legal party until 1991, ran on a platform of change and accused the government of failing young people. The MpD, a centre to centre-right party, campaigned on stability and on defending its record after ten years in office. The UCID, a smaller centre-right party with a regional base, again won parliamentary representation, while the Labour and Solidarity Party (PTS) and the People's Party contested without winning seats. Personalities matter in a small electorate, and the change of PAICV leadership to Francisco Carvalho in 2025 was central to the party's renewed appeal.
The dominant campaign themes were the cost of living, poverty and youth unemployment — the everyday economic pressures of a small, import-dependent island economy that relies heavily on tourism, fishing and remittances from the diaspora, and is exposed to drought and to global price shifts. The MpD asked voters to reward a decade of macroeconomic stability and continuity, while the PAICV argued that growth had not reached ordinary households and that promises to the young had gone unmet. The opposition's momentum from the 2024 municipal results carried into the national campaign.
Cape Verde is an archipelago, and its politics has a strong island dimension, with the parties' relative strength varying between the more populous southern island of Santiago — home to Praia and a large share of the electorate — and the northern and eastern islands such as São Vicente, Santo Antão and Sal. The three overseas constituencies add a further layer: the diaspora seats can diverge sharply from the home vote and have at times proved decisive in a close parliament. Because results are reported constituency by constituency, the balance between islands and emigrant communities can be read directly on the map. The diaspora is more than an electoral curiosity: remittances from Cape Verdeans abroad are a major source of household income, and emigrant communities in Portugal, the United States, France and West Africa keep close ties to home-island politics, which is one reason the parties invest real effort in the overseas constituencies despite their modest seat count.
Since the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1991, power in Cape Verde has alternated peacefully between the PAICV and the MpD, and the country is consistently ranked among Africa's most stable democracies and best performers on governance. The MpD governed from 1991 to 2001, the PAICV from 2001 to 2016, and the MpD again from 2016 to 2026. The 2026 result continues that pattern of alternation, handing the PAICV its first national victory since 2011 and underlining the orderly transfer of power that has characterised Cape Verdean politics for more than three decades.
Following the result, Francisco Carvalho was named prime minister-designate, while Ulisses Correia e Silva conceded defeat and announced that he would step down as leader of the MpD. The incoming PAICV government takes office with a working majority in the National Assembly and a mandate to address the cost-of-living and youth-employment concerns that dominated the campaign.
The incoming PAICV administration takes office once the new National Assembly convenes and the prime minister-designate is formally appointed and sworn in. With a working majority, the government can expect to pass its programme and budget, and it will be judged above all on the cost-of-living and youth-employment concerns that decided the election. Barring an early dissolution, the next ordinary parliamentary elections are due in 2031, and the directly elected president continues as head of state independently of the change of government.
Official results were published by Cape Verde's National Elections Commission (Comissão Nacional de Eleições, CNE) on 29 May 2026 — cne.cv.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.