Turnout: 73.12%
About this election
Kazakhstan held a constitutional referendum on 15 March 2026 on adopting an entirely new constitution to replace the one in force since 1995. According to official results, the new charter was approved by 89.86% of voters against 10.14%, on a turnout of 73.12% — the highest for a national vote in years. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the new constitution two days later, with its provisions due to take effect on 1 July 2026. The reform significantly reshapes the country's institutions, and supporters and critics drew very different conclusions about where it leaves the balance of power.
Tokayev succeeded the founding president Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019 and consolidated his own authority after the deadly unrest of January 2022, which he used to push out the remnants of the Nazarbayev era. He had previously promised a "New Kazakhstan" of de-concentrated power, and a 2022 referendum trimmed some presidential prerogatives. The 2026 constitution, by contrast, was widely read as recasting the state's architecture around the presidency once more.
The new charter merges Kazakhstan's two-chamber parliament into a single legislative body and broadens the president's authority over appointments, including the restoration of the post of vice-president. It also creates a new institution, a People's Council, empowered to initiate legislation and referendums, whose members are appointed by the president. Together these changes reorganise the relationships between the presidency, parliament and other state bodies under a single new framework of a preamble and dozens of articles.
A nationwide referendum put the draft constitution to a single Yes/No vote. As with such state-initiated plebiscites in Kazakhstan, the proposal enjoyed the full backing of the authorities and state media, and there was no organised campaign for a No vote, which helps explain the lopsided official result and high reported turnout.
The government presented the new constitution as a modernisation that streamlines government and strengthens the state's responsiveness. Independent analysts and opposition voices argued instead that, behind the reformist language, the changes concentrate power further in the presidency — particularly through the appointed People's Council and the restored vice-presidency — and roll back the limited checks introduced after 2022.
Kazakhstan is Central Asia's largest economy, rich in oil, gas and minerals, and balances close ties with both Russia and China while courting Western investment. Its politics has been dominated since independence first by Nazarbayev and then by Tokayev, with no effective parliamentary opposition. The constitutional overhaul fits a long pattern in which the rules of the system are periodically rewritten from the top.
Kazakhstan held a constitutional referendum in 2022 that was officially presented as reducing presidential powers and limiting the influence of the Nazarbayev family, and a separate referendum in 2024 that approved the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant. The 2026 vote on a wholly new constitution was the most far-reaching of these exercises.
With the constitution due to enter force on 1 July 2026, the practical task becomes implementing the new single-chamber parliament, the restored vice-presidency and the People's Council, and holding any elections required under the new rules. How these bodies function in practice will determine whether the reform delivers the responsive governance the authorities promise or simply entrenches presidential dominance.
The constitutional overhaul cannot be separated from the trauma of January 2022, when fuel-price protests spiralled into the deadliest unrest in Kazakhstan's independent history. Tokayev used the crisis to sideline the network of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev and to present himself as the architect of a reformed, fairer system. The 2026 constitution is the culmination of that project — though critics argue it ultimately rebuilds, rather than disperses, concentrated presidential power.
Kazakhstan pursues a "multi-vector" foreign policy, balancing its long border and deep ties with Russia against a growing economic relationship with China and careful engagement with the West. Russia's war in Ukraine made that balancing act more delicate, prompting Astana to distance itself cautiously from Moscow while avoiding open confrontation. Domestic political stability, which the constitutional reform is meant to underpin, is closely bound up with this external balancing.
Central Referendum Commission of Kazakhstan.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.