Turnout: 59.67%
About this election
Nepal held a snap general election on 5 March 2026, and it produced one of the most dramatic upsets in the country's recent history. The anti-establishment Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) surged to 182 of the 275 seats in the House of Representatives on 47.84% of the proportional vote, sweeping aside the parties that had dominated Nepali politics for decades. The Nepali Congress fell to 38 seats (16.24%), the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) to 25 (13.44%), and the Maoist-rooted CPN (Maoist Centre) to 17 (7.49%). Turnout was 59.67%. The result amounted to a generational revolt against the established order.
The election followed an extraordinary crisis. In September 2025 a youth-led protest movement — driven by anger over corruption, unemployment and nepotism, and ignited when the government banned major social-media platforms — escalated into nationwide unrest. Security forces killed dozens of demonstrators, and within days Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned and parliament was dissolved, clearing the way for the snap election. The upheaval, often described as a "Gen-Z" uprising, fundamentally reshaped the political landscape going into the vote.
Nepal elects its 275-member House of Representatives by a parallel mixed system: 165 members are chosen in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post, and 110 by closed-list proportional representation from a nationwide constituency, with a threshold for the proportional seats. Voters cast separate ballots for the local candidate and the party list. The system was designed to combine local representation with broad proportionality, and in 2026 it translated the RSP's surge of support into a commanding seat total.
The Rastriya Swatantra Party had been a young, anti-establishment force focused on clean governance and generational change. In the charged atmosphere following the 2025 protests, it became the vehicle for a vast protest vote, especially among younger Nepalis, and rocketed from a minor party to the dominant force in parliament. Its rise reflected deep frustration with the cycle of coalition-building and collapse that had defined Nepali politics since the country became a republic.
The biggest losers were the three parties that had rotated through power for years — the Nepali Congress, the UML and the Maoist Centre. Together they had produced a long succession of short-lived coalition governments, and their leaders had come to symbolise the establishment that the protest movement rejected. Their sharp decline marked a repudiation of that revolving-door politics rather than a simple swing from one bloc to another.
The campaign was dominated by the grievances that had fuelled the protests: pervasive corruption, a lack of opportunities that drives huge numbers of young Nepalis to emigrate for work, perceived nepotism among the political class, and chronic governmental instability. The social-media ban that triggered the September unrest had crystallised a broader sense that the old parties were out of touch with a young, connected population.
With a near-majority of seats, the RSP was positioned to lead the next government — a remarkable turnaround for a party that had been on the political margins. The challenge of converting a protest landslide into stable, effective governance, in a country with a long record of fragile coalitions, became the central question of the new parliament.
In the previous general election, in 2022, the established parties had dominated and the RSP, then newly formed, had finished as a distant minor force. Nepal had also cycled through repeated changes of prime minister since becoming a federal republic in 2008. The 2026 result broke decisively with that pattern, handing power to a party that had barely existed a few years earlier.
Nepal abolished its monarchy and became a federal democratic republic in 2008, after a decade-long Maoist insurgency and a popular movement against royal rule. The years since have been marked by chronic instability: a long-delayed constitution finally adopted in 2015, frequent changes of prime minister, and shifting coalitions among the same handful of parties. That backdrop of unfulfilled expectations and revolving-door governance is precisely what the 2026 protest vote rebelled against.
Holding close to a majority, the RSP faces the formidable task of turning a protest landslide into a functioning government in a system long defined by fragile coalitions. Expectations among the young voters who propelled it to power are high, centred on tackling corruption, creating opportunities at home and ending the cycle of instability. Whether a party that rose so fast can deliver durable reform is the defining question of the new parliament.
Election Commission of Nepal — election.gov.np.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.