Turnout: 70.25%
About this election
Slovenia held snap parliamentary elections on 22 March 2026, called after Prime Minister Robert Golob's coalition collapsed in a budget dispute. The governing Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), which had swept to power in 2022, finished first but only barely: it took 28.66% of the vote and 29 seats, just one ahead of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) of former prime minister Janez Jansa on 27.88% and 28 seats. Turnout was 70.25%, high by Slovenian standards and a measure of how charged the contest had become. Crucially, finishing first did not translate into power — Golob proved unable to assemble a majority, and Jansa instead built a right-wing coalition and returned as prime minister for a fourth time, sending the Freedom Movement into opposition.
The Freedom Movement had been created only months before the 2022 election, when Golob, a former energy-company executive, channelled opposition to Jansa's then-government into a brand-new party and won a landslide. His centre-left coalition with the Social Democrats and the Left governed until a budget crisis in late 2025 fractured it and forced an early election. The 2026 campaign thus pitted a worn-down incumbent against a familiar and highly polarising rival, in a country whose politics has long oscillated between Jansa's conservative bloc and a rotating cast of centre-left and liberal challengers.
Slovenia elects its 90-seat National Assembly (Drzavni zbor) by proportional representation: 88 members are chosen from 11 multi-member constituencies, and two seats are permanently reserved for the Italian and Hungarian minorities, elected by those communities. A party must clear a 4% national threshold, and seats are allocated by the d'Hondt method, with voters also able to express a preference for an individual candidate. The prime minister is elected by the Assembly and depends on commanding a majority of the 90 members, which in a fragmented chamber almost always means a coalition.
The Freedom Movement (GS) is Golob's liberal, centrist party. The SDS, Jansa's conservative party, is the most durable force in Slovenian politics and the anchor of the right. The Christian-democratic and agrarian alliance of NSi, SLS and FOKUS and the Social Democrats (SD) occupy the centre; the Left (Levica), here allied with the green Vesna, sits to the left; and two newer forces — the Democrats (DEM) and the populist Resni.ca — entered or consolidated their place in parliament in 2026.
The defining feature of the result was its closeness: a single seat separated the Freedom Movement from the SDS, and several parties clustered in the 5-9% range held the balance. In a proportional system, first place is far less important than the ability to build a coalition, and the near-tie at the top meant the government would be decided by which leader could assemble fifty per cent of the chamber from the smaller parties.
Despite the Freedom Movement's narrow lead in votes and seats, Golob could not stitch together a viable majority, and the mandate passed to Jansa, who assembled a coalition of the right and centre-right to take office. It was a striking illustration of how, under proportional representation, the largest party can still end up in opposition if the parliamentary arithmetic favours its rival — and it returned one of Slovenia's most divisive figures to the premiership for a fourth time.
The April 2022 election had been a landslide for the brand-new Freedom Movement, which won about 34.5% and 41 seats, allowing Golob to form a comfortable centre-left coalition. The fall to 29 seats in 2026, and the loss of power despite finishing first, marked a sharp reversal for a party that had dominated the previous parliament.
A Jansa-led government shifts Slovenia's direction on issues from migration and security to media and the judiciary, areas where his previous terms drew both strong support and strong criticism, including past friction with the European Union. The durability of a multi-party right-wing coalition, and how the Freedom Movement regroups in opposition, will shape the rest of the parliamentary term.
Slovenia’s electoral geography has a familiar shape: the SDS draws its strongest support from rural and traditionally conservative areas, while the Freedom Movement and the centre-left perform best in Ljubljana, the larger towns and the coast. With the two leading parties almost level nationally, the outcome turned on how narrowly that divide split across the country, and the result page can be clicked to see each electoral unit in detail.
State Election Commission of Slovenia (Drzavna volilna komisija, DVK) — dvk-rs.si.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.