Spain General election 2026 — Live Results & Map

The election in brief

Spain votes on Sunday 29 November 2026 in a snap general election to both chambers of the Cortes Generales. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the dissolution on 5 October, after an extraordinary cabinet meeting, and Royal Decree 806/2026 was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) the next day. It dissolves the Congress of Deputies and the Senate elected on 23 July 2023 roughly nine months before the legislature would have run its full four years, sets the campaign from 00:00 on Friday 13 November to midnight on Friday 27 November, and summons the new chambers to their opening sessions on 23 December at 10:00.

Why now

Sánchez was re-invested in November 2023 at the head of a minority coalition of his Socialists (PSOE) and Sumar, relying on the votes of Catalan, Basque, Galician and Canarian parties — above all the seven deputies of Carles Puigdemont's Together for Catalonia (Junts), secured with the amnesty law for those prosecuted over the 2017 independence referendum. That arithmetic broke in October 2025, when Junts's members voted to end the investiture agreement, citing unfulfilled commitments, and the party moved into opposition. The government kept governing without a reliable majority until 2 October 2026, when the Congress threw out two royal decree-laws on housing, drafted after nationwide protests over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid; Junts voted against them together with the People's Party (PP) and Vox. Three days later Sánchez called the election, saying he needed "a much broader majority" to carry out pending reforms.

The electoral system

The 350 members of the Congress of Deputies are elected by closed-list proportional representation using the D'Hondt method in 52 constituencies: the 50 provinces, each guaranteed two seats with the rest shared out by population, and Ceuta and Melilla with one each. A 3% threshold applies within each province. 176 seats are needed for an absolute majority, and the Congress alone invests or removes a prime minister. The decree's annex reallocates one seat compared with 2023: Madrid rises from 37 to 38 deputies and Cádiz falls from 9 to 8; Barcelona keeps 32, Valencia 16 and Seville and Alicante 12 each. The Senate is elected differently: in each mainland province voters may mark up to three names on an open list and the four most-voted candidates win, while Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife elect three senators, eight smaller islands one each and Ceuta and Melilla two each — 209 directly elected seats in all, joined by senators appointed by the regional parliaments.

The parties and alliances

The contest is between two blocs. On the right, the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which won the most seats in 2023 but could not form a government, and Santiago Abascal's Vox. The two run separately for the Congress but have agreed a pact for the Senate: Vox stands aside in Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cádiz, Valencia, Castellón and the Balearic Islands, where a Vox nominee appears as an independent on the PP's list, and the PP stands aside in Gipuzkoa, Girona and Tarragona. The stated aim is a three-fifths majority in the upper house, which matters for appointments to the Constitutional Court and the General Council of the Judiciary. The PSOE has made its own Senate alliance with the parties of the outgoing government.

The left of the PSOE is divided. Movimiento Sumar, United Left (IU), Más Madrid and the Catalan Comuns run together as Frente Amplio; Yolanda Díaz, Sumar's leader in 2023, is not standing. Podemos runs separately, with Irene Montero heading its Madrid list, and has agreed to work with the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC): it fields no candidacy of its own in Catalonia and contributes candidates to ERC's lists, led by Gabriel Rufián. Nationalist and regional parties — Junts, ERC, the Basque PNV and EH Bildu, the Galician BNG and Canarian Coalition among them — again compete for the seats that decided the last two parliaments.

What the polls show

Every poll published since the dissolution puts the PP first and the PSOE second, with Vox a clear third and far above its 2023 result. The published seat projections give the PP and Vox together an absolute majority, while the most recent surveys show the PSOE narrowing the gap with the PP. Frente Amplio and Podemos are each polling well below what Sumar won as a single list in 2023. Polls are not results: this page reports only the official count.

Election night

Polling stations open at 09:00 and close at 20:00 local time. On the mainland, the Balearic Islands, Ceuta and Melilla that is 08:00–19:00 UTC; the Canary Islands are an hour behind, so they vote 09:00–20:00 UTC. By standing rulings of the Central Electoral Board, neither the Interior Ministry nor any other authority may release results before the last polls close in the Canaries, at 21:00 peninsular time (20:00 UTC). From then on the Ministry of the Interior publishes the provisional count, and the provincial electoral boards carry out the official scrutiny in the following days.

Sources

Royal Decree 806/2026 (BOE-A-2026-20742); the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG); Central Electoral Board doctrine on the release of results; results from the Ministry of the Interior (infoelectoral.interior.gob.es).

Frequently asked questions

When is the 2026 Spanish general election?

On Sunday 29 November 2026. Royal Decree 806/2026, published in the BOE on 6 October, dissolved the Cortes elected in July 2023 and called elections to the Congress and the Senate. The campaign runs from 13 to 27 November and the new chambers meet on 23 December.

Why was the election called early?

The minority PSOE–Sumar government lost its working majority when Junts ended its investiture agreement in October 2025. After the Congress rejected two housing decree-laws on 2 October 2026, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez dissolved parliament about nine months before the end of the term.

How does the electoral system work?

The 350 deputies are elected by closed-list proportional representation (D'Hondt) in the 50 provinces plus Ceuta and Melilla, with a 3% provincial threshold; 176 seats are a majority. Madrid elects 38 deputies this time and Cádiz 8, one more and one fewer than in 2023. The Senate's 209 directly elected seats are filled by open lists, four per mainland province.

Who is standing?

The PSOE is led by Pedro Sánchez, the PP by Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Vox by Santiago Abascal. Sumar, IU, Más Madrid and the Comuns run as Frente Amplio, while Podemos runs separately and backs ERC's lists in Catalonia. The official lists are proclaimed on 2 November and will be listed here.

When will results be available?

Polls close at 20:00 local time, but no results may be released until the Canary Islands close at 21:00 peninsular time (20:00 UTC). The Ministry of the Interior then publishes the provisional count, which will appear on this page as it is released; the official scrutiny follows in the days after.

Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.