Turnout: 71.44%
About this election
Thailand held a general election for the 500-seat House of Representatives on 8 February 2026, the first since the Constitutional Court dissolved the progressive Move Forward Party in 2024. The conservative Bhumjaithai Party, led by Anutin Charnvirakul, won the most seats with 192, ahead of the People's Party — the successor to Move Forward — on 120, and Pheu Thai, the party linked to the exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, on 74. The Kla Tham Party took 58 seats, the Democrat Party 21, and several smaller parties the remainder. The result was widely described as a rare win for conservative and nationalist forces, and Anutin was positioned to continue as prime minister at the head of a coalition. Turnout was 71.44%.
Thailand's politics has been shaped by repeated cycles of elections, mass protests and military coups, most recently in 2014. The 2023 election produced a clear win for the progressive Move Forward Party, but its leader Pita Limjaroenrat was blocked from the premiership by a junta-appointed Senate, and the party was later dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 2024 over a campaign pledge to amend the royal-defamation law. It relaunched as the People's Party, which carried much of the same urban and youth support into 2026.
The House of Representatives is elected by a mixed system: 400 members from single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post and 100 from a national party list by proportional representation, with voters casting separate ballots for each. A constitutional change had removed the appointed Senate's power to help choose the prime minister — the mechanism that had thwarted the progressive bloc in 2023 — so the premiership now depends on commanding a majority in the elected House alone.
Bhumjaithai, a conservative party with a strong provincial base, emerged as the largest force. The People's Party remained the principal reformist and pro-change movement, dominant among younger and urban voters. Pheu Thai, the latest vehicle of the Shinawatra political camp that had won every election it contested between 2001 and 2011, fell back sharply. The Kla Tham Party, the Democrat Party — one of Thailand's oldest parties — and the military-linked Palang Pracharath also won seats.
The campaign was coloured by a surge of nationalist sentiment following a border clash with neighbouring Cambodia, which benefited conservative parties emphasising security and sovereignty. For the People's Party, the contest was a test of whether the reformist wave of 2023 could survive the dissolution of Move Forward; it held much of its vote but was kept from power by the arithmetic of coalition-building among the establishment parties.
Although the People's Party retained a large bloc, the conservative and establishment parties commanded the numbers to form a government, with Bhumjaithai's Anutin Charnvirakul at its head. As so often in recent Thai politics, the party with the most reformist momentum was left in opposition while a coalition of more conservative forces took office.
The outcome marked a reversal of the 2023 result, in which Move Forward had finished first only to be blocked from governing. In 2026 the reformists again could not translate strong support into power, while the conservative camp — for the first time in the 21st century, by some accounts — won both the largest share of seats and the premiership outright.
Thai elections cannot be read without the institutions that sit around them. The Constitutional Court and independent agencies have repeatedly reshaped outcomes — dissolving Move Forward in 2024 and other parties before it — while the army has staged repeated coups, most recently in 2014. The 2026 election was the first held after the removal of the appointed Senate’s power to help select the prime minister, a change that in principle made the elected House sovereign over government formation, even as the establishment parties still assembled the winning coalition.
Election Commission of Thailand — ect.go.th.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.