Zambia National Assembly election 2026 (226 constituencies + 40 PR seats) — Results

A parliament redrawn

The National Assembly elected on 13 August 2026 will not look like the one it replaces. A constitutional amendment passed in December 2025 — Bill 7, the largest change to Zambia's electoral architecture since the 2016 constitution — expanded the chamber and changed how it is filled. The number of constituency seats rose from 156 to 226, the product of an Electoral Commission of Zambia delimitation exercise that created 70 new constituencies and took effect in May 2026, the biggest redrawing of the electoral map in the democratic era. Alongside them, 40 seats are now filled by proportional representation from party lists, reserved for groups the first-past-the-post map has historically under-served: 20 for women, 15 for young candidates and 5 for persons with disabilities. That makes 266 elected members, on top of which the President may nominate up to 11 more — a ceiling the amendment introduced, capped at five per cent of the constituency seats — with the Vice-President, the Speaker and two deputy speakers also sitting.

Two systems on one ballot day

The 226 constituency members are elected by simple plurality in single-member seats: whoever gets the most votes wins, with no threshold and no second round. That is the count that resolves on election night, constituency by constituency, and it is what the seat bar on this page tracks. The 40 proportional seats work differently — they are allocated to parties from lists submitted before the vote, in proportion to the national presidential vote, so they are settled after the national totals are known rather than declared locally. They were filled after the constituency results and did shift the final balance of the chamber, adding 24 members for the UPND and 16 for the NRPUP. A candidate for the National Assembly must be at least 21 years old; the voting age is 18.

Why this is not simply the presidential result

Zambia's parliamentary map regularly diverges from its presidential one, and first-past-the-post amplifies the difference. Independents are a standing feature rather than a curiosity: 13 were elected in 2021, often local heavyweights who lost a party primary and ran anyway, and they hold the balance in provinces where the two big parties are close. Ticket-splitting is common, so a province can back one presidential candidate while returning MPs from another party. And because the winner needs only a plurality, a divided opposition can hand a seat to a party that polled well under half the vote in it. With 70 brand-new constituencies carved out of old ones, incumbency and local name recognition count for less than usual in 2026, and past constituency-level results are a weaker guide than they normally would be.

The outgoing parliament

The 2021 election produced a decisive UPND majority and sent the Patriotic Front into opposition after a decade in office. The UPND took 82 of the 156 constituency seats and the PF 59 on polling day, with the Party of National Unity and Progress on one and independents on 13. The 156th, Kaumbwe, did not vote in August: polling there was postponed to October 2021 after the death of a candidate, and the PF won it — which is why the final split is usually quoted as 82–60. The parliament that followed was marked by a steady trickle of by-elections and by the disintegration of the PF itself, whose leadership dispute ran through the courts for most of the term and was still unresolved when nominations closed — which is why the Tonse Alliance's candidates contest this election under other party labels.

National Assembly (2021)	Seats
United Party for National Development (UPND)	82
Patriotic Front (PF)	59
Kaumbwe (postponed to Oct 2021, won by PF)	1
Independents	13
Party of National Unity and Progress (PNUP)	1

The provincial battlegrounds

The province map on this page colours each of Zambia's ten provinces by the party leading its constituency declarations, and clicking a province opens its full seat breakdown. In 2021 the pattern was stark at the edges and close in the middle: the UPND swept Southern (18 of 18), North-Western (12 of 12) and almost all of Western, while the PF took every seat in Muchinga and all but two in Luapula. The contest was decided in between — the Copperbelt split 9–9 with four independents, Central went 10–4 to the UPND, Northern went 9–4 to the PF, and Eastern returned a three-way mix of PF, UPND and independents. Those middle provinces, plus Lusaka, are where the 70 new constituencies concentrate the most population, so they carry even more weight in 2026.

How the amendment was received

Bill 7 passed the National Assembly unanimously in December 2025 and was assented to days later, but it did not pass without objection. A coalition of civil-society organisations criticised the package on several grounds: the speed of the process, the introduction of the mixed system so close to a general election, changes to by-election rules and to parliamentary dissolution timelines, the return of MPs to local councils, and the expansion of presidential nominees. Supporters argue that the reserved proportional seats are the only realistic route to a parliament that reflects a country where women, young people and persons with disabilities have been persistently under-represented, and that the delimitation simply catches up with three decades of population growth. The 2026 election is the first real test of the design.

The result

All 226 constituencies were declared, and the United Party for National Development emerged with a clear majority of the elected constituency seats — 136 on the fullest tally available, against 60 for the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, 20 independents, five for the Resolute Party, two for Citizens First and one for Zambia Must Prosper. That is a transformation of the chamber: the UPND held 82 of 156 seats in the outgoing parliament, and the expansion to 226 constituencies together with the collapse of the old Patriotic Front vote into new vehicles produced a far larger governing bloc. Independents, who took 13 seats in 2021, again returned a substantial group.

The 40 proportional-representation seats were then allocated from the certified presidential vote, and only the two parties with a meaningful national share qualified for any: 24 went to the UPND and 16 to the NRPUP, split across the three reserved categories as 12 and 8 of the 20 women's seats, 9 and 6 of the 15 youth seats, and 3 and 2 of the 5 seats for persons with disabilities. Added to the constituency results, that gives the UPND 160 of the 266 elected members and the NRPUP 76 — a governing majority of well over the 134 needed, and an opposition bench roughly half its size.

Party	Constituency	PR	Total
UPND	136	24	160
NRPUP	60	16	76
Independents	20	—	20
Resolute Party	5	—	5
Citizens First	2	—	2
Zambia Must Prosper	1	—	1
Not attributed	2	—	2

Two of the 226 constituency seats are not attributed in any tally we could verify, so the party figures sum to 264 of the 266 elected members rather than 266. Beyond those, the President may nominate up to 11 further members, and the Vice-President, the Speaker and two deputy speakers also sit — a full chamber of 280.

A note on these figures

The Electoral Commission of Zambia declared every constituency, but it never published a national seat breakdown — not on its results portal, which reported zero of 226 constituencies throughout and still did so after the president-elect was declared, and not in any consolidated statement of its own. The totals here are compiled from an independent tally of the commission's constituency declarations. They are the best figures available and are widely reported, but they are not an ECZ publication, and the two unattributed seats are the honest measure of how precise they are. Seat counts circulating elsewhere that show the UPND on 74 seats against a majority line of 79 are not results at all: they come from a hidden block on the ECZ portal that was never populated with real declarations and still carries the majority threshold of the old 156-seat chamber.

The 40 proportional-representation seats are on a firmer footing than the constituency tally, because they are not counted at all — they are computed. The 2025 amendment allocates them to parties in proportion to the presidential vote, and applying that formula to the result the commission certified on 18 August gives exactly the split reported: of the 98.36% of valid votes the two qualifying parties took between them, the UPND's 60.49% and the NRPUP's 37.87% yield 12 and 8 of the 20 women's seats, 9 and 6 of the 15 youth seats, and 3 and 2 of the 5 disability seats. The ECZ has published no consolidated statement of the allocation, but it is reproducible from the certified presidential figures alone.

Frequently asked questions

How many seats are being elected to Zambia's National Assembly in 2026?

226 members are elected by first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies — up from 156, after a delimitation exercise that created 70 new constituencies with effect from May 2026 — plus 40 members chosen by proportional representation from party lists. That is 266 elected members; the President may nominate up to 11 more, and the Vice-President, Speaker and two deputy speakers also sit.

What changed in the 2025 constitutional amendment?

Bill 7, passed in December 2025, expanded the constituency seats from 156 to 226 and introduced a mixed system by adding 40 proportional-representation seats reserved for women (20), youth (15) and persons with disabilities (5), allocated to parties from pre-submitted lists in proportion to national vote share. It also capped presidential nominees at 11. Civil-society groups objected to the speed of the process and to several other provisions; the bill nonetheless passed unanimously.

When will the National Assembly results be known?

They were declared constituency by constituency between 14 and 18 August 2026, alongside the presidential count. The ECZ never published a consolidated national seat breakdown, so the constituency totals on this page are compiled from an independent tally of its declarations. The 40 proportional seats were allocated afterwards from the certified presidential vote — 24 to the UPND and 16 to the NRPUP — and are included in the seat figures here.

Why can the parliamentary result differ from the presidential one?

They use different systems and different ballots. First-past-the-post rewards local strength and lets a candidate win a seat with well under half the vote when the opposition is split, independents regularly win seats (13 did in 2021), and voters often split their ticket between a presidential candidate and a local MP from another party.

Who held the seats before this election?

In 2021 the UPND won 82 of the 156 constituency seats and the Patriotic Front 59, with 13 independents and one seat for the Party of National Unity and Progress. Kaumbwe, the 156th, voted only in October 2021 after a candidate died, and the PF took it — giving the final 82–60 split usually quoted.

Can I see the result by region?

No. The ECZ never published a per-province or per-constituency seat breakdown — its results portal carried no declarations at all — so there is no official regional dataset to map, and this page shows none. The only figures available are the national party totals compiled from the commission's spoken constituency declarations.

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