Sweden's 2026 election

Sweden held a tightly contested general election on 13 September that could have brought the far-right, neo-Nazi-rooted Sweden Democrats into government for the first time; the party has been the second-largest in parliament since 2022, providing crucial outside support to conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's coalition without holding cabinet posts, but Kristersson had pledged that a right-bloc win would finally give them ministerial positions. Exit polls showed the four-party centre-left opposition, led by former PM Magdalena Andersson's Social Democrats, ahead with about 51.3% of the vote against 46.8% for the right -- a lead that narrowed sharply in the campaign's final weeks after opening at roughly 10 points, though exit polls had also wrongly predicted a left win in 2022. Andersson framed the choice starkly: 'should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats... or should we have a government led by me?'

As actual counting proceeded, the race tightened into a near-dead-heat: by 14-15 September, with about 95% of districts reporting, the opposition bloc held a narrow projected edge of 176 seats to 173 in the 349-seat Riksdag, with final results -- including overseas ballots -- not expected until Wednesday. In a surprise twist, the Sweden Democrats saw their vote share drop for the first time since entering parliament in 2010, falling from 20.5% in 2022 to about 17.5%, while Andersson's Social Democrats held first place with 28.1%, one of their weakest results in over a century, complicating any left-bloc effort to form a stable government even if their narrow lead held. The election came the same week Germany's far-right AfD won 44% in a state election, making Sweden's outcome, whichever way it broke, a closely watched signal for the trajectory of the European far right.