Elections Stats

Israel votes for a new Knesset on 27 October 2026. The 25th Knesset, elected in November 2022, served its full four-year term, the first to do so since 1988, and was dissolved on 17 July 2026. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led the 37th government since December 2022, a coalition of Likud, the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), and the far-right Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit.

Its term was dominated by the judicial overhaul and the mass protests of 2023, the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and the war in Gaza that followed, and repeated crises over military service for ultra-Orthodox men. In July 2025 both UTJ factions and then Shas withdrew from the government over the stalled conscription law, although they kept supporting parts of the coalition.

The opposition has regrouped. Naftali Bennett, prime minister in 2021–22, runs on a joint list called Together (Yahad) with Yair Lapid and his party Yesh Atid. Former Defence Minister Gadi Eisenkot leads the new party Yashar, Avigdor Lieberman leads Yisrael Beiteinu, and Yair Golan leads The Democrats, formed by the merger of Labor and Meretz. Benny Gantz withdrew his Blue and White list on 19 October. On the Arab side, Ra'am runs separately from a revived Joint List; the Central Elections Committee tried to bar both, but the High Court reversed the decision.

At the last election in 2022, Likud won 23.4 % and 32 seats, and the bloc around Netanyahu won a majority of 64 of 120 seats. A total of 38 lists are running this time. Recent polls disagree sharply: Channel 14 shows Likud clearly ahead, while most other pollsters put Yashar level with or ahead of Likud. Projections for the current government parties range from 46 to 64 seats, against 61 needed for a majority.

All 120 members of the Knesset are elected by closed-list proportional representation in a single nationwide constituency. Every voter has one vote and casts a ballot slip with the letters of a party list; there are no individual candidates or local districts. The 15 sub-districts on the map are only a way to show where each party is strong.

A list must clear the electoral threshold of 3.25 % of valid votes (about four seats) to enter the Knesset. Seats are distributed with the Bader–Ofer method, a variant of the D’Hondt method: lists above the threshold first receive seats by a national quota, and the remaining seats are allocated one by one to the list with the highest average. Two lists can sign a surplus-vote agreement, so that their leftover votes are pooled when these remaining seats are awarded. This slightly favours larger lists. This year, agreements link Likud with RZP–Zehut, Shas with UTJ, Together with Yisrael Beiteinu, Yashar with The Democrats, and the Joint List with Ra'am.

Voting takes place on a single day, and voters must cast their ballot at the polling station assigned to their place of residence. Postal voting does not exist; only soldiers, diplomats, hospital patients, prisoners and similar groups vote with double envelopes, which are counted last. The final result is certified by the Central Elections Committee after about a week. After that, the President asks the member of the Knesset with the best chance of forming a majority to build a government, which needs the confidence of 61 members.