New Zealanders voted in the general election on Saturday 7 November 2026, but it could be weeks before we know for sure who will lead the next government.
Early results show that National, ACT and NZ First, the three parties in the current Government, have 67 of the 131 seats in Parliament. That’s just one more than the 66 needed for a majority, which means more than half of all the seats.
A very close race
Labour got slightly more party votes than National, but the gap was tiny: just 3,650 votes, or fewer than two in every 1000. National still won the most seats overall, with 42.
The Green Party had its best result ever, and the Opportunity Party made it into Parliament for the first time, with seven seats. Before the election, National’s leader, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, said he would not work with Opportunity.
“Tonight New Zealand has voted and it looks like an MMP special,” Luxon told supporters. MMP is our voting system, where each person gets two votes: one for a party and one for a local candidate.
Parliament usually has 120 seats, but this time there are 131. That’s because some parties won more local electorate seats than their share of the party vote would normally give them, so extra seats are added. This is called an ‘overhang’.
What are special votes?
About 399,000 votes still need to be counted, which is around one in every seven votes. Special votes include votes from New Zealanders living overseas and from people who couldn’t vote in the usual way in their own electorate. In past elections, special votes have often helped Labour and the Greens, so the numbers could still change.
What happens next?
The Electoral Commission will announce the official results on Friday 27 November 2026. The parties will then work out who will govern together, which is called forming a coalition.
Until a new government is formed, the current one keeps running the country as a “caretaker” and avoids making big new decisions.
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