Sweden’s September 2026 Parliamentary Elections: A Return to the Centre Ground in Swedish Politics
Voters went to their assigned polling stations on Sunday, 13 September 2026, to elect a new set of members to the Riksdag, Sweden’s 349-member unicameral parliament. The contest involved two blocs, each made up of four parties: the right-wing governing Tidö coalition, led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, and Sweden’s centre-left opposition, led by Magdalena Andersson. Kristersson’s Moderate Party (Moderata Samlingspartiet) campaigned alongside the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna) and the Liberal Party (Liberalerna), actively supported by the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) who had been promised cabinet positions for the first-time-ever in the event of victory. Andersson’s Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiska) partnered with the Green Party (Miljopartiet De Grona), the Centre Party (Centerpartiet), and the Left Party (Vansterpartiet). Sweden’s national public television broadcaster and news website, SVT (Sveriges Television), called the general election in favour of the opposition bloc on the night of 16 September. The following day, it was confirmed that the bloc led by Magdalena Andersson had secured a narrow three-seat majority in the Riksdag, with 176 seats to 173 for Kristersson’s ruling coalition. Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister since October 2022, thereupon stepped down from his position at the head of a minority government.
General elections are held every four years in Sweden- the previous one having been held on 11 September 2022. All Swedish citizens, aged 18 or over and registered in the Swedish Population Register, are eligible to vote. Swedish citizens living abroad can vote in person at Swedish embassies or consulates or respond by post. Elections to Sweden’s 21 regional and 290 municipal councils also took place on 13 September, in which residents who are not Swedish citizens were allowed to vote.
The victorious Social Democratic Party, founded in 1889, has dominated Sweden’s political system for most of the time since it first came to power in 1932, and was responsible for developing its comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare programme. Sweden once aspired to become a utopian People’s Home (Folkhemmet)-an egalitarian society in which the sexes were equal and poverty had been consigned to the past. Under the Social Democrats, Sweden’s immigration policies were among the most accommodating in western Europe. During the 2015 European migrant crisis, for example, Sweden took in 162, 877 asylum seekers-the highest per capita intake in the EU, following which things went downhill.
The usually happy Swedes have become somewhat less so in recent years, as mass migration led to the emergence of segregated urban neighbourhoods, in the larger cities of Stockholm, Malmo, and Gothenburg in particular, which became hotspots for crime and gang warfare. Terms such as “no-go zones”, or “vulnerable areas” in official speak, came to be applied to these urban areas, while the threat of Radical Islamist terrorism increased. This changed climate forced a rethink of Sweden’s once-liberal immigration policies, and gave an added impetus to integrate recent arrivals and newcomers into Swedish society. Recent anti-crime measures targeting urban gangs appear to have paid a dividend and have led to a fall in the numbers of shooting incidents and gun-related deaths.
Meanwhile, support for the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) grew on a rising tide of xenophobia and, in particular, Islamophobia. As of September 2026, Sweden’s population is more than 10.7 million, 20% of whom are foreign-born. Although Muslims now make up the largest non-Christian faith group and are estimated to account for between 8 and 10% of the population, religion is not recorded in Swedish official population registries. In any case, Sweden’s Muslims include several diverse groups of people, with origins in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, Somalia, Türkiye, and elsewhere, who cannot be considered part of one homogeneous mass.
The far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) have seen a decline in their share of the vote for the first time since the party first entered the Riksdag in 2010, despite a message that retains considerable public support. For the 2026 election, SD leader Jimmie Åkesson pointedly chose to cast his vote in the multi-ethnic north Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, of which he said that “Sweden shouldn’t look like this.” The fall in popular support, and a surge of voting by citizens from minority groups, has translated into 62 seats for the SD, down from 73 seats after the 2022 general election. The SD has thereby lost its position as the second-largest party in Sweden and dropped into third place, partly as a result of demographic changes in the voter base.
Sweden’s parliamentary elections are expected to bring about a change in government, reversing the rightward shift in political leadership that is taking place across much of western Europe. Formal certification of the results is awaited, and there some way to go yet before the likely composition of a ruling coalition, or a minority government, can be agreed upon in a country that is well- accustomed to such forms of rule.
Ashis Banerjee