Israel

Editorial preview

Last updated: 27 October 2026. Map the General Editorial Team.

What is at stake on 27 October 2026 is the membership of the 26th Knesset. The Central Elections Committee set Tuesday 16 Heshvan 5787, 27 October 2026, as election day. The Knesset has 120 seats. The whole country is one constituency. Voters choose a list. Lists that pass the legal threshold share the seats in proportion to their votes. The government that follows is a matter for the Knesset after the official count. This page does not predict a coalition and does not call a winner.

How the day works, on the Committee’s pages read for this hub, is a polling day with stations opening at 07:00. Most stations stay open until 22:00. Some small stations close at 20:00. This site does not copy the identification steps used inside a station. The legal deadline for publishing the official results in the Reshumot gazette is 4 November 2026. Until the Committee publishes a count, this hub shows none. The results file, when the site is allowed to show it, is the Committee’s vote file. Seats calculated from those partial official totals are an unofficial allocation, not final and not an official seat allocation, and not a projection from a survey.

The threshold, on the Committee’s page about elections in Israel, is 3.25 percent of the votes cast. A list below that line does not take seats. Lists above it share the 120 seats in proportion to their votes. That is the system the Committee describes. This preview does not restate a formula the page did not print, and it does not apply the threshold to a set of figures, because this page is not publishing a count in the preview. History, as far as the Committee’s title goes, is that this election chooses the 26th Knesset. Earlier Knesset totals were not copied onto this hub, so they are not repeated here as if they had been.

Candidate lists are published by the Committee. The Hebrew lists page for the 26th Knesset is the official list. This English hub does not copy the names from that page into the preview, and it does not describe a list’s programme. A programme is the text the list publishes. Naming a list here without the Committee’s wording would be an invention, so it is not done. Readers who want the lists should open the Committee’s page. Readers who want a list’s own statement should open that list’s publication. This site does not rank the lists.

Israeli law, in the election-law table this site keeps, bars publishing new election-survey results from the end of the Friday before polling day until the polls close. This site prints no survey figure at any time, including before that Friday and after the close. It also prints no sample of voters leaving stations. Vote totals, when shown, are the Committee’s counts after 22:00 Israel time on 27 October 2026. Seat numbers beside them are calculated by this site and labelled unofficial. The about page of this site states that method. A correction of a date or a threshold figure should be checked against the Committee, which is the office linked below.

Sources for this preview

• Central Elections Committee, date of the 26th Knesset election
• Central Elections Committee, elections in Israel
• Central Elections Committee, candidate lists for the 26th Knesset
• Elections (Modes of Propaganda) Law 5719-1959