2026 Japanese general election

An early general election was held in Japan on 8 February 2026 in all constituencies, including proportional blocks, to elect all 465 seats of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet.

The election took place nearly four months into Sanae Takaichi's time as Prime Minister of Japan, which began on 21 October after she won the 2025 Liberal Democratic Party presidential election and formed the Liberal Democratic Party–Japan Innovation Party coalition (LDP–JIP). The main opposition was the newly formed Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA), a new political party formed as a merger between the primary opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and Komeito, the LDP's former longtime coalition partner.

The LDP won a historic landslide victory, with the party keeping its majority in the House and setting a new postwar record for the most seats won by a single party with 316 seats. This gave the party a two-thirds supermajority and passed the last record of 308 seats won by the Democratic Party of Japan in 2009 and the LDP record of 300 seats won in 1986.  Meanwhile, the CRA lost more than two-thirds of its pre-election seats and leading to the resignations of party co-leaders Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito after the election. 

Analysts said the LDP's victory was because of Takaichi's high personal popularity at the time of the election, mainly among young voters and conservatives. 

Opinion polling

Notes

References

Category:February 2026 events
Category:2020s in Japan
Category:Sanae Takaichi