2026 Russian legislative election

Legislative elections were held in Russia from 18 to 20 September 2026. Voters chose all 450 seats of the 9th State Duma, which is the lower house of the Federal Assembly.

Before the election, United Russia was the party in charge and had the most seats, with 310.

The election took place during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. It was the first Russian legislative election held in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Russian citizens in Transnistria also voted. Transnistria is a region of Moldova that broke away, is occupied, and is not recognized as a separate country.

Background

Legislative elections were last held in (/wiki/2021_Russian_legislative_election) from 17 to 19 September. United Russia again won a constitutional majority with 324 seats, but lost 14 party-list seats and 5 constituency seats. The Communist Party (CPRF) stayed in second place with 57 seats, while A Just Russia – For Truth and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third and fourth with 27 and 21 seats. In January 2021, A Just Russia merged with Patriots of Russia and Zakhar Prilepin's For Truth party. For the first time since the 2003 elections, more than four parties passed the 5 percent threshold to win party-list seats. The opposition, which is not seen as linked to the Kremlin, considered the 2021 election to be unfair because of systematic violations and the exclusion of independent candidates and parties. Presidential elections were last held in (/wiki/2024_Russian_presidential_election), when Vladimir Putin was re-elected with 87.28 percent of the vote. The non-systemic opposition called it the most unfair election in Russia's history. Since then, opposition figures have faced prison, have been labelled foreign agents, or have been forced to leave the country, and their leader, Alexei Navalny, died in prison on 16 February 2024.

On 10 August 2026, the Russian Supreme Court banned the main opposition party, Yabloko, from taking part in the election, after a case brought by the pro-Kremlin Rodina party. On the same day, the party's deputy leader, Lev Shlosberg, was sentenced to 11 years and one month in a penal colony over his opposition to the war in Ukraine. On 16 June 2026, Vladimir Putin signed a decree setting the election for 20 September 2026. The Central Election Commission then published a calendar of events, and the election was announced to take place over several consecutive days. The election slogan was "Your vote is the strength of Russia".

Electoral system

See also: Elections in Russia

Under Russian election law, a State Duma term lasts no more than five years. Each seat is chosen using a parallel voting system. Half of the seats are filled through party-list proportional representation, which needs at least 5 percent of the vote to win seats. The other half are filled in 225 single-member constituencies using first-past-the-post voting.

Political parties nominate candidates for the party-list seats, and each list must include between 200 and 400 candidates. Non-members can be on a list, but they cannot make up more than half of it. Lists are divided into regional groups that match the federal subjects of Russia, and a party may also have a federal section. Candidates for single-member seats can be nominated by parties or can nominate themselves. Parties send their lists to the Central Election Commission. Self-nominated candidates must collect signatures from at least 3% of voters in their constituency, or at least 3,000 signatures if the constituency has fewer than 100,000 registered voters. A candidate may run in both types of seat, but if elected to both, they must give up one.

Electronic voting, which was used against electoral fraud in the previous legislative election and in elections to the Moscow City Duma, was planned to be rolled out to 33 regions. It would cover roughly 48 million eligible voters during the election.

Redistricting

See also: Constituencies of Russia

The State Duma constituencies were last redrawn in 2015 to be used for ten years. In April 2025, the Central Election Commission of Russia introduced a new map of 225 constituencies for the 2026 elections. Unlike earlier redistricting, these new constituencies will be used for five years, so they will be redrawn again before the next Russian legislative election. In the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, constituencies were set up in regions occupied since 2022: three in Donetsk, two in Luhansk, one in Kherson, and one in Zaporizhzhia. The constituencies in Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, were significantly re-arranged.

Within Russia's internationally recognized borders, Moscow (16), Moscow Oblast (12) and Krasnodar Krai (9) each gained one constituency. Ten regions lost one: Rostov Oblast (6), Altai Krai (3), Volgograd Oblast (3), Voronezh Oblast (3), Zabaykalsky Krai (1), Ivanovo Oblast (1), Kaluga Oblast (1), Smolensk Oblast (1), Tambov Oblast (1) and Tomsk Oblast (1). Constituencies were significantly re-arranged in Dagestan, Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Saint Petersburg. Smaller changes were made in Chuvashia, Kursk Oblast, Leningrad Oblast, Lipetsk Oblast, Samara Oblast, Ulyanovsk Oblast and Vladimir Oblast. On 20 May 2025, the State Duma adopted the new map by a 396–3 vote. Galina Khovanskaya (SR–ZP), Marina Kim (SR–ZP) and Yevgeny Marchenko (Independent) voted against it. Khovanskaya strongly objected to the removal of Sokol District from her constituency, Leningradsky. On 21 May, the Federation Council unanimously approved the map, and on 23 May, President Vladimir Putin signed it into law.

Political parties

See also: Political parties in Russia

As of December 2023, 25 political parties are registered in Russia.^{[needs update]} To appear on the ballot, a party must collect 200,000 signatures under nomination rules. Parties already represented in the State Duma through party-list seats, or in at least one regional parliament through party lists, are included automatically.

As of 30 July 2026, all parties eligible for automatic inclusion had held conventions, nominated candidates, and been registered, as listed here:

Other registered parties that needed to collect signatures, but did not run in the elections, are shown here:

* Did not participate

Some parties were banned from taking part, even though they had collected the required signatures, because the Supreme Court had suspended their activities:

Campaign

In April 2025, the Presidential Administration of Russia and United Russia began preparing for the next election. Regional authorities rated the performance of incumbent deputies, and the parliamentary group was also evaluated. In January 2026, Vladimir Yakushev was announced as head of the party's election campaign headquarters. At the party convention in June, Vladimir Putin spoke and wished the party luck. The party list's top five included Sergey Lavrov, Sergey Sobyanin, Maria Lvova-Belova, and Vladislav Golovin of the Yunarmiya movement. As in earlier elections, party leader Dmitry Medvedev was not on the list. United Russia nominated candidates in all 225 single-member constituencies, and in 110 of the 198 constituencies it had won in 2021, it chose new candidates. Putin used the congress to present the election as a referendum on the war in Ukraine. The Communist Party aimed mainly to keep its 2021 result, although members reported more interference from state authorities, including arrests in Altai Krai. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov's remarks about bank deposits drew wide attention, and he later said his words had been taken out of context. The Liberal Democratic Party launched its campaign first, with leader Leonid Slutsky aiming to at least double its seats in the State Duma. Its platform, "100 Days of Transformation of Russia," included a "people's mortgage" at 3%.

Yabloko was the only registered party to openly oppose the Russian war in Ukraine, campaigning under the anti-war slogan "For Peace and Freedom." Since the last election, several members faced criminal cases or were placed on the register of foreign agents, which removed their right to run. One member, Maxim Kruglov, was sentenced to seven years in prison for sharing information about civilian casualties during the Russian invasion, including in Mariupol and Bucha. On 10 August 2026, the Supreme Court of Russia removed Yabloko from the party-list ballot after a lawsuit by the Rodina party, though the party was allowed to run in some constituencies, and it said it would appeal. A Just Russia returned to its earlier name and was led by Sergey Mironov, with Serhiy Arbuzov, a former Ukrainian acting Prime Minister, on its list. The party put forward 263 list candidates and 224 single-member candidates. In April 2024, New People had merged with the Party of Growth, and its top leaders were Alexey Nechayev, Vladislav Davankov, and Sardana Avksentyeva. The Party of Pensioners planned to compete in 108 single-mandate constituencies. Rodina was led by Aleksey Zhuravlyov, and writer Zakhar Prilepin did not join its list. In April 2026, The Greens merged with the Green Alternative party, and their list was headed by Marina Shishkina, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg.

Opinion polls

Main article: Opinion polling for the 2026 Russian legislative election

Conduct

During the election week, a CEC employee was killed in a drone attack in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in occupied Ukraine. On the first day of voting, a polling station in Krasnodar Krai was moved because of drone damage. In the Luhansk People's Republic, occupied Ukraine, 14 polling stations lost electricity after a drone attack on energy infrastructure. In Sochi, election workers and voters had to take shelter because of an air raid alert.

There were reports of widespread failures of electronic voting terminals in Moscow. Election officials in the city later said an online voting system had come under a cyberattack. Voting in Sochi was suspended on 19 September after another Ukrainian drone attack. On 20 September, the final day of voting, Ukraine carried out its largest ever drone attack on the Moscow area. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that over 1,900 drones, eight guided aerial bombs, eight cruise missiles and four other missiles had been shot down overnight.

Results

United Russia won the election easily, taking more than three quarters of the seats in the State Duma. Several parties that are part of Russia's systemic opposition won most of the remaining seats, and a few seats went to people who did not belong to any party. Overall turnout was 55.66%. The election commission said Moscow had a record high turnout. Observers said that, with no serious opposition parties, the question was how much United Russia would win, not whether it would win. Some people said this could lead to stricter laws being passed, or to Vladimir Putin using the legislature more often to support his decisions. Putin said the results showed that the Russian people stood firmly behind the war in Ukraine. Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the Central Election Commission, said that for the first time, veterans of the Russo-Ukrainian War who ran in the election won between 46 and 49 seats.

Reactions

United Russia chairman Dmitry Medvedev welcomed the party's preliminary performance and said its next task was to carry out President Vladimir Putin's policies and decisions. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov questioned the preliminary results. He said all of the party's observers in Voronezh had been unlawfully removed, and that the party would compare its own copies of polling-station protocols with the official results. New People thanked its supporters and said more than five million citizens had voted for it. Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov claimed the party would have finished second if it had not been disqualified.

On 6 August, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) criticized Russia for not inviting OSCE observers to the elections. On 21 September, the Council of the European Union described the election as evidence of the "continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia." Albania, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, San Marino and Ukraine later agreed with this view. Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the results in Russian-occupied Ukraine would be invalid because the vote was illegal. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova called Russia's plan to open polling stations in the Moldovan unrecognized breakaway region of Transnistria "unacceptable," since it had not been coordinated with the Moldovan government. Vadim Krasnoselsky, the de facto president of Transnistria, had announced 17 polling stations there, while the Russian embassy in Chișinău had agreed to open only one, in Chișinău. Romania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned the polling stations in Transnistria, as well as the election in occupied Ukraine. The Georgian government condemned Russia's decision to open polling stations in the occupied territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.