2026 Rhineland-Palatinate state election

The 2026 Rhineland-Palatinate state election was held on 22 March 2026 to elect the 19th Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The CDU won with 31.0% of votes, while the SPD, which led the state government since 1991, suffered heavy losses and fell to second place with 25.9% of votes. The AfD climbed to third place by doubling its vote share to 19.5%, the highest in Western German states. The Greens came in fourth with 7.9%. FDP and FW both lost votes, failed to reach the five percent hurdle and lost their parliamentary representation which Die Linke did not win either. Turnout was 68.5%.

The Rhineland-Palatinate state government has set the date for the 19th state election on Sunday, 22 March 2026. Interior Minister Michael Ebling stated that the date meets constitutional requirements, avoids the Easter holidays, and allows for timely formation of the new state parliament. The election must occur between 57 and 60 months after the current legislative period began on 18 May 2021. Unlike previous elections since 1996, the 2026 election will not coincide with Baden-Württemberg’s due to differing legal and holiday schedules. Baden-Württemberg voted on 8 March 2026, while Rhineland-Palatinate’s election date accommodates the mandatory 67-day period for approving election proposals, avoiding overlap with the year-end holiday season.^[1]

In Rhineland-Palatinate, each voter has two votes. The first vote, known as the constituency vote, is used to elect a direct candidate. The second vote, called the state vote, is cast for a party or voter association and is decisive for the allocation of seats in the state parliament. The number of constituencies was increased from 51 to 52 in 2019.

Parties and voter associations can choose to submit either a statewide list eligible for election across Rhineland-Palatinate or district lists in the four electoral districts. However, it is not mandatory to submit a district list for each district; in such cases, the state vote is not applicable statewide. For the 2021 state election, no district lists were approved.

Election proposals had to be submitted by 6 January 2026.

For seat allocation, only parties and voter associations that receive at least 5% of the state votes are considered. Unlike federal elections, there is no basic mandate clause. The state parliament generally has 101 seats, with 52 allocated as direct mandates. Direct mandates won by parties or voter associations that fail to meet the 5% threshold are subtracted from the total before further seat allocation. If a party wins more direct mandates than its proportional share based on the state vote, other parties receive compensatory mandates, potentially increasing the total number of seats. The seat distribution for state and district lists uses the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers divisor method with standard rounding.

In the 2021 state elections, the SPD, led by Minister-President Malu Dreyer, achieved the largest share of the vote with 35.7 percent. The CDU came second with 27.7 percent, the Greens regained third place with 9.3 percent^[2], and the AfD dropped from 3rd to 4th largest party in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, getting 8.3 percent of the vote. The FDP came fifth with 5.5 percent. A sixth party, the Free Voters, made it into the state parliament for the first time with 5.4 percent.^[3] Prior to the election, all three parties in the traffic light coalition expressed they would like to continue their coalition in the new term. The balance of power within the alliance changed, since the Greens were now the second strongest party instead of the FDP. The SPD invited the Greens and FDP to exploratory talks the day after the election. Almost eight weeks after the election, the SPD, Greens, and FDP agreed to continue their previous coalition, forming the Third Dreyer cabinet.

In the constituent session of the state parliament on 18 May 2021, Malu Dreyer was re-elected Prime Minister and the Third Dreyer cabinet was sworn in.^[4] Due to health reasons, Dreyer resigned in summer 2024. On 10 July 2024, Alexander Schweitzer took over the position and formed the SPD-led Schweitzer cabinet with two ministers each from FDP and Greens.

On the federal level, in late 2024, the Scholz cabinet collapsed as the FDP withdrew from the traffic light coalition, triggering the snap February 2025 German federal election in which FDP lost its representation in the Bundestag, and the SPD dropped to third place, behind CDU and AfD. Both of the SPD and CDU refused to work with AfD in continuation of their Firewall policy. The only other option was a CDU-SPD coalition, which the parties agreed to, forming the Merz cabinet.

According to polling, the FDP was expected to lose its representation in the state parliament, and this was confirmed by exit polls. A left-wing coalition (red-red-green) was also predicted to be impossible, as the three left-wing parties (SPD, Greens, Left) that are in contention to win seats are not indicated to reach a majority between them. The AfD was predicted to finish in third place, with the best ever result in Western states, but will remain in opposition as no other party is willing to cooperate with them according to the "firewall policy".

The mostly likely outcome was a CDU-SPD coalition, as in the federal Bundestag, with CDU taking over the lead according to exit polls. As seen in the 2026 Baden-Württemberg state election two weeks earlier, the close proximity of the two leading parties in the polls, with uncertainty about which party the next Minister-President will be selected from, produced tactical voting negatively affecting small parties, denying representation also to FW and the Left according to exit polls. The Greens lost, too, but will keep representation.

The table below lists the parties represented in the 18th Landtag.