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Israel’s Central Elections Committee released the final results of the 2026 legislative election early Friday. Neither bloc won the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset, Anadolu Agency reported.
The official results are expected to be presented to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday, Nov. 4, after the committee reviews reported errors and complaints. Herzog will then meet party leaders, who will recommend a candidate to form the next government.
Turnout reached 77.9%, the highest since 1999, with 5,716,665 eligible voters casting ballots.
Netanyahu bloc wins 53 seats
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party won 27 seats, down from 32 in the 2022 parliamentary election.
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism alliance, headed by Ya’akov Asher, and the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, each won seven seats.
The ultra-Orthodox Shas party, led by Aryeh Deri, and the far-right Religious Zionism party, headed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, each secured six seats. Shas won 11 seats in the previous election.
In 2022, the Religious Zionist alliance — comprising the Religious Zionism Party, Otzma Yehudit and Noam, led by Avi Maoz — won 14 seats. In the 2026 election, the Religious Zionism Party and Otzma Yehudit together won 13, while Noam failed to pass the 3.25% electoral threshold.
Opposition and Arab parties
Yashar, led by Netanyahu’s main challenger and former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, won 21 seats.
The Together alliance, formed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and their respective parties, Bennett 2026 and Yesh Atid, won 12 seats. Yesh Atid alone had won 24 in 2022.
The left-wing Democrats, chaired by Yair Golan, secured eight seats, twice its 2022 total. Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing opposition party led by former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, won seven seats, one more than in the previous election.
Arab parties, including the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am), won 19 seats in total: 11 for the Joint List and eight for Ra’am. Their combined tally was 10 in 2022, when each won five.
The final results give Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats, the Jewish opposition bloc 48 and Arab parties 19. Parties in the current governing coalition held 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset.
The Joint List and Ra’am’s support would have been enough to give the opposition a comfortable majority. However, most Jewish opposition parties, including Eisenkot’s bloc, had previously ruled out cooperation with Arab parties. Golan was an exception, urging Eisenkot’s bloc to work with the Arab-majority parties to remove Netanyahu from power.
The new Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in on Nov. 10, regardless of the progress of coalition talks, which are expected to be difficult and could last more than two months. Netanyahu and Eisenkot both said they would form the next government, although neither bloc is close to the 61 seats required for a majority.
Tuesday’s vote was Israel’s first election since the Israeli army launched its war on Gaza in October 2023. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 175,000 wounded in the war, according to the figures in the report.
