OMM Newsroom
Voting in Israel’s 2026 general elections began Thursday at the country’s diplomatic missions abroad, nearly two weeks before the nationwide vote scheduled for Oct. 27, The Times of Israel reported.
Voting for diplomatic mission employees and their family members is expected to last about 30 hours. Embassies are opening polling stations during daytime hours in their host countries.
A total of 101 polling stations are operating across 99 diplomatic missions, with approximately 4,800 eligible voters, according to the report. Overseas voting is restricted to diplomatic envoys, diplomatic staff and their family members.
The Israeli Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand, was the first to open, at 9 a.m. local time. That was 11 p.m. Wednesday in Israel (2000 GMT). The Israeli Embassy in Fiji opened its polling station an hour later.
The last polling stations scheduled to close are at the Israeli consulates in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where voting is due to end at 8 p.m. local time, or 6 a.m. Friday in Israel (0300 GMT).
After voting ends, the ballots will be flown to Israel and sent to the Knesset for counting, the report said.
Opinion polls indicate that neither the camp of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the Jewish opposition bloc can independently secure the 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset needed to form a government.
Netanyahu has led the current government since late December 2022. He also faces charges of corruption, bribery and breach of trust in three cases.
Netanyahu has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. More than 74,000 people have been killed there since October 2023, according to the report.
