Nepal voted in a general election on 5 March 2026, two years ahead of schedule and less than six months after a youth-led uprising left 77 people dead and brought down the government of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli. The polls turned out to be a watershed: the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), led by former Kathmandu mayor and rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, stormed to a landslide, winning 182 of 275 seats in the House of Representatives and becoming the first party to command an outright majority in Nepal since 1999.
Voting began at 7 am and closed at 5 pm across the Himalayan nation. By 3 pm, the Election Commission had recorded a turnout of nearly 40 per cent; the final figure climbed to around 60 per cent. Election Commissioner Sagun Shumsher Rana said voting proceeded smoothly, with only minor incidents reported in a few places.
Nearly 19 million eligible voters, including roughly one million newly registered voters, most of them young, elected the 275-member House of Representatives. A total of 3,406 candidates contested 165 seats under the first-past-the-post system, while 3,135 candidates vied for the remaining 110 seats allocated through proportional representation. Nearly a third of all 3,400-odd candidates were under 40.
The Uprising That Triggered the Vote
The election traced its origins directly to the two-day youth protests of September 2025, which began on 8 September with 19 people killed in police firing on the very first day. The movement drew fuel from widespread public anger over corruption, poor governance, and an economy seen as rigged in favour of entrenched political elites. It ended with Oli’s resignation and the dissolution of the House of Representatives. An interim government took over, a move that some constitutional scholars said exceeded legal boundaries.
A Capital Empties, Then Votes
In the week before polling day, Kathmandu saw a mass exodus. Authorities estimated that roughly 800,000 people left the capital valley to travel to their home constituencies, as Nepal’s law requires voters to cast ballots where they are registered. Long queues of jeeps, minibuses and vans clogged highways for hours.
Among those who made the journey was Saroj Chapagain, 38, who spent 14 hours on a bus to reach Bardiya district. “I have come home to cast my ballot in order to safeguard the constitution and the system,” he told BBC Nepali. “My one vote may not be decisive on who wins or who loses but it can play a crucial role in safeguarding the constitution.”
Not everyone shared his enthusiasm. Ophthalmologist Rabindra Singh Thakuri said he and his friends backed the traditional parties. “All of my friends support the traditional political parties... [a government dominated by newcomers] will not provide the country with any meaningful way forward,” he told the Kathmandu Post.
From Kathmandu’s Christian community came voices of cautious hope. “The elections are going well,” Karuna Sharma, a Christian scholar, told Christian Today. Jyoti Bhattarai, a member of the Asia Evangelical Alliance Women’s Commission from Nepal, echoed the sentiment. “The elections are going smoothly,” she said, before adding: “We’re praying to get good politicians for better governance.”
Old Guard Versus New Wave
The contest pitted Nepal’s established parties against a new political force. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), the Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) had dominated Nepali politics for decades. But the RSP, formed just six months before the 2022 elections, drew enormous public attention this cycle. Shah, its prime ministerial candidate, first rose to prominence through rap songs that criticised the ruling elite before winning the Kathmandu mayoralty.
The most closely watched race was in Jhapa-5, the eastern stronghold of former Prime Minister Oli, who had lost only once in seven contests since 1990. Shah stood as his principal challenger there, and the constituency’s electorate was notably young: about 40 per cent of its 163,379 voters were between 18 and 40 years old. The result confirmed what many had feared for Oli. Shah defeated him by nearly four to one, a margin that effectively ended the 74-year-old’s political career.
In Sarlahi-4, newly elected Nepali Congress president Gagan Thapa faced RSP candidate Amresh Kumar Singh, having shifted from his longstanding Kathmandu constituency in what some considered a political gamble. The gamble did not pay off; Thapa lost. Meanwhile, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a three-time Prime Minister, moved to Rukum-1, once a Maoist stronghold during the insurgency he led, in what proved to be his final electoral outing at 71.
A Result With Regional Consequences
India, China and the United States all expressed support for the electoral process. Nepal conducts over two-thirds of its trade with India and has deepened infrastructure ties with China under the Belt and Road Initiative, which means the outcome carries considerable regional significance. The RSP’s commanding majority gives Shah a rare mandate to govern without coalition partners, a political luxury no Nepali leader has enjoyed in a quarter century.
Because Nepal counts votes manually and the proportional representation tally requires a nationwide count, the final results took close to a week to confirm. When they came, they validated what the streets of Kathmandu had been saying since September 2025: the generation that sparked the uprising had also, quietly and decisively, won the election.
