Sweden Votes Today, Sweden Democrats Eye Cabinet Seats

Sweden is voting today, Sunday, September 13, 2026, for a new Riksdag, the 349-seat parliament, in an election that could determine whether the far right enters government in a Nordic European Union member state for the first time. For Serbia, which is negotiating its own EU membership, a precedent like this in Stockholm shows how far radical right-wing parties have moved into acceptable company at the very core of the Union, not just on its eastern and southern edges.

Polling stations are open from 8am to 8pm local time, or 6am to 6pm GMT. Around eight million of Sweden’s roughly 10.6 million residents are eligible to vote, and more than half of them cast their ballots early. The election authority is due to publish the first preliminary results around 9pm local time, 7pm GMT, while the final count will not be ready until district authorities finish their detailed tally, in roughly a week. A parliamentary majority requires 175 seats, and a party only enters the Riksdag if it clears a four percent threshold.

In brief

• Voting runs from 8am to 8pm local time on September 13
• About 8 million people are eligible, more than half voted early
• A majority needs 175 of 349 seats, the threshold is 4 percent
• First preliminary results are expected around 9pm
• In the 2022 election, the right-wing bloc won 176 seats, the center-left 173

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of the Moderate Party is seeking a second four-year term. Since 2022 he has led a three-party center-right coalition that depends on outside backing from the Sweden Democrats for its parliamentary majority, a party founded in the 1980s by former far-right extremists and led since 2005 by Jimmie Akesson. In the 2022 election the Sweden Democrats took 20.5 percent of the vote and 73 seats, more than any other party on the right, making them the strongest force in that bloc. Kristersson announced in April this year that the Sweden Democrats could receive cabinet posts for the first time if the right-wing bloc holds onto power, though he himself would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats outpoll his own Moderate Party.

“We want to make use of our new and far better conditions to improve the lives of ordinary people,” Kristersson told the AFP news agency ahead of the vote. Speaking live on Swedish public broadcaster SVT as he left a polling station in Strangnas, he added: “We are the leaders of the team, that’s our role in Swedish politics.”

His main challenger is Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson, 59, who served as prime minister from 2021 until the 2022 election and is now trying to bring power back to the center left. Voting with her husband at a school in the Nacka municipality south of Stockholm, she told reporters: “Should we have a government led by me, one that will steer Sweden into a new spirit of cooperation?”

Pre-election polls had favored Andersson’s four-party center-left bloc over Kristersson’s four-party right-wing coalition for months, but the gap narrowed sharply in the final days of the campaign. In the 2022 election, the right-wing bloc, made up of the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, won 176 seats to the center-left’s 173, a margin of just three seats.

Amanda Lind, spokesperson for the Green Party, said in SVT’s live broadcast on September 13 that a narrowing lead in the polls does not necessarily mean the opposition’s chances of winning are in doubt: “I think there will be a majority for changing the government.” Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar struck a more vivid note of optimism, surrounded by red banners in Skarholmen: “That’s because we’re going to win, we feel we have the wind at our backs.”

According to several reports, the campaign has been shaped more by arguments over who will even be able to form a government than by concrete policy fights. Zet Isakson, a sociologist who studies voting behavior at Stockholm University, put it this way to the AP news agency:

Crime has gone down, inflation has gone down. So people aren’t really arguing about those issues. People are arguing about who will be in government, and that’s what this election is about.

An August poll by the Novus agency found that voters named healthcare, education, law and order, immigration and integration, and elderly care as the most important issues.

Besides Kristersson, Andersson, Akesson, Dadgostar and Lind, several other party leaders are casting their own ballots today: Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist of the Centre Party, Ebba Busch of the Christian Democrats, Daniel Hellden, co-leader of the Greens, and Simona Mohamsson of the Liberals.

If the Sweden Democrats do end up in government, Sweden would become the first Nordic EU member state where a party with roots in the far right takes a direct role in power, rather than serving only as outside support for a parliamentary majority. For Brussels, that would be one more sign that normalized cooperation with the radical right is no longer confined to central and eastern Europe, a development Belgrade is also watching closely as it negotiates its own place in the Union. The first preliminary results arrive this evening, but the full picture of Sweden’s next government will not be clear for days to come.