Spain general election 2026 results, live

What time the results are announced

Polling stations close at 20:00 on Sunday 29 November (mainland Spain time, CET). Exit polls are published at that time; they are estimates, not results. The official count starts to be released from 21:00, when polling stations also close in the Canary Islands, where voting goes on for one more hour because of the time difference.

The count moves quickly: small polling stations finish first and those in the big cities take longer, so the first percentages do not yet represent the whole of Spain. Most of the vote has usually been counted by about 22:30, and the distribution of seats is practically settled before midnight, except in provinces where the last seat is decided by a handful of votes.

What this page will show during the day

• During the day, turnout: the Interior Ministry publishes two updates, at 14:00 and 18:00, which are compared here with those of the previous election.
• At 20:00, the exit polls, with the range of seats each one gives.
• From 21:00, the count: seats and votes for each party, the hemicycle, which combinations add up to the 176 seats of an absolute majority, and the result in each of the 52 constituencies.

Until the count begins, the charts show the result of the 2023 election as a benchmark, and each one says so. No figure on this page is an estimate of our own.

How the votes are counted

When voting ends, each polling station opens its ballot box and counts the ballot papers in public. The result is recorded in the station's official return and sent to the Interior Ministry, which adds it up and publishes it: this is the provisional count, the one followed on election night. It has no legal force, but it almost never changes the distribution of seats.

The official result comes later. The provincial electoral boards carry out the general count from the third day after the vote, using the original returns and the votes of residents abroad, which are not part of the election-night count. If a seat has been decided by very few votes, it can change hands at that point.

How the seats are allocated

Congress has 350 deputies, elected in 52 constituencies: the 50 provinces, Ceuta and Melilla. Each province allocates its seats separately using the D'Hondt formula among the lists that pass 3% of the valid vote in that province. That is why the share of the vote across Spain does not translate directly into seats, and why the province-by-province map matters as much as the total.

The figure that decides the legislature is 176, the absolute majority. If no party reaches it, pacts are needed for the investiture: the first vote requires an absolute majority and, 48 hours later, more votes in favour than against are enough.

Frequently asked questions

What time do the Spanish general election results come out? From 21:00 on Sunday 29 November, mainland Spain time (CET), when polling stations close in the Canary Islands. At 20:00 there are only exit polls.

When are the results final? After the general count by the electoral boards, which begins on the third day after the vote and includes the votes from abroad. The figures published on election night are provisional.

How many seats are needed to govern? An absolute majority in Congress is 176 of the 350 seats. A government can be formed with fewer if the investiture succeeds in the second vote, with more votes in favour than against.

Why do the seats change during the count? Because each province allocates its seats with the votes counted up to that moment. The last seat in a province can pass from one party to another several times before the count ends.

How often is this page updated? The figures refresh automatically, without reloading the page: every few seconds during the count and every minute during voting hours.

Text updated on 10 November 2026.