Regional and local elections 2026: results and the parties' role

On Saturday 24 October 2026 Slovakia held two elections at once. In the eight self-governing regions, people elected a regional governor (župan) and the members of the regional council; in towns and villages, they elected a mayor and the local council. The elections were called by the Speaker of the National Council in decision No. 145/2026 Coll.

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic published the final results on 25 October 2026 at 14:30. We checked them the same day at 18:17 and compared them with the provisional figures from that morning: the votes for governor candidates, regional turnout and the results in the regional capitals were unchanged, and our morning count of regional councillors matches the official allocation of seats.

This article describes who was elected and which candidacies the twelve parties in our test supported. It does not judge which party did well, and it does not turn the results into any forecast for the parliamentary election.

Before you read: this is not a parliamentary election

The results of local and regional elections do not tell us how a National Council election would turn out. There are several reasons:

• Voters choose people, not national lists. The governor is the candidate with the most votes, in a single round (§ 157 of Act No. 180/2014). Regional councillors are those who finish at the top in their constituency. For the National Council, by contrast, voters choose a party's single national list, with a 5% threshold (see how the 150 seats are allocated).
• Independents can stand. For governor and for the councils; in parliamentary elections they cannot.
• Parties team up differently. Here a single governor candidate was often nominated by six to ten parties at once. In a parliamentary election, a coalition of four or more parties would need at least 10% of the vote.
• Well-known local politicians stand. All eight sitting governors ran for another term and kept their posts.
• Different turnout, different voters. Fewer than half of those eligible voted.

The figures below are therefore neither an opinion poll nor the parties' share of the vote. The next parliamentary election is due by September 2027 at the latest; the date has not yet been set (election guide).

Turnout

In the regional elections 2,085,145 of 4,477,457 registered voters cast a ballot: 46.56%. In 2022 the figure was 43.74%, so turnout rose by 2.82 percentage points (our calculation from Statistical Office data). It was highest in the Žilina region (50.14%) and lowest in the Košice region (42.50%).

Turnout in the municipal elections was 48.48% (2,171,581 voters), compared with 46.19% four years ago.

Regional governors

Parties are listed in the order used in the official table. That table records Hnutie Slovensko as SLOVENSKO and Právo na pravdu by its abbreviation, PRAVDA; Maďarské fórum (Hungarian Forum) is a different party from the Hungarian Alliance.

Grouped by who nominated the winning candidate:

• Four of the governors elected (Bratislava, Trnava, Žilina and Prešov) were backed by the opposition parties PS and SaS, each time together with other parties.
• Two (Trenčín and Nitra) were nominated by Smer, Hlas and the SNS, the three parties in government, in both cases together with Republika.
• Two stood as independents (Banská Bystrica and Košice).

The closest result was in the Košice region: Rastislav Trnka received 3,117 more votes than Marián Porvažník, a gap of 1.30 percentage points (our calculation).

Some candidates withdrew before polling day, but their names stayed on the ballot papers and their votes appear in the tables: in the Prešov region Judita Laššáková (Smer, Bratia Slovenska), by agreement with Smer's leadership; in the Žilina region Adam Lučanský (SNS), who urged his voters to back Igor Choma, and Anna Belousovová (Republika); and in the Košice region Tibor Géci (Jednota Slovanov).

Regional councils

The eight councils have 427 seats, filled in 96 constituencies. The Statistical Office records those elected by who submitted the candidacy, not by party membership. When several parties share a candidacy, the seat cannot be divided between them. In the first table we therefore group candidacies into blocs so that no seat is counted twice (our calculation from table 03b).

The column headings are the regions' Slovak abbreviations: BA Bratislava, TT Trnava, TN Trenčín, NR Nitra, ZA Žilina, BB Banská Bystrica, PO Prešov, KE Košice. No candidacy combined opposition and governing parties. Independents hold 36.53% of the seats and are the largest group in the Trenčín, Žilina and Banská Bystrica regions. Among the "other parties", the Som Slovensko movement has the most councillors (7, all in the Bratislava region).

The government is currently formed by Smer, Hlas and the SNS; the other parties in the test are in opposition, inside or outside parliament (details on the party pages).

What the twelve parties in the test did

For each party, the table adds up the candidacies it took part in, alone or with others. The figures cannot be added across parties: a seat won by a five-party candidacy counts for each of the five. The number in brackets is the seats the party won on its own, without partners.

* Including one candidate who withdrew before polling day.

The mayoral columns cover municipalities and city districts; the Statistical Office lists the mayors of Bratislava and Košice in a separate table, so they appear in the next section. All the figures are our totals from the official tables.

The table shows several differences in how the parties approached the elections:

• PS, SaS, Demokrati, KDH and Hnutie Slovensko did not win a single regional seat on a candidacy of their own: all of their 127 to 154 councillors come from joint candidacies. In the Prešov region their councillors come from two separate groupings: PS with Demokrati (4 seats) and KDH, Hnutie Slovensko, SaS, Za ľudí and Konzervatívci (26 seats).
• Hlas won 20 regional seats on its own, mostly in the Prešov region (10), and has the most mayors elected of any party: 568, of whom 260 stood without partners. Smer follows with 491 mayors.
• The Hungarian Alliance ran alone in the regional elections, and all 37 of its councillors come from its own candidacies, in the Trnava (12), Nitra (13), Banská Bystrica (7) and Košice (5) regions. Its candidate József Berényi came second in the Trnava region and Tibor Csenger third in Nitra. It has 208 mayors elected, 159 of them from its own candidacies.
• Republika had its own governor candidates in the Banská Bystrica and Prešov regions, and both came second. Elsewhere it backed joint candidates with Smer, Hlas and the SNS.
• Právo na pravdu, registered in November 2025, was standing for the first time. Its candidate Zuzana Krajčovičová came third in the Bratislava region (9.60%); in the Nitra region the party backed Branislav Becík, who was re-elected.
• Sme rodina had no governor candidate, and its candidates for the regional councils won no seats; it has 16 mayors, 10 of them from its own candidacies.

For municipalities, the number of candidates matters too. Hlas backed 897 mayoral candidates and Smer 869, while PS backed 86 and Hnutie Slovensko 85. Most mayors elected, 1,560 of 2,912 (53.57%), stood as independents. The picture is similar for local councils: of 20,260 councillors elected, 9,397 are independents; among the parties, KDH (2,407), Hlas (2,345) and Smer (2,130) have the most councillors from their own or joint candidacies.

Regional capitals

According to noviny.sk, three regional capitals have a new mayor: Košice, Trnava and Trenčín. In Košice the outgoing mayor, Jaroslav Polaček, came second. Overall, the regional capitals elected four independents, three candidates backed by opposition parties (Bratislava, Nitra and Prešov) and the Košická strana candidate. In Trenčín only independents stood. Candidates backed by Smer, Hlas or the SNS ran for mayor in only three of these cities, Trnava, Nitra and Prešov, and won between 3.72% and 6.53% of the vote. In Prešov, as in the region, the opposition parties fielded two different candidates: František Oľha was backed by PS and Demokrati, and Rastislav Mochnacký (13.30%) by KDH, Hnutie Slovensko, SaS and others.

How the parties assessed the results

The parties read the results differently. According to noviny.sk, Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer) said that, "given their specific character", the elections "did not change the political map of Slovakia, as shown by the fact that not a single regional governor was replaced". According to the same source, SaS leader Branislav Gröhling called them "a historic success for SaS". We quote both statements as the parties' views (our translation from Slovak); we do not assess the results ourselves.

What follows from this, and what does not

• What follows: who will run the regions and cities in the coming term, and which parties backed them.
• What does not: what share of the vote the parties would win in a National Council election. A seat won by a joint candidacy does not show which party "brought it in", and independent councillors may have all kinds of ties to parties that the official data do not capture.

For the parliamentary election, what matters is where each party stands on the issues; you can compare that statement by statement.

Read more

• Basic facts about each party in the test: Slovakia's political parties explained.
• How votes become seats in parliament: How the 150 seats are allocated.
• The parties' positions on every statement: party comparison.
• Party pages: Smer, PS, Hlas, Hnutie Slovensko, KDH, SaS, SNS, Republika, Hungarian Alliance, Demokrati, Sme rodina, Právo na pravdu.
• The 42-statement test that compares your answers with the parties' positions: start the test.