How the November 29 election works

Spain elects its Congress and Senate on November 29. What is being decided, how the 350 seats are allocated, where things start from and what happens next, with the official rules and dates.

By The Contrast · 22 October 2026 (updated 28 October 2026) · 7 min read

Spain · November 29 election · Institutions · Rules and dates checked on October 22, 2026; updated October 28

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What is being decided

On Sunday, November 29, voters elect the 350 deputies of the Congreso de los Diputados (the lower house of Spain's parliament) and most of the Senate. E01 Afterwards, Congress votes on who will lead the Government: a candidate needs 176 votes in a first vote or, 48 hours later, more votes in favor than against. If nobody manages it within two months of that first vote, the election is held again. In the meantime, the current Government stays on as a caretaker government (en funciones). E04

The calendar

1. Oct 6
   The BOE (Spain's official gazette) publishes the election call. E01
2. Oct 21–26
   Parties submit their lists of candidates. E06
3. Oct 24–30
   Voting materials are sent to Spanish citizens who live abroad. E06E09
4. Oct 28
   The BOE publishes the lists of candidates that were submitted. E06E14
5. Nov 3
   The BOE publishes the proclaimed lists of candidates, the ones that go on the ballot. E06
6. Nov 13
   The campaign begins, at 00:00. E01
7. Nov 19
   Last day to apply for a postal vote in Spain (at Correos, the postal service, in person and with a DNI, the national ID card). E03E06
8. Nov 24–28
   Publishing polls is prohibited. E03
9. Nov 27
   The campaign ends, at 24:00. Saturday the 28th is the “day of reflection” (jornada de reflexión) before the vote. E01E06
10. Nov 29
    Voting, from 9:00 to 20:00. E01E03
11. Dec 23
    The new Cortes (Congress and Senate) are constituted. E01

How the 350 seats are allocated

Each province votes separately. Every province has at least two deputies, Ceuta and Melilla one each, and the rest are shared out according to population. That is why Madrid elects 38 and Soria, 2. E03E04

Within each province, a list needs at least 3% of the valid votes (blank votes count as valid) to be in the running for a seat. Seats are assigned with the D'Hondt method: each list's votes are divided by 1, 2, 3… and the seats go to the highest results. E03

In small provinces, with few seats, it takes much more than 3% to win one. That is why the final allocation does not match each party's share of the vote across Spain.

What changes from 2023

Cádiz goes from 9 to 8 and Madrid goes from 37 to 38; the other provinces elect the same number as before. The change is due to population: with the official figures from the population register (padrón), the rule in the law gives exactly that allocation. E01E02E11

The Senate

In the Senate people vote for individuals, not lists: in each province voters mark up to three candidates and those with the most votes win (fewer on the islands and in Ceuta and Melilla). For the first time Formentera elects its own senator, separately from Ibiza, so 209 are elected, one more than in 2023. E03E05E01 In addition, each regional parliament appoints one senator, plus one more for every million inhabitants. E04

The starting point: 2023

66.6% of the total electoral roll voted, counting Spaniards who live abroad. E10 If only those who live in Spain are counted, turnout comes out higher, because few people vote from abroad: they are two different figures and are not compared.

What happens next

• Investiture. The King proposes a candidate after consulting the parliamentary groups. The Constitution does not set a date for the first vote; the two-month period starts with it. E04
• In the meantime. With the Cortes (Spain's parliament) dissolved, the Diputación Permanente of Congress (the standing committee that acts for Congress while it is dissolved) decides on decree-laws. The two housing decrees are still awaiting that vote; since the new Cortes are constituted on December 23, the vote falls to the deputies of the outgoing legislature. E04E12 According to Europa Press, the Diputación Permanente plans to vote on them on November 12, the day before the campaign starts. We could not check this on the Congress website. E15 We cover this in The price of getting in.

Voting from abroad

Spaniards who live abroad are sent their voting materials automatically between October 24 and 30. They can vote by mail until November 24, or in person at a ballot box in their consulate from November 21 to 26. E03E06

Spain's Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) is keeping in place, as a precautionary measure (it is not a judgment), the suspension of the vote in this election for some of those who obtained Spanish nationality under the Democratic Memory Law (Ley de Memoria Democrática) and live abroad, unless a consulate certifies that they met the requirement of being descendants of exiles. E07 The Junta Electoral Central required a warning about this to be included in the mailing. E09 There is no official figure for how many people are affected.

Polls

From November 24 to 28, publishing election polls is prohibited. Before then, every published poll must state who conducted it and who commissioned it, how many people were asked, when, and with what margin of error. E03

The latest barometer from the CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, the public polling institute) was carried out by phone from October 1 to 6, the days when the housing decrees were voted down and the election was called. The CIS itself warns that its method is not intended to predict the result. E13 In this story we do not reproduce vote estimates: we explain the rules, not who is going to win.

Who is running

The BOE of October 28 published the lists of candidates submitted for the Congress: 556 lists across the 52 constituencies, from 6 in Ciudad Real, Ceuta and Melilla to 15 in Álava. E14

They are not final yet. The electoral boards review each list, can ask for errors to be corrected and can reject those that do not comply with the law; the lists that will be on the ballot are published on November 3. In Burgos, the board has already rejected one. E03E06E14

Below, each constituency with its lists in the order the BOE publishes them, which says nothing about who has more support, and the first name on each one. Names are copied exactly as they appear in the BOE, in Spanish (or the regional language).

What we don't know

• How many senators the regional parliaments appoint in total: the figure in the press varies and we could not open the Senate's website.
• How many people abroad are left without a vote because of the Supreme Court's measure.
• Whether the Diputación Permanente session of November 12 on the housing decrees is confirmed, and what will be voted on.

How we did it

We read the decree calling the election, the electoral law (the LOREG, Ley Orgánica del Régimen Electoral General), the Constitution, the calendar and the decisions of the Junta Electoral Central, the official 2023 results and the CIS technical sheet, all in the original documents, on October 22, 2026. We recalculated the seat allocation with the official population figures from the INE (Spain's National Statistics Institute) and checked that the 2023 totals add up. The allocation example is made up, and says so.

The research and writing were done with the help of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editor of The Contrast; there was no independent outside verification. If we correct anything, we will note it here with the date.

Update, October 28, 2026. We added the lists of candidates submitted, read in the official text of that day's BOE, and the planned date for the vote on the housing decrees, which we attribute to Europa Press because the Congress website did not open from our system.

English version, October 22, 2026: translated from the Spanish original with the help of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editor of The Contrast. Same facts, figures and sources; document titles, institution names and constituency names are left in their original language.

Sources

These documents are in Spanish.

1. E01BOE, Real Decreto 806/2026, of October 5, dissolving the Cortes and calling the election (arts. 1–6 and annex). BOE
2. E02BOE, Real Decreto 400/2023, of May 29, calling the 2023 election (annex: deputies per province). BOE
3. E03Ley Orgánica del Régimen Electoral General (LOREG) [Organic Law on the General Electoral System], consolidated text: arts. 69, 72–75, 84, 162, 163, 165 and 166. BOE
4. E04Constitución Española [Spanish Constitution]: arts. 68, 69, 78, 86, 99 and 101. BOE
5. E05BOE, amendment of article 69.3 of the Constitution, of May 19, 2026 (a senator of its own for Formentera). BOE
6. E06Junta Electoral Central [Central Electoral Board], calendar for the general election of November 29, 2026. PDF
7. E07BOE, orders (autos) of the Tribunal Supremo [Supreme Court] of October 12, 2026 (appeals 1013/2026 and 1015/2026), operative part: precautionary suspension of the vote of some of those who obtained nationality under the Ley de Memoria Democrática [Democratic Memory Law]. Order 1 · Order 2
8. E08Junta Electoral Central, elections under way: general information and lists of candidates. JEC
9. E09Junta Electoral Central, Acuerdo 270/2026 [Decision 270/2026], of October 15: mailing to the register of residents abroad with a warning about the Supreme Court orders. JEC
10. E10Junta Electoral Central, official results of the July 23, 2023 election (Resolution of August 30, 2023), tables I and II. PDF
11. E11INE [National Statistics Institute], official population register (padrón) figures by municipality (table 29005), used to check the seat allocation. INE
12. E12Congreso de los Diputados, sessions page of the Diputación Permanente (as of Oct 22: “No hay convocada sesión” [No session has been called]). Congreso
13. E13CIS [Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Spain's public polling institute], technical sheet of the October 2026 barometer (study 3582). Technical sheet
14. E14BOE of October 28, 2026, provincial electoral boards: lists of candidates submitted for the Congress and the Senate (BOE-A-2026-22607). BOE · PDF
15. E15Europa Press, October 16, 2026: the Diputación Permanente plans to vote on the two housing decrees on November 12 (published in La Región). La Región

The Contrast · Stories in context · Published October 22, 2026 and updated October 28; English version October 22, 2026, updated the same day as the Spanish. More stories