2026 South Australian state election

The 2026 South Australian state election will be held on Saturday, 21 March 2026, to elect members to the 56th Parliament of South Australia. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly will be up for election, along with 11 of the 22 seats in the Legislative Council.

The incumbent Labor majority government, led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, will seek a second four-year term in government. They will be challenged by the Liberal Party, led by Opposition Leader Ashton Hurn, who took leadership of the party^[1] following the resignation of Vincent Tarzia on 5 December 2025^[2]. It is expected that the South Australian Greens and other minor parties and independents will contest the election.

South Australia has compulsory voting, with full-preference instant-runoff voting for single-member electorates in the lower house, and optional preference single transferable voting in the proportionally represented upper house. The election will be conducted by the Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA), an independent body answerable to Parliament, and will be held on the same day as the South Australian First Nations Voice election.^[3][4]

At the 2022 election, the South Australian Labor Party won government after spending four years in opposition. The party, led by Peter Malinauskas, gained 8 seats to have a four-seat majority in the House of Assembly, while the incumbent South Australian Liberal Party government, led by Premier Steven Marshall, lost a total of nine seats to Labor and independents. Statewide the Labor Party won 54.59% of the two-party preferred vote, which was a swing of over 6.5%.^[5][6][7][8]

In the Legislative Council, Labor won five seats, the Liberals won four and the Greens and One Nation both won one seat each. As a result, the Labor government held a total of nine seats and the Liberal held eight, with five on the crossbench, including two Greens, two SA-Best representatives and a single One Nation seat held by Sarah Game.^[5][6][7] Following the election, the Presidency of the council was unexpectedly retained by Liberal MLC Terry Stephens, meaning the Labor government required an additional two non-government votes for passage of legislation.^[5][6][7]

Three by-elections have been held during the parliament's four-year term. A by-election in Bragg was held in July 2022 and the seat was retained by the Liberals. In March 2024 the Labor Party gained the seat of Dunstan, which had belonged to former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall. Labor's majority therefore increased by one, though when Leon Bignell was elected to the position of Speaker of the Assembly the following month, the party composition returned to its post-election state, as the Speaker is required to renounce party ties for the duration of their speakership.^[9]

Labor again gained when the party won the November 2024 by-election in the seat of Black, recording a double-digit swing. The result reduced the Liberals to 13 members in the lower house, their worst parliamentary position in nearly a century.^[10]

As of May 2025, there have been four alterations to the post-election party composition in the Legislative Council. SA-Best MLC Frank Pangallo left the party and moved to the crossbench to sit as an independent in December 2023.^[11] Liberal MLC Jing Lee became an independent and moved to the crossbench in January 2025,^[12] and Greens MLC Tammy Franks quit the party and sat as an independent in May 2025.^[13] Pangallo joined the Liberal Party in August 2025.^[14]

• Susan Close MHA (Port Adelaide) – announced 18 September 2025^[15]
• Stephen Mullighan MHA (Lee) – announced 18 September 2025^[15]
• Lee Odenwalder MHA (Elizabeth) – announced 9 October 2025^[16]
• Dana Wortley MHA (Torrens) – announced 9 October 2025^[16]
• Leon Bignell MHA (Mawson) – announced 27 November 2025^[17]

• John Gardner MHA (Morialta) – announced 13 December 2024^[18]
• David Pisoni MHA (Unley) – announced 8 October 2024^[19]
• Matt Cowdrey MHA (Colton) – announced 27 June 2025^[20]

• Tammy Franks MLC – announced 30 September 2024^[21]
• Dan Cregan MHA (Kavel) – announced 28 January 2025^[22]

As of 26 October 2025, the following political parties are registered by the Electoral Commission of South Australia:^[23]

The pendulum includes mid-term affiliation changes and by-election outcomes, in particular the Dunstan by-election and Black by-election which saw Labor take both seats away from the Liberals.

Italics indicates that the member is retiring.

A redistribution, required after each election, was finalised by the South Australian Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission in December 2024. The below post-redistribution pendulum shows all seats by their redistributed Labor or Liberal notional two-party-preferred margin, and does not take in to account by-election swings since the last election.^[25][26]

Italics indicates that the member is retiring.

The last state election was held on 19 March 2022 to elect members for the House of Assembly and half of the members in the Legislative Council. In South Australia, section 28 of the Constitution Act 1934, as amended in 2001, directs that parliaments have fixed four-year terms, and elections must be held on the third Saturday in March every four years unless this date falls the day after Good Friday, occurs within the same month as a federal election, or the conduct of the election could be adversely affected by a state disaster. Section 28 also states that the Governor may also dissolve the Assembly and call an election for an earlier date if the government has lost the confidence of the Assembly or a bill of special importance has been rejected by the Legislative Council. Section 41 states that both the Council and the Assembly may also be dissolved simultaneously if a deadlock occurs between them.^[27]

The Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2013^[28] introduced set dates for writs for general elections in South Australia. The writ sets the dates for the close of the electoral roll and the close of nominations for an election. The Electoral Act 1985 requires that, for a general election, the writ be issued 28 days before the date fixed for polling (S47(2a)) and the electoral roll be closed at 12 noon, six days after the issue of the writ (S48(3(a)(i))). The close of nominations will be at 12 noon three days after the close of rolls (Electoral Act 1985 S48(4)(a) and S4(1)).^[29][30][31]

• Members of the South Australian House of Assembly, 2022–2026
• Members of the South Australian Legislative Council, 2022–2026