By Tjasa Doljak, PA & PR Consultant

Slovenia’s 2026 parliamentary elections, held on 22 March, have produced one of the most finely balanced outcomes in recent years, leaving the country without a clear governing majority and opening the door to a potentially protracted coalition-building process.

Although Prime Minister Robert Golob’s Gibanje Svoboda (Freedom Movement) emerged as the relative winner, its lead over Janez Janša’s centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) was exceptionally narrow, just 0.78 percentage points, or 9,179 votes, amounting to a one-seat advantage in the 90-member National Assembly. Neither the centre-left nor the centre-right can govern alone: the centre-left currently holds 40 seats and the centre-right 43, well short of the 46 needed for a majority.

The result marks a clear departure from the 2022 election, when a centre-left coalition secured a stable majority. This time, voters delivered a far more fragmented parliament, with seven parties in the 90-seat upper house compared to the five of 2022, and a far more volatile political landscape.

NSi can be seen as one of the quieter winners of the 2026 election. Its joint list with two smaller centre-right parties won nine seats, giving it considerable leverage in post-election talks. Though the most striking surprise was the parliamentary breakthrough of Resni.ca, a party that grew out of anti-vax mobilisation on social media during the pandemic and was quite underestimated during the campaign. It now enters parliament with five seats, while the Democrats, led by Anže Logar and widely expected to perform more strongly, secured six. Those parties now matter disproportionately in coalition arithmetic, even though each has publicly ruled out cooperation with some of the most obvious potential partners.

Government formation is likely to be prolonged and politically complex

This leaves Slovenia facing a negotiation-heavy and politically awkward government formation process. President Nataša Pirc Musar has already signalled that formal victory alone will not determine who gets the first real chance to govern. Her position is clear: the mandate should go to whoever can demonstrate 46 votes in parliament. That pragmatic stance reflects the reality of the post-election map, where symbolic victory matters less than numerical viability.

Foto: Office of the President of the Republic

The new parliament must convene by 11 April, while the President must nominate a prime minister-designate by 11 May at the latest. But the real challenge is political, not procedural. With both blocs short of a majority and several parties having drawn red lines during the campaign or after, coalition talks are proving to be difficult and probably lengthy. A further question is how stable any such government could be.

In search of a coalition: Red lines, fragile options and shadows from abroad

A combination of Gibanje Svoboda, SD, NSi and Logar’s Demokrati would produce a workable majority of 49 seats and the prospect of a cooperation of four relatively moderate parties. But what many have seen as the opportunity for Slovenia to form a mixed coalition spanning both sides of the political spectrum communication in a very statesmanlike manner is resulting in a much more challenging situation without an easy way forward.

Outgoing PM Golob opened talks with several parliamentary parties, but the public positions that emerged from those meetings made clear that there is still no natural path to the needed 46 votes. The Democrats and Resni.ca both signalled limits to cooperation with Levica (the Left party), while the Christian party NSi declined to join Golob’s format at all, and SDS’s Janša ruled out scenarios in which his party would build a weak minority government dependent on outside support. Golob, on the other hand, has adopted a noticeably statesmanlike tone, which Slovenia has not seen for 20 years (since the last government of Janez Drnovšek). Golob is arguing that Slovenia may need an unusually wide governing format to deal with mounting external pressures, including energy and economic uncertainty.

What further complicates the post-election atmosphere is the so-called Black Cube affair. In the week before elections, after Slovenian media revealed a case of alleged foreign interference in elections, the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) confirmed the involvement of a foreign para-intelligence structure in the election environment. Media reports suggest that representatives of an Israeli private intelligence company were in contact with SDS. While the affair has not been fully investigated by the police yet, it has hardened rhetoric, deepened mistrust and made coalition-building even more difficult.

Coalition talks in the shadow of energy security concerns

In parallel with the coalition talks and the accompanying scandals, the outgoing Slovenian government remains very active due to the consequences of the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. Already in the days preceding election Sunday the public reacted with a rush to buy fuel after some local energy companies limited availability.

Prime Minister Golob warned that the consequences of the Middle East escalation could exceed the impact Slovenia experienced after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, particularly in the fields of energy, the economy and food security. He also convened the National Security Council and invited all newly elected parliamentary parties to attend, underlining that the country is at a moment of wider geopolitical and economic strain. The government has also adopted a crisis-response framework focused on energy security and the reliability of supplies of key goods and services, including possible intervention measures in the fields of fuel, gas and basic foodstuffs.

Foto: National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia