Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party did worse than in 2022 in the Czech local elections and won none of the five Senate seats decided in the first round, leaving 22 seats to runoffs on 16 and 17 October.
The Czech municipal and Senate elections of 9 and 10 October 2026 were not a political earthquake but brought a warning for the government of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, according to Balkan Insight and Expats.cz. Turnout in the municipal elections was 48%, which Expats.cz calls relatively strong.
Babiš said that the results confirmed ANO as the strongest political force at all levels except the Senate. Analysts quoted in the reports say that ANO underperformed compared with four years ago both in municipal seats and in the popular vote. It came first in six of the 13 regional capitals, compared with eight in 2022, including Karlovy Vary, Plzeň, Ostrava and Olomouc, and it had its worst-ever result in Prague and unexpected losses in Ústí nad Labem, according to Balkan Insight.
The centrist STAN movement won in Prague, finishing about one point ahead of the ODS, and its candidate Petr Hlaváček is positioned to lead talks on the city’s mayoralty. The Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) won about 2,000 council seats, the most of any party in parliament, and STAN and KDU-ČSL together dominated the results in Brno, according to the report.
The government’s junior partners did poorly. The Motorists for Themselves broke through only in Ostrava, and their leader Petr Macinka said he was not happy about it, while the far-right SPD won fewer than 170 municipal seats and began to reflect on what to change, according to Balkan Insight.
A third of the Senate was up for election, 27 seats, and five senators were elected outright in the first round, equalling the record set in 2024, according to a summary of Euronews and AP coverage. None of the five was from ANO. Twenty-two seats go to a second round on 16 and 17 October.
In the runoffs 13 ANO candidates face 26 candidates from pro-Western opposition parties and groups, according to the same summary. STAN did best in the first round: all 14 of its candidates either won outright or advanced. The report does not say how many of the 26 are from STAN, so no total is given.
A national poll cited by Balkan Insight puts ANO at 31% if a general election were held now, with STAN at 17% and the ODS at 11%. The poll’s pollster, date and sample are not given in the report, so it should be treated as indicative.
The numbers give an idea of the scale of the contest still to come. Of the 27 seats, 22 are still open, so the runoffs will decide about 81% of the seats up for election this year, a figure that is Delima News’ own calculation. In 13 of those 22 contests an ANO candidate is in the second round, which means that in nine contests there is none. The opposition has two candidates in some contests, as the 26 candidates against 13 suggest.
The sources reviewed do not report the first-round vote shares for the Senate candidates. The result of the second round will show whether ANO can win any Senate seats at all this year, and Delima News will report it.
Image: The Wallenstein Palace in Prague, seat of the Czech Senate (file photo). Photo: Hynek Moravec / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
