How does the Danish election work?
Denmark has a number of different elections, all on different days. The election on March 24th, 2026 is for the Danish parliament, Folketinget.
Danes go to the polls roughly every four years.
Technically, the maximum period between elections is four years, but the prime minister is free to call an election at any time within that period. Denmark’s last election was on November 1st, 2022, meaning that an election had to be held again at some point before November 1st, 2026.
Who can vote?
Unlike in local elections, in which some foreign residents can vote, the right to vote in general elections is limited to Danish citizens only.
More specifically, voters must be over 18 years old on election day and Danish citizens as of January 1st, 2026 to be eligible to vote in the 2026 election.
Some 4,317,926 ballots – one for each voter – will be printed for the election, according to figures from Statistics Denmark.
The total includes 224,644 people who will be voting for the first time in 2026 – including people who recently turned 18 and who recently became citizens. This means that 5.2 percent of the eligible voters are first-time voters. The actual proportion of first-time voters will depend on turnout, of course.
How to vote in the Danish election
If you are eligible to vote in the Danish election, you should already have received your voter card – these are supposed to arrive five days before the election. If you haven’t, or if the information is wrong, then you should contact your local municipality to get it fixed.
You can also vote without your voter card, in which case you’ll need to take some other form of ID, like your passport or drivers licence.
You then turn up at the polling station listed on your voter card at some point between 8am and 8pm, where you’ll be given a ballot paper. You go into a private booth or room to vote, then fold your paper and post it into the vote box outside.
In the Danish system you only cast one vote. If you put a cross in more than one box your paper will be considered invalid. You can, however, submit a blank ballot paper – more than 46,000 people did so in the 2022 election.
It’s also possible to vote in advance. Advance voting for the current election closed on March 20th.
What do I need to know about Denmark’s political parties?
We’ve got several handy guides on The Local. Here are some of them:
- Who are the political parties running in the 2026 Danish election?
- What 2026 election policies could affect foreigners in Denmark?
- What issues could decide the 2026 election in Denmark?
You can find all our coverage on our 2026 Danish Election tag (be aware that this might not work on our app, in which case try opening in your phone’s browser instead).
How are votes allocated?
Denmark uses a form of proportional representation, meaning that a party which receives, for example, ten percent of votes, gets ten percent of seats.
More specifically, Denmark uses a combination of two methods: part of the seats are elected via the d’Hondt method, known as kredsmandater in Danish, which slightly benefits larger parties.
To make up for the slight benefit larger parties have when using the d’Hondt method, 40 ‘levelling seats’, known as tillægsmandater, are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. Essentially, combining these two methods is supposed to make the final number of seats as proportional as possible to the percentage of votes cast for each party.
Each of Denmark’s ten constituencies elects a certain number of kredsmandater, then the remaining 40 tillægsmandater are allocated by region.
The Faroe Islands have two kredsmandater and Greenland has another two.
There is also a two percent limit, meaning that only parties who achieve at least two percent of the vote will have their votes counted.
How does the next government get picked?
Once we know how many seats the parties get in parliament, the work to form the next government begins.
The prime minister is formally appointed by the monarch, meaning that a prime minister can only officially be appointed after a kongerunde (previously known as a dronningerunde when Margrethe was still reigning queen).
The parties will tell the monarch – in this case King Frederik X – who they want to lead the negotiations for a new government. This is, generally, the leader of whichever ‘bloc’ appears to have won the election, or in other words whoever has the most seats supporting them. Parties might propose their own leader if they do not support the de facto leader of the bloc they belong to.
Once the person the monarch chooses to negotiate a government is successful (which doesn’t always happen on the first try), they formally take over from the outgoing prime minister and can appoint their new cabinet.
Usually, although not always, the parties will say in advance of an election whether there is a particular prime ministerial candidate they plan to support.
Denmark frequently has a minority government made up of a coalition of several parties or a single party that enjoys the support of enough other parties in parliament to make up a majority. Majority coalitions are also possible.
Mette Frederiksen is currently in charge of a Social Democrat-Liberal-Moderate government which holds 89 of the Danish parliament’s 179 seats – just one seat short of a majority, but de facto considered a majority government due to the support of the Faroese and Greenlandic seats, also known as the North Atlantic seats.
What might Denmark’s next government actually look like?
The short and probably most accurate answer is: who knows?!
The medium-length answer is that the left and the right bloc are incredibly close in the polls, and we don’t even know yet if prime minister Mette Frederiksen is interested in a left-wing government or another cross-bloc centrist government.
READ ALSO: What is Danish 'bloc politics' and why is it making a comeback in the 2026 election?
Usually, the ‘red’ and ‘blue blocs’ back the leader of the biggest party on either side – normally the Social Democrats and Liberals, respectively – to form a government. In the current government, however, Liberal leader Troels Lund Poulsen is Defence Minister, while Frederiksen is PM, and the Moderates, the third party in the government, are led by a former Liberal (Venstre) Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
Poulsen has put himself forward as a candidate for prime minister in the March general election, but has not completely ruled out working with Frederiksen again. Overall though, it seems a return to 'bloc politics' is more likely than a continuation of the centrist coalition (regardless of whether the red or blue side wins).
What happens on election day and when do we get a result?
8am: Polling stations open. Voter turnout is traditionally high in Denmark. In the both the 2019 and 2022 elections, more than 84 percent of over 4.2 million eligible voters cast their vote, with approximately 700,000 of those votes cast using advance voting ahead of election day.
Danish citizens over the age of 18 who live in Denmark, including foreign born, naturalised Danes, have the right to vote in national elections.
A small number of polling stations on small islands are permitted to open an hour later, at 9am.
8pm: Polling stations close and then counting of votes begins. If voters arrive at 8pm and there is a queue, they will still be able to vote.
8pm: Exit polls are released and discussed by Danish television broadcasters DR and TV2. These are based on interviews with voters shortly after they have left polling booths.
After this point, results will begin to trickle in from polling stations across the country, with media coverage (including The Local) updating information as this comes in.
9:30pm: By around this time, it should be possible to make a fairly firm indication of the overall outcome, with the caveat that the 2026 election could be close enough for a single seat or 'mandate' to tip the balance, meaning a confirmed result might not come until later.
Party leaders are called together for a comment when they have all arrived in Christiansborg and spoken to their party colleagues.
12am: The final results are usually known not long after midnight. At the election in 2019, the results were ready at 12.14am and in 2022, the result was confirmed a little after 12:45am.
How will The Local cover the election?
We’ll keep our coverage updated during the day and throughout the evening as the exit poll and final results come in, and our team will report straight from Christiansborg, Denmark's parliament, to get you the latest news.
If you want to get in touch with us, comment on the site or email us at news@thelocal.dk.
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