New constituencies, a different voting system, and more Members. These are some of the headline changes coming at the Senedd election in May 2026.
This article - the first in our series on the upcoming election – looks at these changes in more detail.
Increase in Members
At each Senedd election since the first in 1999, Wales has elected 60 Members.
Following the Senedd agreeing the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024 last year, the number of Members will increase to 96 from 2026.
This puts the number of Members of the Senedd (for a population of 3.2 million) slightly higher than the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has 90 members for a population of 1.9 million people, and below the Scottish Parliament, which has 129 Members for a population of 5.5 million.
One of the main drivers put forward in favour of this change was to give the Senedd sufficient capacity to fulfil its policy, legislative and scrutiny responsibilities. Our article from May looks at the work of the Future Senedd Committee on how a bigger Senedd could improve scrutiny, strengthen accountability and broaden representation.
New constituencies
The 96 Members will be elected from 16 new constituencies.
In each of the 16 new constituencies, voters will elect six Members via the closed list proportional representation system (see below).
The new constituencies were decided by the Democracy and Boundary Commission Cymru, an independent body that reviews electoral boundaries for the Senedd and local government in Wales. The Commission was tasked with pairing the 32 existing Welsh constituencies for UK Parliament elections into 16 Senedd constituencies.
The Commission’s final report was published on 11 March 2025. The Welsh Government made the subordinate legislation to bring the Commission’s recommendations into effect in June 2025.
These constituencies aren’t necessarily permanent, however - there will be a full boundary review before the 2030 election.
For more information on the new constituencies, see our article from earlier this year.
New voting system
Members will be elected in the new constituencies using a new electoral system – known as closed list proportional representation.
Under this system, voters will vote for either a political party or an independent candidate. Political parties will choose up to eight candidates to stand in each constituency, while independent candidates will only be able to stand as individuals. Parties will rank their candidates in the order they are to be elected. Six Members will be elected from each of the 16 constituencies.
Once the votes have been counted in a constituency, the D’Hondt formula will be used to calculate how many seats each party has won. Seats will then be allocated to party candidates in the order they are listed. If an independent candidate wins enough votes, they will be elected to one of the six seats.
Candidate names and rankings will be available in the run up to the election, and you’ll be able to see the names and order of party candidates on the ballot paper. However, you won’t be able to change the order in which party candidates are elected – that will have been decided by the parties prior to the election.
We’ll be looking at the electoral system in more detail in an article later in this series.
Shorter Senedd terms
From 2026, Senedd general elections will take place every four years, instead of every five. This means that the next election after 2026 is scheduled to take place in 2030.
Senedd elections took place every four years for its first three terms, however, this was changed to every five years by the Wales Act 2014. This was to avoid Senedd elections and UK general elections happening on the same day after the length of UK Parliament terms was fixed at five years in 2011.
When introducing the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill, the then Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, Mick Antoniw MS, said:
…four-year terms were the norm in Welsh democracy at the point of devolution and only changed in response to the UK Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011. That Act has since been repealed, and I believe that a return to four-year terms would more appropriately balance considerations of democratic renewal and accountability to the people of Wales.
New eligibility requirements for candidates
There are certain eligibility requirements for people wishing to stand as candidates for the Senedd election and to serve as Members of the Senedd.
For example, to stand for election a person must be at least 18 years old and a British citizen, a qualifying Commonwealth citizen, a qualifying foreign citizen, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland or a citizen of the European Union who is resident in the United Kingdom.
From 2026, candidates (and Members) will also need to be registered in the register of local government electors in Wales (i.e. registered to vote). This means that candidates must be resident in Wales in order to be able to stand. This requirement would last throughout their time as a Member of the Senedd.
Town and Community Councillors will also be disqualified from serving as Members of the Senedd for the first time, bringing them into line with existing rules for members of county or county borough councils. This means that if a Councillor wins a seat in the Senedd, they would need to resign from their council role.
More information on eligibility for standing as a candidate will be available in a later article in the series.
Stay up-to-date
This article is the first of many we plan to publish in the run up to the election. These will include articles explaining what devolution is, what you need to know as a candidate, an explainer on the new electoral system and more.
All articles will be published on the elections series home page.
Article by Adam Cooke and Josh Hayman, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament.
