The 2026 South Australian state election will be held on 21 March 2026 to elect members to the 56th Parliament of South Australia. All 47 seats in the House of Assembly (the lower house, whose members were elected at the 2022 election), and half the seats in the Legislative Council (the upper house, last filled at the 2018 election) are up for re-election. 

The incumbent Labor government, currently led by Premier Peter Malinauskas, will attempt to win a second four-year term against the Liberal opposition, currently led by David Speirs.

South Australia has compulsory voting, uses 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.

Background

At the 2022 South Australian state election, the Labor Party won government after spending four years in Opposition. The party, led by Peter Malinauskas, gained 8 seats to have a majority in the House of Assembly while the incumbent Liberal government, led by Premier Steven Marshall, saw a loss of nine seats including 3 from independents. Statewide, the Labor Party won 54.59% of the two-party preferred vote, which was a swing of over 6.5% compared to the previous election.

In the Legislative Council, Labor won five seats, the Liberals won four and the Greens and One Nation both won one seat each. In total, the Labor government has nine seats and the Liberal opposition has eight seats, with five crossbenchers (the Greens and SA-Best have two seats each, while One Nation has one, held by Sarah Game).

With the Liberal Upper House President unexpectedly re-elected to the Presidency, this gives the Labor government nine of 21 seats during votes on the floor, meaning that only an additional two non-government votes are required for the government to pass legislation.

Date
The last state election was held on 19 March 2018 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. As none of these possibilities eventuated, the election was held on its proper date of 19 March 2022.

The Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2013 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)).

Opinion polling

Voting intention

House of Assembly

Legislative Council

Leadership approval

References

Elections in South Australia
2026 elections in Australia
2020s in South Australia
March 2026 events in Australia