The 2026 Kansas gubernatorial election is scheduled to take place on November 3, 2026, to elect the next governor of Kansas. Incumbent Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is term-limited and ineligible to seek a third consecutive term. This will be one of five Democratic-held governorships up for election in 2026 in a state that Donald Trump won in the 2024 presidential election and the only one of those states that Trump won by a double-digit margin.
Background.
Despite Kansas being a longtime red state in presidential races, Kelly won the open seat in 2018 with the help of a national "blue wave" in the 2018 midterms as well as the conclusion of the unpopular administration of Sam Brownback, who was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in 2017. Kelly won re-election in 2022 thanks in part to both her own personal popularity and the negative reaction to the overturning of "Roe v. Wade", the latter being particularly enhanced by the presence of an abortion referendum on the ballot a few months prior. Since her re-election, Kelly has seen a rise in personal popularity, and as of 2024 is one of the ten-most popular governors in the country, which some commentators have attributed to her frequent use of her veto powers and frequent travels across the state. However, the Republican Party in Kansas has for a long time been the dominant party in the state of Kansas, holding 5 of 6 seats in Kansas's congressional delegation as well as a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature.