Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said he will announce on Sunday, 8 November, which lawmaker he will task with forming Israel’s next government, after completing consultations with all factions elected to the 26th Knesset. The decision follows an election that left no bloc with a majority and a coalition deadlock neither main camp can easily break.
Factions totalling 67 lawmakers recommended opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar party leader, while factions representing 46 lawmakers backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Seven lawmakers abstained. But Herzog said the recommendations did not resolve the question of who can actually assemble a governing majority, given the mutual vetoes between and within the political blocs.
A hung parliament
In the 27 October vote, neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor Eisenkot’s bloc secured the 61 seats required to govern in the 120-member Knesset. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, Eisenkot’s bloc won 48, and Arab-led parties won a record 19. Likud remained the largest single party with 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot’s Yashar with 21 and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad with 12. Turnout was 77.7%, up 7.1 percentage points from the 2022 election, according to the Central Elections Committee.
The Joint List, with 11 seats, and the United Arab List, or Ra’am, with eight seats, both recommended Eisenkot, though the endorsements do not commit them to joining his coalition. United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, declined to recommend any candidate, breaking with its past practice of backing Netanyahu.
The clock is ticking
Herzog received the certified results from Justice Noam Sohlberg, chairman of the Central Elections Committee, on Wednesday, 4 November. The committee examined records from 9,069 polling stations and found no evidence of irregularities that compromised the election or affected its results, despite Netanyahu’s efforts to discredit the vote. Herzog has seven days from the formal announcement of the results to assign the task, setting a deadline of 11 November.
The chosen candidate will have 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension. If neither man succeeds, Israel would hold another election early next year. The new Knesset is expected to be sworn in on 10 November regardless of any government or coalition talks.
Sources: Political.org (5 Nov 2026); Reporter World News (6 Nov 2026); Al Jazeera (6 Nov 2026); Crisis Zone (4 Nov 2026).
