Sweden has voted, but the real count starts on Wednesday

Sweden renewed the Riksdag, the regional assemblies and the municipal councils on Sunday 13 September 2026, for the 2026-2030 term. Polling stations remained open from 8 to 20, and the electoral authority, Valmyndigheten, released the first preliminary figures around 21 that same evening.

Those figures are not the result. It is a distinction that carries more weight in the Swedish system than elsewhere, and it is worth explaining before any political reading: late advance votes and postal votes are not included in the night’s count but are tallied in the survey held on the Wednesday following the vote. The final national result for the Riksdag is expected on the weekend after the election.

The arithmetic that counts

The Swedish parliament assigns 349 seats. The national threshold is set at 4% and an absolute majority at 175 seats. These are three figures which, taken together, explain why in Sweden the percentages from election night may not be enough to say who will govern: a gap of a few decimal points around the threshold shifts an entire parliamentary group in or out of the chamber, and with it the possibility of forming a majority.

Wednesday’s count is not a formality: in Sweden it is the part of the tally that can change the map of seats.

Advance and postal voting are not marginal in the Swedish system, and their allocation takes place at a separate stage: whoever reads Sunday night’s data is looking at an incomplete picture, not a mistaken projection. The electoral authority itself presents the evening’s figures as preliminary and progressively updated as polling stations transmit their data.

Why we are writing about this without giving percentages

This newspaper is not publishing Swedish party results today, and the reason is documentary, not a matter of general caution: the verified material available to us — the electoral authority, the public broadcaster SVT and the Valmyndigheten data collection published by Valstatistik — describes the timetable and method of the count, but does not attribute consolidated figures to the parties. Publishing election-night percentages as though they were an outcome would mean presenting as definitive a figure that the competent body itself describes as preliminary, and which could be corrected two days later.

It is the same criterion the newspaper has applied to other European elections this month: first the structure of the vote, then the result when there is one.

The three deadlines to note

Sweden’s calendar this week has three stages. Wednesday: count of late advance and postal votes. The following weekend: final result for the Riksdag. In between, the formation of a government, which in an assembly of 349 seats with a majority at 175 requires a coalition arithmetic that no preliminary data allows one to anticipate.

What we do not know

We do not know the final turnout, we do not know the distribution of seats, we do not know which parties will clear the 4% threshold. We do not even know how much weight advance votes carry over the total in this round: the available material describes their procedural handling, not their share.

In the same week, the European institutional calendar provides for the meeting of the College of Commissioners on 15 September and the State of the Union address in Strasbourg on 16 September.

Sources: Valmyndigheten (val.se) and Valmyndigheten — 2026 results; SVT Nyheter and SVT — Val 2026; Valstatistik.