Parliamentary Elections, 3–4 October 2025

On 3–4 October 2025, Czechs went to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections. All 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies were contested. The elections were conducted using a list proportional system with votes converted into seats according to the Imperiali quota, which is calculated by dividing the total number of votes by the number of seats plus two (Chamber of Deputies n.d.). The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of the Czech Republic; the upper house, the Senate, is elected in separate elections (IFES 2025).

The election administration in the Czech Republic is decentralized and composed of several tiers. The electoral process at the national level is organized by four bodies: the State Election Commission, Ministry of the Interior, Czech Statistical Office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The State Election Commission has ten members has a coordinating role and is responsible for announcing final results. The lower tiers are Regional Offices, Municipal Offices and Precinct Election Commissions (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

Mis- and disinformation narratives were widespread. For example, there were claims that the elections would be annulled either by the President (thus allowing the outgoing governing coalition to stay in power), or by the Security Information Service and the Constitutional Court on grounds of  foreign interference (CEDMO 2025a). Hundreds of fake TikTok accounts promoting anti-establishment politicians and pro-Russian messages were discovered prior to the elections, some of which stoked anxieties about overseas voting (see below) (Jochecová and Gkritsi 2025; Ferenčík 2025; Datta 2025).

Aimed at spreading disinformation or, in other cases, obtaining sensitive data or money from users, deepfake videos appeared featuring politicians from both governing and opposition parties. In one extreme case, a post called for the killing of a member of the government (CEDMO 2025a). Prevalent disinformation narratives targeted ethnic relations (Ukrainians living in Czechia) and Constitutional Court rulings on covert coalitions, among others (CEDMO 2025a).

The election campaign was marked by an incident of violence directed against a politician. During one of the electoral rallies, the leader the opposition ANO party, Andrej Babiš, was hit with a metal crutch(Kola 2025).

A record 67 women were elected in 2025, making up one third of the Chamber of Deputies. Without the preferential voting system, only 23 women would have been elected (24.5 per cent of elected members) (Vaughan 2025). This improvement—the outgoing parliament had 50 female MPs—came despite the lack of legal obligations or formal policies to ensure gender balance in party lists (OSCE/ODIHR 2025).

Turnout was 68.95 per cent, an increase of more than 3 per cent compared to the previous parliamentary election in 2021. It was also the highest voter turnout since the 1998 election to the Chamber of Deputies (International IDEA n.d.). Babiš’s ANO party received the most votes at 34.5 per cent, while the largest political force in the outgoing government, SPOLU, finished second with 23.4 per cent. Four other parties – Mayors and Independents (STAN), the Pirate party, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and Motorists for Themselves (AUTO) – received enough votes to gain representation in parliament (IFES 2025).

Innovations

Electronic voter identification was introduced based on 2024 amendments to the Act on the Right to Digital Services. However, due to a high volume of requests on the first day of voting, the eDocuments system crashed. Unable to identify themselves digitally, voters instead made use of traditional plastic ID cards or passports (Borak 2025).

In a second innovatiion, eligible citizens living abroad were able to vote by mail. However, there was a requirement to register in a special voters’ list administered by the embassy or consulate closest to a voter’s place of residence. Additionally, any citizen living abroad wishing to vote by mail had to request a postal voting package no later than 40 days before the election (OSCE/ODIHR 2025). In the run-up to the elections, there were claims that some actors would use the change in policy to question the legitimacy of the election (OSCE/ODIHR 2025). Almost half of survey respondents expressed concerns about potential fraud related to voting by mail, and a similar proportion considered credible the false claim that the introduction of postal voting would give ‘more than two million’ Czechs living abroad the right to vote (CEDMO 2025a; CEDMO 2025b).