The Hague Central Electoral Committee has just announced that twenty parties will participate in the municipal elections on March 18, 2026. A total of 487 candidates are on the candidate lists. The valid candidate lists were also numbered in the public session of the central electoral committee. Parties that won at least one seat in the previous municipal elections will receive a number based on the number of votes in the previous election. The party with the highest number of votes will receive number 1, and so on. The remaining list numbers were assigned by drawing lots.
The numbering is as follows:
- Heart for The Hague / De Mos Group
- GREEN LEFT / Labour Party (PvdA)
- D66
- VVD
- Party for the Animals
- CDA
- THINK
- The Hague City Party
- SP (Socialist Party)
- PVV (Party for Freedom)
- Christian Union-SGP
- Forum for Democracy
- Volt
- New Social Contract (NSC)
- INL The Hague
- Blank list (with T. Çetinkaya as the first candidate)
- Drerrie for The Hague (DvD)
- Party for the Rule of Law
- Blank list (with N. Ramdhani as the first candidate)
- 50PLUS
Most absences are corrected on time
Last Monday, twenty parties submitted their candidate lists to the central electoral committee. No lists were declared invalid. All parties that submitted a candidate list are therefore eligible to participate in the municipal elections. Correctable omissions, such as missing documents, were found for eight parties. These omissions could be corrected last Wednesday and Thursday. Not all omissions were corrected. Six candidates were removed because the accompanying documents were not in order.
Jan van Zanen, chairman of the central electoral committee: “The nomination process involves a lot of paperwork. This requires a great deal of effort from the parties. A slip-up can easily occur: for example, an expired ID, or a name that’s just been misspelled. Many potential slip-ups have already been identified during the so-called pre-submission, the optional check in the week before nomination day. Of the slip-ups that remained after February 2nd, most were corrected in time. The parties had their affairs in order.”
Profession
Interested parties can appeal to the Council of State against decisions made by the central electoral committee regarding the validity of the candidate lists until Tuesday, February 10th. No appeal is possible against the list numbering. The Council of State will issue its ruling no later than Monday, February 16th. After that date, the candidate lists will become final.
The minutes of the public hearing of Friday, February 6, can be found here .
Photographer: Martijn Beekman
Photo caption: Jan van Zanen (chairman of the central polling station in The Hague) during the drawing of the list numbers