Zambia 2026 General Election

CCMG's process and results verification, built from official polling-station results reported by monitors at 1,491 of 1,500 sampled stations, estimated turnout at 53.5 per cent plus or minus 0.6, Hichilema at 56.0 per cent plus or minus 1.7 and Mundubile at 42.3 per cent plus or minus 1.7. CCMG states that the official results for turnout and for both leading candidates do not fall within those ranges; the declared figures of 57.23 per cent turnout, 60.49 per cent and 37.87 per cent lie outside them, as does the lowest winning share reported by any account of the declaration, 60.5 per cent. CCMG's monitors did not count ballots: the estimate is built from the results announced by the commission's own polling officials.

CCMG identified 30 constituencies in which official turnout exceeded the upper limit of its sample estimate by more than ten points through increased UPND votes, and stated that in those 30 constituencies votes were added, artificially increasing turnout. The average change in turnout from 2021 was plus 6 per cent in those constituencies against minus 15 per cent in the other 196. In four constituencies where observers obtained the constituency totalling records for 24 sampled polling stations, every figure including rejected ballots matched at 13 stations; UPND totals at the tally centre exceeded the polling-station results recorded by monitors at 10 of the 24, by an average of 178 votes, and at one further station the NRPUP total at the tally centre was 10 votes higher than the polling-station record.

The commission cited reports of violence affecting counting and results processes, and, in its statement to the press, attacks on polling officials and stolen ballot papers; SADC observers record that the suspension was lifted the same evening with counting resuming at 22:00, and the EU mission puts its duration at six hours. The EU mission also records that the commission announced it would not publish results by polling station. CCMG asked the commission to publish all 226 Records of Proceeding at the Totalling of Votes and images of the GEN20 forms from all 13,529 polling stations; neither had appeared by 29 August 2026. The commission's own published timetable set declaration for 17 August 2026 and publication of the election results between 17 and 24 August 2026, and its published procedure provides for results forms signed by agents and posted at each polling station before constituency totalling and transmission to the National Results Centre.

Article 103 of the Constitution allows seven days from the declaration of the winner to petition the Constitutional Court; with the result declared on 18 August, Human Rights Watch records that the last lawful day to file was 24 August. A notice from the chief administrator of the judiciary to court staff, seen by Human Rights Watch, said the court premises were closed 'for security reasons' and that guidance on reopening would follow 'once the situation is contained'; police described the closure as an 'intelligence-led and preventive measure' without giving details. A lawyer told Human Rights Watch he found the High Court in Lusaka cordoned off by armed police on the morning of 24 August, and seven Zambian civil society organisations said court premises had been sealed across the country and judicial services suspended entirely. Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa stated on 25 August that the seven-day period had expired without the judiciary receiving any petition, and that the swearing-in would proceed under Article 105 on 1 September 2026.

EU monitoring of ten outlets from 15 July to 12 August recorded UPND on 96.2 per cent of election-related airtime on ZNBC TV1 and 90.5 per cent on ZNBC Radio 1, the president holding 98.3 per cent of direct speech on TV1, and Mundubile on 0.1 per cent of TV1 coverage with no direct speech at all; the state-owned Zambia Daily Mail gave 90.7 per cent of its election news to the president. EU observers directly observed misuse of state resources at campaign events in eight provinces and indications of voter inducement at a third of observed events. The ECZ campaign timetable restricted other candidates to a five-day slot per province but did not apply to the president or vice-president, and nine candidates reported events blocked or cancelled by unscheduled presidential visits.

The Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 13 of 2025, assented to on 18 December 2025, replaced first-past-the-post with a mixed-member system, raised constituency seats to 226 and provided for 40 reserved seats distributed after the poll in proportion to presidential votes. Delimitation of the 70 new constituencies concluded on 16 April 2026 and the Electoral Processes Act No. 12 of 2026 was enacted on 15 May 2026, the last day of parliament and three months before the vote. Observers recorded delayed regulations, erroneous training materials and ECZ voter-education material that did not reflect the new law, and AU-COMESA noted that the constitutional delimitation criteria had never been operationalised in legislation.

The EU mission recorded arrests for online speech offences arising mostly from criticism of the president, public warnings against unlawful posts issued by police and army, and the two-week detention in July of ZNBC journalist McPherson Mukuka under the Cyber Crimes Act. The presidentially appointed Zambia Cyber Security Agency supported police investigations into speech offences including criticism of the president and of the ECZ, and a case challenging the constitutionality of provisions of the 2025 Cyber Security Act and Cyber Crimes Act was pending at the time of the poll. SADC and AU-COMESA separately recorded a consistent chilling effect reported by journalists, parties and civil society.

EU monitoring found Facebook political advertising limited but peaking near the vote at about EUR 42,000, of which 92 per cent supported UPND. NRPUP-supporting pages relied on accusations of rigging and corruption, UPND-supporting pages on fearmongering and name-calling; abuse directed at women candidates was more frequent and more severe than at men. The ECZ countered 18 false claims during the campaign and the iVerify platform debunked claims about ballot printing and delays, the ECZ, internet shutdowns and opposition figures.

The AU-COMESA mission records that Mundubile publicly claimed victory before the commission could announce results. CCMG's sample-based verification, the same exercise that concluded votes had been added in 30 constituencies, estimated Hichilema at 56.0 per cent plus or minus 1.7 and stated that he received the most presidential votes and more than the 50 per cent threshold, and that the variances it identified do not alter the overall outcome of the presidential election. No count supporting the claim of an opposition win has been published.

Human Rights Watch records that after the declaration Mundubile alleged 'inconsistencies and circumstances surrounding the conduct, counting, transmission, and declaration of results' and said he would challenge the results in court. Because the courts were closed on the final day of the Article 103 window and the Secretary to the Cabinet stated that the period expired without the judiciary receiving any petition, no body with the power to compel evidence has examined those allegations, and the corpus records them as allegations only.

SADC recorded submissions that the exercise lacked adequate consultation and produced boundaries said to favour the ruling party, and one submission that the number of constituencies created exceeds the constitutional ceiling, but stated that it had not verified that analysis. The EU mission found the exercise time-constrained and lacking transparency but assessed the net effect on equality of the vote as only marginally improved rather than distorted. CCMG concluded the exercise undermined equal representation. The ECZ has not released a delimitation report with population by constituency, so the question cannot be settled from published data.

The EU mission found that although false claims were numerous, they showed no signs of coordinated and structured effort, describing them as at times politically motivated and exploiting existing polarisation, limited institutional communication and poor access to information. Ethnic and violent language remained limited in volume in the public Facebook pages the mission monitored. The AU-COMESA mission listed misinformation and disinformation as a growing challenge in the campaign but did not identify any organised actor behind it. No observer mission, and no platform threat report, has attributed any part of the campaign's disinformation to a foreign actor.

Amnesty International records that Kafwaya, a former cabinet minister and member of the opposition Tonse-Pamodzi Alliance, was shot and killed in Lusaka on 14 August 2026 during a state-run security operation, and that the authorities did not confirm his death until 19 August, leaving his family without official information for five days. Amnesty does not state who fired the shots, and called for a prompt, independent, impartial, transparent and effective investigation into the circumstances. No investigation outcome had been published by 29 August 2026. Separately, CCMG's long-term observers counted 79 incidents of violence during the campaign period, including four fatalities, with the highest number in Lusaka; the SADC mission recorded reports of intimidation, assault, abduction and damage to property in five provinces, including in one submission fatalities, which it could not verify.

As of 29 August 2026 the commission's official results portal showed 0 of 226 constituencies reporting, 0 valid votes and a NaN percentage against each of the 14 presidential candidates on its 2026 presidential page. Its 2026 parliamentary page displayed a party seat distribution totalling 225 of the 226 constituency seats while every one of the 226 constituency rows read 'No results', and the same page reported 0 of 1 constituencies reporting against a register of 57,072. Because the 40 reserved seats are allocated in proportion to presidential votes under the 2025 amendment, the contested presidential figures also determine part of the National Assembly's composition, and CCMG named the implications for the allocation of proportional representation seats as a reason its findings merit further review.