Israel election: main parties competing on October 27

Israel heads to the polls on October 27 in its first election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party facing a crowded field of rivals.

Some seven million Israelis will be eligible to vote. Thirty-eight parties registered ahead of the Tuesday evening deadline to compete for seats in the 120-member Knesset.

Likud, led by Netanyahu, currently holds 32 seats. Netanyahu is Israel's longest-serving prime minister, but the party is running slightly behind in most polls.

Yashar, a centrist party founded in 2025 by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, currently has no parliamentary seats. Eisenkot has topped recent polls asking who is best suited to be the next prime minister and has pledged to end an exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Beyahad is a centre-right alliance led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party has 24 seats. Bennett and Lapid formed a short-lived government in 2021-2022 united largely by opposition to Netanyahu.

On the left, HaDemokratim is led by former deputy military chief of staff Yair Golan and currently has four seats. The party brings together remnants of Labour and Meretz and supports a two-state solution.

The ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism currently hold 11 and seven seats respectively and oppose conscription of religious students.

Far-right parties include Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit, with six seats, Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism, with seven, and Ofer Winter's new Amha Israel.

Avigdor Lieberman's secular right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu has six seats. Arab and far-left lists include Mansour Abbas's Raam, with five seats, and Hadash-Ta'al, led by Yousef Jabareen, also with five.