Everything you need to know before Saturday

Unless you’re living under a rock, you will have realised there is an election in a few days.

Think you can't vote on Saturday? You might be wrong - you don't have to be Icelandic, only legally domiciled for three years. Still confused? Read on.

Ensuring your vote counts

The Icelandic democratic system can seem strange to people who are used to two-party systems or first-past-the-post voting.

In those systems, you either vote for the largest party you agree with, or more often than not, the party you disagree with the least. Any vote for a party that isn’t one of the top two can feel thrown away, wasted.

That’s not how it works here. Iceland uses proportional representation, with a method called D’Hondt. It slightly favors larger parties, but a key feature of this system is that many parties win seats, roughly in proportion to the votes they receive. Coalitions and compromise are the norm. The current city majority is a coalition of five parties, and since 2014, we’ve had coalitions of four.

In municipal elections, you can vote for the party that appeals to you the most without worrying about their size. No vote is wasted simply because a party is small. It also matters less which party comes first, because there’s no winner-takes-all outcome. The coalition forms among whichever parties have enough common ground to make it work.

This is different from national elections, where a 5% threshold applies. If a party falls below it, their votes don’t translate into seats, which leads people to vote tactically. In local elections, that pressure doesn't exist.

Deciding which party

Once you know your vote counts, the question becomes which voice you want in the room and how effective you think they will be.

A small party that refuses to join any coalition unless it gets everything it wants is less useful than one that can negotiate, hold larger parties accountable and get things done. You might also consider: would you like a larger party you broadly support to be kept in check by a smaller coalition partner? Or are you worried they might end up with the wrong partner if a party you align with doesn’t get enough votes to be viable?

Voting in Iceland, particularly in local elections, is less about choosing the least bad option among the big parties and more about deciding which voice you want at the table.

How to mark your ballot

This is incredibly important! Only use an X in the appropriate box. Any other mark, whether a comment, a smiley face, a scribble or a line through another candidate’s name, will invalidate your vote.

But can you vote?

You are eligible to vote if you fall into one of these categories:

• You are an Icelandic or Nordic citizen (from Denmark, Finland, Norway or Sweden), aged 18 or over on election day, with legal domicile in the municipality.
• You are a citizen of any other country, aged 18 or over, and have been legally domiciled in Iceland for at least three consecutive years as of 8 April 2026.

You vote in the municipality where you are currently registered, which does not have to be where you have lived for the full three years.

If you are a Nordic citizen studying in another Nordic country, you may be able to register to vote, but the deadline for applications to Þjóðskrá was 40 days before election day, so this will only apply if you already registered.

You should have received a notification on island.is in the past few days. You can check your eligibility, polling station etc. at skra.is/english using your kennitala.

Consultant, DEI and Culture expert, current kosningastjóri for Píratar in Reykjavík (though not able to vote for them as live in Seltjarnarnes, so have tried to make it as apolitical as possible. The article was inspired by conversations I've had and the steep learning curve I've had learning about how municipal elections work!) Dual citizen British and Icelandic since 2021. I have lived in nine countries and in Iceland on and off since 2005.