Nepal 2026 election: The old guard battles new leaders

On 5 March, Nepal will hold national elections to its House of Representatives, the lower house of its bicameral legislature. Just as in Bangladesh, this will be the first post-revolution election in Nepal. In September last year, a protest by youth in Kathmandu – which came to be called the Gen Z protest – gave vent to mass anger on the streets against political corruption and nepotism. After the police met the protesters with force, the movement turned into violent resistance which became a revolution that toppled the prime minister K P Oli’s government. After six months of a bureaucracy-led interim government in charge, Nepal’s voters will not decide what direction they want the country to go in. Will they fall back on the old guard that they emphatically rejected in September or will they take a chance on new leaders?

Nepal’s electoral battle of the old versus the new is most pronounced in the contest between Oli, the former prime minister, and Balendra Shah, the political upstart and former Kathmandu mayor, in the Jhapa-5 constituency. The old versus new will also play out in how the new Rastriya Swatantra Party, which Shah has joined, will perform against older established parties. But many of the structural and institutional problems that have plagued Nepal’s politics and governance continue.