Ethiopia to Hold Nationwide Elections on June 1

Ethiopia will hold nationwide elections on June 1, the first since the formal end of the Tigray war in 2022. 5 million voters have registered to choose representatives for all 547 parliamentary seats. The National Election Board of Ethiopia is expected to release official results on June 11. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party currently holds 457 of the 547 seats.

Ethiopia is a landlocked nation in the Horn of Africa covering 1,104,300 square kilometers. It borders Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti. The country has a population of about 135 million and five official languages: Afar, Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya. Roughly two-thirds of residents are Christian and one-third are Muslim. 2 percent in 2026. 7 percent in April 2026.

Ethiopia contains more than 80 ethnic groups. The Oromo make up about 35 percent of the population, the Amhara 24 percent, the Somali 7 percent, the Tigrayan 6 percent and the Sidama 4 percent. The country is divided into 12 regional states and two chartered cities, each organized largely around a dominant ethnic group under a system introduced in 1992.

Fighting has occurred in several regions since 2020. The Tigray war lasted from 2020 to 2022 and ended with the Pretoria peace agreement. Clashes resumed in Tigray in January 2026. In Oromia, conflict between regional forces, federal troops and the Oromo Liberation Army has continued since 2019.

A December 2024 peace deal covered one OLA faction. In Amhara, fighting between the Fano self-defence force and federal troops has taken place across more than 31 districts since 2023. Between January 2022 and May 15 2026, ACLED recorded more than 7,400 attacks nationwide.

The Amhara region accounted for 3,719 of those incidents and Oromia for 2,735.