Nepalis vote in first election since Gen Z uprising for change

This election will test whether the country is ready for a new, untested generation to shape its future.

Nepal held its first nationwide election since the youth-led protests of September 2025 that unseated the previous government. The vote passed peacefully with about 60% turnout and only minor incidents reported. Results are expected by the weekend.

Millions of Nepalis have voted in the country's first general election since violent youth-led protests toppled the government last September. Corruption, economic stagnation and inequality were the main issues in the vote. They sparked the uprising in which 77 people died, many of them protesters shot by police.

Nearly 19 million voters will choose who replaces the interim government in place since the September 2025 uprising, in which at least 77 people were killed, and parliament and scores of government buildings were torched. Youth-led protests under a loose gen-Z banner began as a demonstration against a brief social media ban, but were fed by wider grievances at corruption and a woeful economy.

Nepalis are voting in a consequential election that will chart the country's path after last year's youth-led anti-corruption protests toppled the government. The same issues that sparked last September's protests are at the centre of today's vote - corruption, unemployment, economic stagnation and inequality.