National Rally wins 14 Senate seats to form first caucus

France's far-right National Rally (RN) and its allies won 14 seats out of 348 in the Senate election held on 27 September 2026, enough to form a parliamentary group in the upper house for the first time in the party's history. Nine RN senators were elected that day, on top of three who won seats in 2023, plus two from ally Eric Ciotti's Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR).france24.com

The result quadrupled the party's presence in the 348-seat chamber and marks the first time it has cleared the 10-seat threshold required to form a Senate parliamentary group. Half the upper house is elected every three years through indirect voting, with senators serving six-year terms, so the RN's gain came in one of the two staggered rounds that make up a full chamber.straitstimes.com

First group above the threshold

Local elected officials, along with lawmakers in the National Assembly, vote for senators, which means the result reflects the preferences of France's territorial representatives rather than a direct national ballot. Of the 348 seats in the upper chamber, 178 were contested in the election on 27 September. The right, centrist and centre-left Socialists were set to remain the three major forces in the upper house, according to initial results.

RN president Jordan Bardella said the party's senators would form a group with UDR allies. Marine Le Pen, the party's leader and presidential candidate, wrote on X: "This is a historic victory, and a major milestone with the formation for the first time of a group in the Senate." She also said: "The results have exceeded our expectations."

The arithmetic behind the 14 seats breaks down as follows: nine RN senators elected on 27 September, three RN senators already seated from the 2023 contest, and two senators elected under the UDR banner, an ally of the RN. The party entered the Senate for the first time with two seats in 2014, when it was known as the National Front, and won three seats in 2023.

How the seats were won

A Senate group carries concrete procedural weight. Group leaders are able to request votes, among other powers, which gives the far right a formal lever in a chamber it has never organised in before. The RN's previous best showing was three seats, won in 2023, so the jump to 14 seats represents the largest single-step increase in the party's Senate history.

The election also delivered firsts for other forces. The left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party won its first-ever Senate seat. The upper chamber's president, Gerard Larcher, a member of Les Républicains (LR) who is 77 and has held the post for more than a decade, is expected to be re-elected next week. Ciotti quit LR in 2024 after calling for an alliance with the far right.

What a Senate group delivers

The Senate result lands as the RN prepares for a 2027 presidential race in which opinion polls show it in the lead for the first round. Le Pen is seeking the presidency in a two-round election in the spring, but previous far-right attempts to reach the country's highest elected office have been blocked. President Emmanuel Macron's second and final term ends at that point.

In the lower house, Le Pen's anti-immigration party emerged as the largest single party in the National Assembly after Macron called snap polls in 2024, though it fell well short of a majority and trailed behind the left-wing New Popular Front alliance. The Senate result therefore extends the RN's institutional footprint across both chambers of the French parliament.

The wider political backdrop

The next step in the upper house is the election of its president. Gerard Larcher is expected to be re-elected next week, which would keep the LR leadership in place even as the RN assembles its first group. The composition of the new Senate group, and how its 14 seats are distributed between RN and UDR members, will be settled when the chamber reconvenes.