---
title: "Kazakhstan votes for a new single-chamber parliament under a reset constitution"
description: "Sunday's election fills 145 seats in the Kurultai, a unicameral legislature that replaced the two-chamber parliament on July 1. Seven parties are standing, the governing one was formed in June, and the same change that capped future presidents at a single term restarted the clock for the current one."
category: "Politics"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/politics
author: "Hannah Brooks"
published: 2026-08-23T03:41:40-04:00
updated: 2026-08-23T03:41:40-04:00
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/kazakhstan-votes-for-a-new-single-chamber-parliament-under-a-reset-constitution
tags: ["kazakhstan", "elections", "central-asia", "parliament", "tokayev"]
---
# Kazakhstan votes for a new single-chamber parliament under a reset constitution

Sunday's election fills 145 seats in the Kurultai, a unicameral legislature that replaced the two-chamber parliament on July 1. Seven parties are standing, the governing one was formed in June, and the same change that capped future presidents at a single term restarted the clock for the current one.

Kazakhs voted on Sunday for a parliament that did not exist two months ago. The Kurultai, a single chamber of 145 seats, replaced the country's bicameral legislature on July 1, [according to Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/kazakhstan-parliamentary-elections-begin-whats-at-stake).

Seven parties are contesting it: Adilet, Auyl, Aq Jol, the People's Party of Kazakhstan, the Nationwide Social Democratic Party, Baytaq and Respublica. A party needs at least 5 percent of the vote to take seats.

## Two changes that arrived together

The constitutional package that created the Kurultai did something else at the same time, and the two need to be read together.

It abolished the old structure, under which laws passed through the Mazhilis and then the Senate. Under the new arrangement the Kurultai considers legislation and adopted laws go to the president. Removing a revising chamber concentrates the legislative process; whether it also weakens it depends on what the single chamber turns out to do.

It also changed presidential terms to a single seven-year term. That sounds like a limit, and for future presidents it is one. For the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the reset means his existing service does not count against the new cap, leaving him able to seek what would in practice be a third term.

A reform that constrains everyone except the person enacting it is not unusual in the region, and it is the single most consequential fact about this vote.

## The governing party is two months old

Adilet, the party in government, was formed in June 2026, absorbing Amanat, which had been the dominant party before it.

Renaming and restructuring the ruling party ahead of an election is a recurring feature of Kazakh politics, and it complicates any reading of the result. A new party cannot lose ground it never held, and comparisons with the last parliament are not straightforward when the vehicle has changed.

## What observers and analysts say

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has deployed nearly 80 parliamentarians and staff from about 30 countries to observe.

Rustam Burnashev, a Kazakh political analyst, was unsentimental about the range of possible outcomes. "All the parliamentary candidates are known," he said. "Nor can one say that the parliament itself will be a transformative one."

Nargis Kassenova of the Belfer Center offered a different frame, on Kazakhstan's external position rather than its internal one: "Kazakhstan has begun positioning itself as a middle power."

Both are worth holding at once. A legislature that changes little domestically can still belong to a state that is becoming more consequential internationally, and Kazakhstan sits between Russia and China with a great deal of oil and uranium.

## What we could not establish

The report does not give the number of registered voters, does not say whether any opposition party sought registration and was refused, and carries no assessment from observers of the conditions of the vote, which would not yet be available in any case.

We were unable to verify this account against a second publication, and we have not seen results.

## Sources

- [Kazakhstan parliamentary elections begin: What's at stake?](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/kazakhstan-parliamentary-elections-begin-whats-at-stake)