Overseas voting underway
Voters who are overseas can vote in the 2026 General Election from today.
“If you’re travelling or living overseas, you can still vote in the election,” says Karl Le Quesne, Chief Electoral Officer.
“The easiest way to vote from overseas is to download your voting papers from vote.nz and return them by upload to the website. In 2023, 88% of overseas voters used this service to download their voting papers.
“There are also 64 locations overseas offering in-person or postal voting services, including 10 voting places in Australia.”
More information on voting from overseas, including the locations of voting places and the times they are open, can be found at vote.nz/overseas.
The number of overseas votes, and the number of people enrolled overseas, has grown in recent elections.
The number of votes received from voters living or travelling overseas was 77,295 in 2023, 62,787 in 2020 and 61,524 in 2017.
About 126,000 enrolled voters have told the Electoral Commission they are living overseas compared with 92,600 in 2023. 64% of those enrolled overseas are in Australia.
On 19 October, the top five countries where voters were enrolled were Australia (75,347 people), the United Kingdom (19,148), the USA (5,733), Canada (2,717) and Germany (1,367).
Telephone dictation voting
In New Zealand, telephone dictation voting also opens today. The service is for people who are blind, partially blind, or have a physical disability that means they cannot mark their voting paper without help. More information is available at vote.nz/telephone-dictation-voting.
Advance voting in New Zealand
Voting in New Zealand starts Monday 26 October and closes at 7pm on election day, Saturday 7 November. Find your nearest voting place at vote.nz.