Overview
- Voters cast ballots on Sunday, June 28, in the first provincial elections since 2019 after three postponements caused by the 2024 riots and institutional deadlock.
- Province Sud is the strategic prize because it contains about 75% of the population and supplies 32 of the 54 seats in the territorial Congress.
- Loyalist parties are campaigning to win an outright Congress majority so they can push reforms without relying on pro-independence partners.
- The pro-independence camp is fragmented after the UNI split from the FLNKS following the rejected 2025 Bougival agreement, leaving multiple rival lists that could reduce their vote share.
- The French government has signaled that talks on New Caledonia’s future will resume in July with a goal of concluding them before the end of the year, a timeline that makes the election results decisive for negotiation leverage.