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Kosovo’s election authorities on Monday ordered a full recount of last month’s national elections as prosecutors launched an investigation following reports of a “high degree of inaccuracies” in vote tallies.
Certification of preliminary results has taken weeks after a partial recount was ordered earlier this month. The initial count showed caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti winning more than half of the vote.
Kosovo’s Central Election Commission ordered the full recount during a meeting in the capital, Pristina, with commission chairman Kreshnik Radoniqi citing problems related to vote counts for individual parliamentary candidates.
The commission convened to discuss manipulations detected during the vote-counting process.
Following the decision, Kosovo’s state prosecutor said an investigation had been launched into the possible “commission of any criminal offence related to the electoral process,” Chief State Prosecutor Laura Pula said.
According to the election commission, the recount confirmed that party vote totals largely matched the initial count but revealed discrepancies in the distribution of votes among individual MP candidates.
“The data for candidates after the recount presents a high degree of inaccuracies,” Radoniqi told reporters.
He said the commission would forward a report on the recount’s findings to prosecutors.
In Prizren, Kosovo’s second-largest city, more than 20,000 ballots were believed to have been tallied inaccurately, Radoniqi added.
Kurti has remained in a caretaker role since February last year after an earlier election left him without the parliamentary majority needed to form a government.
Deeply divided lawmakers later forced a second election in less than 12 months, leading to the Dec. 28, 2025, early parliamentary vote.
The recount is expected to further delay the formation of a new government by several weeks, amid warnings that Kosovo risks losing hundreds of millions of euros in international assistance without a functioning administration.
In the recount conducted so far, Prizren emerged as the municipality where the largest discrepancies were identified. The Central Election Commission also decided to dismiss political party representatives serving on the Prizren Municipal Election Commission.
As a result of the recount of about 98% of ballot boxes in Prizren, officials found that roughly 19,000 votes had been added to candidates of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK.
It was also determined that about 4,500 votes each were added to candidates from the election-winning Self-Determination Movement, known as Vetevendosje, and the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK. Vote totals for some candidates from these parties were found to have decreased.
In the early general election held on Dec. 28, 2025, Vetevendosje, led by Kurti, declared victory after receiving about 51% of the vote.
Preliminary results showed Vetevendosje leading with 51.1% of the vote, which would allow it to form a government without coalition partners and end a 10-month institutional deadlock. The party was projected to win 57 seats in the 120-seat parliament.
The PDK, led by Bedri Hamza, followed with 20.2%, while the LDK won 13.2%. The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo received 5.5%.
Despite the recount and investigation, local and international organizations welcomed the smooth conduct of the election process by the Central Election Commission, citing the short preparation time it faced.
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