Newsletter - March 2026
Our monthly newsletter with news from Volt Slovenia and from across Europe.
Photo: Let's get the party started
Welcome to our monthly newsletter! (👉 Subscribe here)
We’re late… so much is happening and we’re not even running in the elections. If you don’t know who to vote for this weekend, neither do we. What can we do? Help us build an alternative:
👉 Join us
This month’s topics:
What’s happening with Volt in Slovenia?
Are you the next Prime Minister? Play our simulator!
Founding General Assembly on 11.04.2026
Country Council retreat in Berlin
Monthly Meet&Greet
Signature Collection Update
News from Europe
Another war, where are our European leaders?
Hungary is ready for change
French local elections see extreme left and right gaining
Updates from Volt around Europe
Volt Germany is all smiles after local elections
Volt Switzerland increases votes but short of winning a seat
Volt Netherlands wins seats in municipalities across the country
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What's happening in Volt Slovenia
Are you the next Prime Minister? Play our simulator!
Photo: Can you run or ruin the country?
While we don’t participate in the elections, we still wanted to contribute something: getting citizens to vote.
For our own campaign we had planned to make a simulator of running the country as prime minister. The result: Jaz, Premier(ka)
It’s a card game where you are Prime Minister of Slovenia and have to optimize popularity, risks, your mental health, your agenda and state funding by playing cards based on Slovenian politics.
Our members are quite hooked, if you can beat their high score, do sign up, we need more prime ministers
👉 Play the game here: https://jaz-premier.si and https://jaz-premierka.si
👉 The game was in LD;GD, episode 203 (~49min). Listen to it
Čeprav ne sodelujemo na volitvah, smo v tem predvolilnem obdobju vseeno želeli nekaj doprinesti: spodbuditi ljudi, da gredo volit.
Founding General Assembly on 11.04.2026
We are almost done collecting signatures and are busy preparing our founding general assembly, which will happen on 11.04. From 11h00-14h00 in Fantastični prostori.
We will welcome speakers from Volt Europa and neighbouring chapters, elect our initial leadership and adopt statutes as well as our programme to register Volt Slovenija as a political party.
If you want to help, now is the time, we need a few more signatures and would love to welcome you to our event.
Council Country meeting in Berlin
Photo: Spot Lars and Sven in the crowd
We are also starting to get active with Volt Slovenia on our international level and were happy to send Lars and Sven to the Country Council retreat in Berlin last month.
The Country Council is the instance of Volt Europa that brings together leading members from all chapters across Europe to coordinate on political positions, organisational challenges and to review the work of the European representatives.
Monthly Meet&Greet
Photo: The Volt locals at their usual spot in Sax
We also fit in our regular Meet&Greet welcome new members and discussing elections, party foundation and preparing the Ljubljana local elections. A lot to do in the upcoming months and a great moment to become part of our political adventure.
Signature update
We’re at 171 signatures. Final sprint to reach 200. If you want to help us get over the hump, now is the time.
How can you sign?
We’ve prepared clear and simple IKEA-style instructions:
What does signing mean?
You’ll be able to vote for the party leadership and approve the statutes and programme at the founding assembly.
After registration, everyone’s welcome to become full members via Volt.team—but it’s not mandatory. Even if you don’t want to join, you can still help register Volt Slovenia with a single signature. It’s completely fine to leave it at that.
👉 More info and FAQs on our website about signatures
News from Europe
Another war, where are our European leaders?
Photo: Still kowtowing? (Samuel Corum/ABACAPRESS/IMAGO)
The international order took another hit last month when the US and Israel started a war on Iran without a real justification. The implications will be felt around the globe as the Hormuz strait is a vital lifeline for the global economy - not only for oil, but all sorts of raw materials such as fertilizers.
Europe will face multiple hits: at the gas station we can already see it. But prices for many other categories are set to rise as well as our leaders have not doubled down to make Europe more independent, whether it’s for renewable energies or resilience in strategic areas.
Worse, it seems only Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez was the only head of state willing to condemn the attack. On the other end of the scale, Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz even sided with Donald Trump calling out Spain for speaking up for the international order. At least no EU member state is jumping to the rescue in providing military support - yet. We really need different leadership - European leadership.
👉 Read about Pedro Sanchez taking a stand and Merz not
Hungary is ready for change
Foto: Predvolilni shod Petra Magyara (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Photo: Election rally of Peter Magyar (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Closer to home, Hungary is nearing elections and for the first time, the reign of Viktor Orban seems on the brink of ending. Last weekend saw a record number of supporters take to the streets for opposition leader Peter Magyar.
A lot can happen before the elections on April 12th and if you see how opinion polls diverge whether pollsters are independent or close to the current government, you know how dire the situation in Hungary is.
Should Peter Magyar win these elections, he will have his work cut out for him to try and repair the damages done to democratic institutions. With Fidesz-close personnel across all government branches, Hungary will face a similar situation like Poland of having a hard time to do reforms, fast, efficiently and legally at the same time.
👉 Read about Peter Magyar’s government plans
French local elections see extreme left and right gaining
Photo: the 1st round of french local elections took place last week (ERIC BRONCARD / Hans Lucas via AFP)
France held local elections in its 36 000 municipalities last week. Local elections are tough in France: you need full lists, there are 2 rounds, you need 10% to advance to the runoff. The winner gets 51% of the seats AND his percentage of the remaining 49% always giving an absolute majority and making the opposition decoration.
Volt ran on joint lists in few municipalities, and although we reached the runoff in a few cities, the necessary fusions between lists eliminated all our promising candidates who were too low on lists to be included in the fusion.
Overall, the extreme-left and also the extreme-right made a lot of gains. The first in big metropoles for example scoring 50% or more in Roubaix and Saint-Denis. The second across the rural countryside, where the population votes conservative or extreme-right.
The election was not about local topics but about the 2027 presidential elections where moderate parties will face the dilemma for fielding strong candidates against Marine LePen (or Jordan Bardella) should she be illegible and Jean-Luc Melenchon - both populists and extremely popular and with the runoff election only being between the best two candidates, France risks to take a turn to the extreme-right or left if no other solid candidates appear.
News from other Volt Chapters
Volt Germany is all smiles after local elections
Volt Germany ran in local elections in Bavaria and Hessia and results were excellent. In Munich, Volt scored 4.7% and jumped from 1 to 4 seats in the local Council while across Bavaria, the party entered municipal councils in almost all cities it ran.
Last week in Hessia, Volt scored even better, keeping most of their seats and winning new ones in many cities with 9.4% in Darmstadt being by far the best result and on par with other established parties.
Volt Switzerland increases votes but short of winning a seat
Volt was running Switzerland
As a true paneuropean party, Volt is also active outside the 27 EU member states. Our Swiss chapter also ran in local elections - in some communities for the 2nd time.
While we didn’t manage to enter any local councils yet - the barriers are quite high, some teams like Zurich received over 8000 votes and are very motivated to continue their work for Switzerland moving closer to the European Union.
Volt Netherlands wins seats in municipalities across the country
Photo: The Dutch members campaigning
Finally, the Netherlands held local elections this Wednesday and Volt ran in a record 38 municipalities.
Votes are still being counted and while we lost some seats, Volt Nederland gained representation in many of the cities our Dutch chapter ran in with an overall increase in elected representatives - so another reason to celebrate.
👉 Watch the campaign spot for the Dutch local elections
As always, thanks for reading! Recommend the newsletter to friends who might be interested in Volt – and we’ll catch up again next month with news from our party foundation and the Slovenian elections.
– The Volt Slovenia Team