---
title: "France’s National Rally quadruples its seats in the Senate"
description: "Marine Le Pen’s party wins 14 seats and its first Senate caucus, months before the presidential election"
author: "Albion Grey"
published: 2026-09-28T08:10:17Z
modified: 2026-09-28T09:14:33Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/france-s-national-rally-quadruples-its-seats-in-the-senate-ad2fda
language: en
tags: ["politics", "france", "elections", "senate", "national-rally", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# France’s National Rally quadruples its seats in the Senate

*Marine Le Pen’s party wins 14 seats and its first Senate caucus, months before the presidential election*

By Albion Grey · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/france-s-national-rally-quadruples-its-seats-in-the-senate-ad2fda

## In brief

- RN and its allies won a record 14 seats in the 348-seat Senate, quadrupling their number
- It was the first time Ms Le Pen’s party passed the 10-seat threshold to form a Senate caucus
- Nine RN senators were elected on Sunday, plus two from Eric Ciotti’s UDR, an AFP tally showed
- The far right first entered the Senate with two seats in 2014, as the National Front
- The result comes months before a presidential first round in April 2027, when Mr Macron steps down

The French Senate is a dignified museum of the republic: average age high, tempers low, and politics reliably a generation behind the street. On September 28th the street arrived. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) and its allies secured a record 14 seats in the 348-seat chamber, quadrupling their tally and, for the first time, clearing the 10-seat threshold needed to form a caucus of their own.

“The results have exceeded our expectations,” Ms Le Pen said after Sunday’s indirect election, calling it an “historic victory” and “a major milestone with the formation for the first time of a group in the Senate”. She has reason to gloat. The party entered the upper house only in 2014, with two seats, when it was still called the National Front; it won three more in 2023. According to an AFP tally, nine RN senators were elected on Sunday, and a further two from the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR), the vehicle of Eric Ciotti, the conservative who quit the Republicans (LR) in 2024 after calling for an alliance with the far right. Jordan Bardella, the RN’s president, said the two parties’ senators would sit together.

The Senate’s odd constitution flatters outsiders less than most. Half the chamber is renewed every three years by an electoral college of local elected officials—mayors, councillors and the like—each senator serving a six-year term. That is precisely why Sunday’s result stings the mainstream: it suggests the RN’s patient cultivation of municipal France, long the party’s weak ground, is bearing fruit. A caucus brings procedural rights and visibility in the chamber, and something less tangible: proof that the far right now belongs in every room of the republic, not just the rowdy lower house.

The champagne should stay half-chilled. The Senate remains dominated by the right, with Gerard Larcher, its LR president of more than a decade and now 77, expected to be re-elected next week. The right, centre and left-wing Socialists looked set to remain the chamber’s three major forces on initial results; the hard-left France Unbowed also won a Senate seat for the first time. Fourteen seats out of 348 is a foothold, not a faction. The real prize lies elsewhere: the presidential election, whose first round is scheduled for April next year, when the centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, steps down.

Ms Le Pen plainly considers that her best chance yet at power. Her anti-immigration party emerged as the single largest in the National Assembly after Mr Macron’s ill-judged snap election in 2024, though it fell well short of a majority. The Senate performance fits a broader pattern: the far right is advancing across Europe, even if, as with \[Germany’s record-winning AfD\]((/a/europe-s-far-right-draws-the-line-at-germany-s-record-winnin-8290e2)), its neighbours still keep their distance.

Sunday’s vote will not change a single French law. But it changes something subtler: the RN can no longer be dismissed as a party of protest votes and parliamentary noise. It now has senators, a group, and an institutional claim to permanence. The Fifth Republic’s oldest chamber has quietly registered what its youngest voters already know.

## Sources

- [France's far-right National Rally gains ground in Senate vote](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/28/frances-far-right-national-rally-gains-ground-in-senate-vote) — aljazeera.com
- [France’s far-right National Rally surges in Senate elections](https://theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/28/french-election-2026-far-right-senate-elections) — theguardian.com