The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, the party founded by the actor Vijay, won 108 of the 234 seats in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly election and formed the government, according to Wikipedia. Polling was held on 23 April and results were declared on 4 May. The majority mark is 118 seats, so the party needed partners, and a search summary says that its win ended a 59-year run of dominance by the Dravidian parties.
The turnout was 85.1 per cent, the highest in the state’s history, with 5.73 crore registered voters. The TVK received 34.92 per cent of the votes, which was 1,72,26,209 votes, compared with 24.19 per cent for the DMK and 21.21 per cent for the AIADMK. The DMK won 59 seats and the AIADMK 47, while the Congress won 5, the BJP 1 and other parties and independents 14, according to the same page.
The alliance results show the scale of the change. The Secular Progressive Alliance, led by the DMK, won 73 seats, and the AIADMK-led alliance, described as the NDA, won 53. The TVK contested alone and won 108 seats. In 2021, the DMK-led alliance had won 159 of the 234 seats, and M. K. Stalin served as chief minister from 2021 to 2026.
Vijay was sworn in as chief minister on 10 May 2026 and the government passed a floor test on 13 May. The coalition consists of the TVK, the Congress and four other parties that had been in the Secular Progressive Alliance, and together they have 146 seats supporting the government, according to Wikipedia. That is far above the 118 needed, though the sources reviewed do not describe the terms of the alliance or the allocation of ministries.
Vijay won two seats, Perambur and Tiruchirappalli East, according to the page. India TV’s live report on counting day said that he won Perambur by a margin of 53,715 votes. The seat count for the party on counting day was reported as leading in 107 or 109 seats in different live reports, and the final figure on Wikipedia is 108, so early reports differed from the final result.
The losses were notable. M. K. Stalin, the outgoing chief minister, lost the Kolathur constituency, according to Wikipedia. The AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami retained his seat of Edappadi with the widest margin, according to the page. The page does not give the margins for the other candidates.
The TVK’s rise was fast. The party was founded by an actor, but the sources reviewed here do not give an account of its campaign or its policy promises, so they are not described.
There is also a tie to the national picture. The Congress, which is a national party, was the TVK’s coalition partner while winning only five seats of its own, and the arrangement shows how a small number of seats can bring a party into government. The BJP won one seat, according to the page, while the AIADMK-led alliance with which it was associated won 53.
The sources reviewed do not describe the government’s first decisions or its relations with the Centre. Those will be the subject of later reports, and the party’s record in office will test the large margin of its first election win.
Tamil Nadu’s result is among the biggest changes of the 2026 round, since a new party formed the government with more than a third of the vote and with a majority of 146 members including its partners.
Featured image: The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and Secretariat complex in Chennai (file photo). Photo by Prateek Karandikar, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.