Former prime minister Naftali Bennett officially registered a political party under the name “Bennett 2026” on Tuesday.
The name is a temporary holding name for the party and will be adjusted if an election is called. Bennett has yet to announce he will run in the next election, but several sources indicated that they believe he will run.
Giora Levy, Bennett’s commander in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, said in an interview on KAN Radio on March 18, “Naftali is laying the groundwork, and I’m helping to the best of my ability. He’s organizing eight work teams to develop plans for the country’s recovery and rehabilitation with a 20-year vision. He’s a killer – when he makes a decision, he executes it.”
The official registration of a party is the first step in running in an election. The process usually takes months but is sped up if the registration occurs during an election cycle. The timing of the registration of the party was planned in advance and not in response to recent events.
Polls highlight Bennett's likely popularity
Polls taken in recent weeks have shown that a hypothetical Bennett-led party would likely win a general election.
A March 14 poll signaled that if Bennett were to run today, his coalition would secure 61 seats, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc would drop to 49 seats.
Bennett’s party would win 25 seats, compared to Netanyahu’s Likud, which would win 21 seats, the same poll found.
מברך את נפתלי בנט על הקמת מפלגתו החדשה. ישראל זקוקה לממשלה טובה
— יאיר לפיד - Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) April 1, 2025
Opposition leader Yair Lapid congratulated Bennett, stating, “Israel needs a good government.” National Unity chairman MK Benny Gantz congratulated Bennett soon after.
לא מתערבים איך בשמאל מחלקים את המנדטים שלהם. https://t.co/RkxN4ms8TC
— הליכוד (@Likud_Party) April 1, 2025
The Likud, on its official social media, denounced Bennett’s announcement, commenting that it “doesn’t interfere in how ‘the Left’ distributes its Knesset seats.”
Bennett and Lapid formed a national unity government in June 2021. During that coalition agreement, Bennett served as prime minister from June 2021 until July 2022, with Lapid succeeding him until the government was dissolved in December 2022.
Bennett’s party at the time was Yamina. He did not run in the 2022 election, and the party instead ran under former justice minister Ayelet Shaked. It did not pass the electoral threshold.
According to numerous reports, the party accrued over NIS 10 million in debts, but these have remained unpaid due to a legal loophole whereby there is no official financial guarantor for parties that ran in an election but did not pass the threshold.
Launching a new party will allow Bennett to avoid having to cover the remainder of Yamina’s debt.