After months of speculation, Premier Danielle Smith said during her 2025 year-end interviews that she isn’t planning to call an early election in 2026, but anyone who pays attention to politics knows: circumstances change.
The next provincial general election is scheduled to happen in October 2027 but there continues to be wide speculation that an early election could be called — and there are plenty of reasons to believe why.
Smith’s UCP remains ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP in the polls and the governing party continues to raise large amounts of donations. And there is little doubt that Smith remains one of the most effective and shrewd political communicators in Alberta and in Canada’s conservative movement.
