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 when an actual election is called.
Bennett has yet to announce his candidacy for the next election, but several sources indicated that they believe he will.
Giora Levy, Bennett’s commander in the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (also known as Sayeret Matkal), 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 a number of months, but is sped up if the registration occurs during an election cycle. The timing of the registration of the new 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 then-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 own party would win 25 seats, compared to Netanyahu's Likud party which would gain 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
Current 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
Likud, on its official social media, denounced Bennett's announcement, commenting that it " doesn't interfere in how 'the Left' distributes its Knesset mandates."
Bennett and the current opposition leader, MK Yair Lapid, formed a national unity government in June 2021. During this former 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.
