New Caledonia votes under heavy security in test of French rule

Polling stations opened under heavy security across New Caledonia on Sunday, ending a delay that pushed the territory’s provincial elections from 2024 to no later than 28 June 2026. About 2,500 police were deployed, with drones and armored vehicles added to the operation, as authorities treated the vote as a stability test for the French Pacific territory rather than a routine local contest.

The ballot will elect 76 assembly members, with 40 seats in the South Province, 22 in the North Province and 14 in the Loyalty Islands. Those assemblies will then determine the composition of New Caledonia’s Congress and the government formed from it, making the result central to who governs the territory and how it negotiates with Paris in the months ahead.

The election was repeatedly delayed as French institutions and local stakeholders fought over the voter roll. France’s Constitutional Council validated a June 2026 adjustment that would allow more than 10,000 additional people to vote, including some New Caledonians born since 1998. That change cut into the restricted, or frozen, electorate created by the 1998 Nouméa Accord, a system designed to preserve Kanak political weight and one that pro-independence leaders had defended for years.

The dispute over eligibility helped fuel the unrest that exploded in May 2024, when riots in Noumea and elsewhere left 14 people dead and caused about 2.2 billion euros in material damage. The nickel sector, which accounts for about 20% of private-sector jobs and most exports, has still not fully recovered from the upheaval, leaving politics and economic anxiety tightly linked as the vote unfolds.

New Caledonia sits in the southwest Pacific about 1,500 kilometers east of Australia and has a population of roughly 270,000, divided between a large Melanesian Kanak community and a substantial European population, mostly French. The territory has already held three independence referendums, including one in 2021, and each delivered a majority for staying with France. A queue formed outside a polling site in Noumea before voting began.

French and local figures have tried to restart negotiations over the territory’s future. The July 2025 Bougival talks produced a draft roadmap that floated the idea of a future State of New Caledonia within the French realm, though that idea later met resistance in Paris. An alcohol sales ban remained in place alongside the security deployment. A French court’s June 2026 decision to drop charges against pro-independence leader Christian Téin and 13 others over the 2024 unrest also reflected the territory’s divisions.