Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister on 22 June 2026, less than two years after Labour's landslide win in 2024. A scandal over Peter Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador had already cost him his chief of staff and communications director. Then on 7 May Labour was decimated in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections, losing 38 councils, and ministers began to quit. Andy Burnham, back in Parliament through a Makerfield by-election, won the leadership unopposed after 322 of 403 Labour MPs nominated him, and became prime minister on 20 July. No general election was held, and none is required until 2029.

On 28 February 2026, a joint US-Israeli strike killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials. Iran retaliated across the region, and protests broke out worldwide, most violently in Pakistan, where 20 to 25 people were killed.

On 8 March the 88-member Assembly of Experts elected his son Mojtaba. The constitutional process was followed, but with remarkable speed and reported IRGC pressure, and a revolution built on rejecting monarchy has now handed power from father to son. Mojtaba hasn't been seen in public since March, and a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire collapsed on 8 July.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar left the PDP in July 2025 to build a united opposition around the African Democratic Congress, with Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, against President Bola Tinubu in the January 2027 election. It fell apart. Two aspirants called the ADC primary fraudulent, and by June Obi and Kwankwaso had left for the Nigeria Democratic Congress. Tinubu's FCT minister Nyesom Wike is enjoying it, arguing the presidency should stay in the South until 2031 under Nigeria's informal North-South rotation, which rules out Atiku, a northerner. INEC published all 19 presidential candidates' credentials in early August.

Keiko Fujimori is Peru's ninth president in ten years. Most of her predecessors resigned, were forced out by protests, attempted a self-coup, or were removed by Congress, most recently José Jerí by a 75-24 censure vote in February 2026.

The 12 April first round, with 35 candidates, was chaotic. Late ballots in Lima kept 52,000 to 63,000 people from voting, and far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga alleged fraud and called for an insurgency. Observers found no basis for his claims, and he was later criminally charged. Fujimori beat Roberto Sánchez in the 7 June runoff by 0.27 points and was inaugurated on 28 July.

On 11 May 2026 the Philippine House impeached Vice President Sara Duterte 257 to 25, making her the first official impeached twice, and her Senate trial began on 6 July. Her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, is in ICC custody in The Hague after judges confirmed crimes against humanity charges over his drug war on 23 April. Behind both cases is a Marcos-Duterte power struggle, sharpened by President Marcos Jr.'s expansion of US military access under EDCA, which the Dutertes oppose.