Kosovo has a fourth Kurti government, but the institutional crisis is not over

Kosovo’s parliament confirmed a new cabinet under Albin Kurti on 13 September 2026. He received 62 votes in the 120-seat Assembly. That is one more than the simple majority needed to form a government. It is his fourth cabinet. For a country that has held three parliamentary elections since February 2025, the vote looks like an ending. It is not.

Kurti’s party, Vetëvendosje (Self-Determination), came first in the June 2026 election with 53 seats. That is well short of the 61 votes required to govern alone. The extra nine votes came from lawmakers who represent non-majority communities – eight from non-Serb minorities and one Serb deputy, Nenad Rašić. The main Albanian opposition parties – the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) – stayed out of the hall. The Serb List attended and voted against. Opposition parties say they will take the procedure to the Constitutional Court. They argue that the Assembly was declared complete before all deputy-speaker posts were filled.

Why this keeps happening

Kosovo’s crisis is easy to misread as a simple coalition failure. It is a constitutional trap.

A government needs 61 votes. A president needs much more: a quorum of 80 members and, in practice, a two-thirds majority in the first two rounds. Every time parliament cannot elect a president, the country is pushed toward another early election. Kurti’s party has won three legislative contests in 18 months and still cannot lock in the head of state. In late August he appeared close to a deal with the LDK to back law professor Bekim Sejdiu for president. Within a day, six LDK deputies said they would not follow their leader. The presidential vote has no firm date. If it fails, Kosovo faces a fourth snap election in two years.

The longer story began after the February 2025 election. Vetëvendosje was the largest party but could not assemble 61 votes. Attempts to elect an Assembly speaker collapsed again and again. The Constitutional Court was drawn in repeatedly. Two bids to form a government in October and November 2025 failed with 56 votes each. Parliament was dissolved. Voters were called back in December 2025 and again in June 2026. Budgets, EU-related laws and ordinary administration have been interrupted in between. Brussels has said Kosovo needs stable institutions if it wants candidate status and the money that comes with the EU growth plan. Those files have waited while Pristina argued over chairs.

What Kurti says, and what the opposition hears

Before Sunday’s vote Kurti did not offer a new programme. He said repeated elections had only interrupted the same government, and that the job now was to restore “security and well-being.” EU candidate status, he said, remains the main strategic goal. The opposition hears something else: a majority that treats procedure as optional, keeps the same ministers, and still cannot make the compromise required for a president. PDK has already said the new cabinet as well as the way the Assembly was constituted will go to the Court.

For readers outside the Balkans, the stakes are practical. Kosovo is young, poor by European standards, and still unrecognised by Serbia and five EU members. A country that cannot elect a president cannot ratify agreements on a normal timetable, cannot present a reliable partner to NATO and the EU, and keeps asking voters to settle fights that the parties will not settle with each other. Kurti IV ends one deadlock – there is again a cabinet with a parliamentary majority. The deeper deadlock is unchanged: the party that wins elections cannot finish the state without votes it does not have, and the parties that hold those votes will not give them without a price Kurti has so far refused to pay.

The article by EUalive’s partner IBNA can be found here.

Caption: Acting Prime Minister of Kosovo and leader of Vetevendosje (LVV) party Albin Kurti (R) celebrates with supporters in Pristina, Kosovo, 7 June 2026. Early projections indicate a victory for Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s party on the 7 June snap parliamentary election. EPA/GEORGI LICOVSKI