Skip to content
Volím Prahu

Only this section is in English. The rest of the site — candidate profiles, party programmes and our assessments of them — is in Czech. Celý web česky

Can I vote?

The right to vote in Czech municipal elections turns on three things: your citizenship, where your residence is registered, and your age. The check below walks through them. The legal basis for every answer is set out underneath.

Check your case

Three questions. Nothing is sent anywhere — the check runs in your browser.

What citizenship do you hold?

If you hold more than one, answer for the one that helps you most — Czech first, then EU.

What the law says

Section 4(1) of the Act on elections to municipal assemblies sets out two groups of voters. Read closely, it is the second one that matters here.

  • Czech citizens

    Aged at least 18 on the second day of voting and registered for permanent residence in the municipality — in Prague, in the city district whose assembly they are electing.

  • Citizens of another state

    Aged at least 18 on the second day of voting, holding either a permanent residence permit or a registration certificate for temporary residence, registered for residence in the municipality, and — the decisive condition — granted the right to vote by an international treaty that binds the Czech Republic and has been published in the Collection of Laws.

Which treaty, and why it means EU citizens

The only instrument that grants that right is European Union law: Council Directive 94/80/EC gives every EU citizen the right to vote in municipal elections in the member state where they reside, and it entered Czech law through the Treaty of Accession. No comparable treaty exists for any non-EU country. That is why a Ukrainian, Vietnamese, American, Russian or — since Brexit — British citizen cannot vote in Czech municipal elections, no matter how long they have lived here.

The wording of the Act points the same way: the residence document it names for foreign voters is the registration certificate (osvědčení o registraci), which is the document issued specifically to EU citizens.

You do not need to register

This is the single most common piece of out-of-date advice, and it is repeated by guides that were written before the election reform. Until the end of 2025, an EU citizen had to apply to be entered in an addendum to the permanent voter roll kept by their municipal office, and had to do it before a deadline. That addendum no longer exists.

Since 1 January 2026 the Act on election administration has replaced roughly 6,500 local rolls with one central voter list, maintained by the Ministry of the Interior and populated from the basic population registers and the foreign nationals information system. If your residence is registered in Prague and you hold the citizenship and the residence status the Act requires, you are already on it. There is no form to file and no deadline to miss.

How to check that you are on the list

  • Ask at any municipal office in the country — it does not have to be the one for your district.
  • Or check online through the public administration portal, or the election information system, using an electronic identity at assurance level “substantial” or higher.

You are entitled to see what the list records about you, and if something is demonstrably wrong the municipal office has to verify it and correct it.

If you are missing from the list on election day

Say so at the polling station. Where a voter objects that they are not in the polling station’s extract although they ought to be, the commission adds them once the municipal office has confirmed their right to vote in that precinct. Bring your residence document — it makes that confirmation faster.

What takes the right away

  • Serving a custodial sentence or being held in preventive detention.
  • Serving abroad as a professional soldier or a soldier in the reserve.
  • Being deprived of personal liberty in order to protect public health.
  • Having legal capacity restricted specifically as to the right to vote — note that capacity to exercise the right to vote cannot be restricted, so in practice this bars only the right to stand as a candidate.

The Senate election is different

Three of Prague’s Senate constituencies are contested in 2026. Only Czech citizens aged 18 and over vote in the Senate election — EU citizenship does not extend to it, because the treaty that grants the municipal vote covers municipal elections only. If you are an EU citizen you will simply be handed two ballots instead of three.

Sources