Holyrood

Holyrood refers to the Scottish Parliament building on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, opened in 2004 after a construction project that overran from an initial estimate of £40 million to a final cost of £414 million. Designed by Enric Miralles, the building is named after the adjacent Holyrood Palace. It houses the 129-seat chamber of the Scottish Parliament, established by the Scotland Act 1998 following the 1997 devolution referendum. The term Holyrood is used as a metonym for the Scottish Parliament as an institution, in the same way Westminster refers to the UK Parliament. Elections use the Additional Member System (AMS): voters cast two ballots, one for a constituency MSP under first-past-the-post and one for a regional party list.

The 7 May 2026 Holyrood election transformed the chamber's political composition. The SNP won 58 seats (down from 64 in 2021), Labour won 17, Reform UK won 17 — the first hard-right populist caucus in Scottish Parliament history — the Scottish Greens won 12, the Liberal Democrats 7, and the Scottish Conservatives fell to 12 seats, losing all five constituency seats they had held. Turnout fell to 53.0%, down 10.5 points on 2021. Reform UK's 17 seats all came from regional lists, making it jointly the second-largest opposition party alongside Labour. The Greens' Lorna Slater won Edinburgh Central in a constituency upset, defeating Angus Robertson.

The post-2026 Holyrood is a more fragmented chamber than any previous iteration. Five parties hold more than 10 seats each. The SNP must build case-by-case support across the Greens and others to pass legislation; Reform UK and the Conservatives form a combined 29-seat right-of-centre bloc that, while short of a blocking minority on its own, complicates cross-party consensus. The chamber's internal dynamics will define the constitutional debate on Scottish independence for the remainder of this parliamentary term.