Overview

South Australia's Legislative Council is made up of 22 members serving staggered eight-year terms, with half elected at alternating elections. As in New South Wales (which likewise has staggered terms) and now Western Australia (which doesn't), members are elected at large, rather than for multi-member regions as in Victoria. The quota for election is 8.33%, making the system less conducive for minor parties than in New South Wales (where 21 members are elected from a quota of 4.55%) and Western Australia (37 from 2.63%), but more so than the Senate, with its 14.29% quotas at ordinary half-Senate elections. The election will be the third held since the abolition of group voting tickets, which remain only in Victoria.

Labor won five seats in 2022, a feat it last achieved at the 1989 election, which proved the end of an era with a hitherto typical result of Labor five, Liberal five and Democrats one. Elections since have returned two to four cross-bench members, the first being in 2006 when Nick Xenophon's “No Pokies” ticket won two seats. The Greens also won their first seat in 2006, assisted by the effective demise of the Australian Democrats, while Family First maintained a winning run that scored them seats at four successive elections from 2002 to 2014.

The Greens have since won a single seat at five successive elections, while Xenophon's outfit, eventually known as SA-Best, performed more modestly from his move to federal politics in 2007 until his attempted return in 2018, when SA-Best scored two upper house seats while failing completely in the lower house. The Xenophon phenomenon looked to be extinct as of the 2022 election, leaving enough room for Labor to win a fifth seat while One Nation also won a seat for the first time.

The combined results of 2018 and 2022 left the Malinauskas government facing numbers of Labor nine, Liberal eight, Greens two, SA-Best two and One Nation one. There have since been four party resignations, three from members whose terms are shortly to expire: Frank Pangallo, who quit SA-Best in December 2023, joined the Liberals in August 2025, and will now run as their candidate for the lower house seat of Waite; Jing Lee, who quit the Liberal Party in January 2025 and will seek re-election under her Better Community banner; and Tammy Franks, who quit the Greens in May 2025. Also in May 2025 came the resignation from One Nation of Sarah Game, whose term extends to 2030.

Labor candidates

Labor is defending four seats from the 2018 result, to which it added five with its improved performance in 2022. The only one of the four not on the ticket for the coming election is Irene Pnevmatikos, who resigned in October 2023 due to ill health.

At the head of the ticket is Emily Bourke, a former staffer to Jay Weatherill who entered parliament at the 2018 election. Bourke also headed the ticket on that occasion despite emerging as a candidate barely more than a month out from the election, following the late withdrawal of her Right faction colleague Leesa Vlahos. Vlahos had been slated to move to the upper house from her lower house seat of Taylor, but abandoned the plan after being dogged by an aged care patient abuse scandal for which she bore responsibility as Disabilities Minister.

Bourke was immediately elevated to shadow assistant minister and further promoted to the shadow ministry in April 2021, though she was moved down a rung to assistant minister after the 2022 election to make room for independent Geoff Brock. She was elevated to the ministry in January 2025 in emergency services, correctional services and recreation, sport and racing, and further promoted to infrastructure and transport the following September.

Irene Pnevmatikos was the only Left member elected in 2018, and the vacancy created by her retirement in October 2023 was duly filled by a factional colleague, Mira El Dannawi. El Dannawi is a former assistant director of Modbury Community Children’s Centre and the first Muslim to serve in state parliament.

Third on the ticket is Justin Hanson, a former Tea Tree Gully councillor and legal officer with the Right faction Australian Workers Union. Hanson filled the vacancy created in February 2017 by the retirement of Gerry Kandelaars, and was elected from second on the ticket in 2018. His preselection was reportedly secured through a split in the Left that won him support from opponents of rival nominee Jamie Newlyn, state secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia.

The circumstances of the 2018 election disturbed the factional balance by giving the Right three out of the four seats won by Labor, which has been rectified with the elevation to fourth position of Left faction newcomer Hilton Gumbys, a defence industry fitter and machinist aligned with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

The loser from Gumbys' elevation is Right faction incumbent Clare Scriven, reduced to the precarious fifth position after entering parliament from fourth in 2018. A former ministerial adviser and state manager of the Australian Forest Products Association, Scriven was immediately elevated to the party's deputy upper house leadership after the 2018 election, and has served as Minister for Forest Industries and Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development since the March 2022 election win. Scriven was one of two Labor upper house members to support Liberal member Ben Hood's bill to limit access to abortion in September 2024, together with Tung Ngo.

The five Labor members serving ongoing terms are, in order of their position on the 2022 ticket, Kyam Maher of the Left, who came to parliament in 2012, served in the Weatherill ministry from 2015 to 2018, has served as Attorney-General since the 2022 election, and succeeded Susan Close as deputy leader in September 2025; Tung Ngo of the Right, who has served since 2014; Reggie Martin of the Right, who came to parliament at the 2022 election; Ian Hunter of the Left, who entered parliament in 2006 and served in the Weatherill ministry from 2011 to 2018; and Russell Wortley of the Right, who entered parliament in 2006 and served in the Weatherill ministry from 2011 to 2013, and as President of the Legislative Council from 2014 to 2018.

Liberal candidates

The Liberals won four seats in both 2018 and 2022, with none of the former cohort to appear on the ticket at the coming election. David Ridgway and Stephen Wade have since retired; Jing Lee quit the party in January 2025, and will run under her own Better Community banner; and Terry Stephens, who has served as the chamber's President throughout the past term, will retire at the election.

The top four positions on the ticket are all held by factional conservatives, led by Ben Hood, who filled former Health Minister Stephen Wade's vacancy in March 2023. A former Mount Gambier councillor, Hood ran unsuccessfully against independent member Troy Bell in Mount Gambier in 2022. He won the preselection ballot to succeed Wade with 119 votes to 87 for moderate-aligned state party vice-president Leah Grantham, despite then leader David Speirs' preference that he run again in Mount Gambier. His sister, Lucy Hood, holds the lower house seat of Adelaide for Labor, and has served since September as Environment Minister.

Hood has been swiftly promoted, becoming a shadow assistant minister in August 2023 and entering the shadow ministry in August 2024. He initially took on infrastructure and transport, government accountability and regional roads, exchanging the latter for industrial relations and hospitality in January 2025. Meanwhile, he burnished his conservative credentials with a private members' bill to limit abortion access, which was voted down in September by ten votes to nine. There were suggestions in November that Hood might join Ashton Hurn as deputy on a cross-factional leadership ticket, but party rules required that both positions be held by members of the lower house. He became Shadow Treasurer when Hurn became leader the following month through a portfolio swap with Sam Telfer, who was demoted to infrastructure and transport.

The other Liberal seeking re-election is Heidi Girolamo, who filled David Ridgway's vacancy in August 2021. Girolamo takes second place on the ticket despite the efforts of Senator Alex Antic, who favoured rival conservatives Thea Hennessey, Playford mayor Glenn Docherty (who withdrew his nomination), and Belinda Crawford-Marshall. This reflected division within the conservative camp between Antic and federal Barker MP Tony Pasin on the one hand, and former federal Boothby MP Nicolle Flint on the other.

Girolamo was promoted to the shadow ministry after the 2022 election defeat and replaced Jing Lee as deputy upper house leader in January 2025. Her initial portfolios were finance and trade and investment, with the latter exchanged for disabilities, communities and youth in January 2023. She further gained education in January 2025, before moving to health when Ashton Hurn became leader in December 2025.

Third on the ticket is Rowan Mumford, a business director, former state party president and unsuccessful candidate against independent Dan Cregan in Kavel in 2022.

At number four is Thea Hennessey, co-owner of a construction business and part-time policy adviser.

The only moderate on the ticket is KD Singh, an Adelaide financial planner who emigrated from India in 2008. Singh holds the fifth position, which has not availed the party since 2002.

Another conservative, state party women's council president Belinda Crawford-Marshall, is sixth.

The four Liberal members serving ongoing terms are, in order of their 2022 ticket positions, Michelle Lensink, a factional moderate who has served since 2003, holding the human services portfolio through the Liberals' period in government from 2018 to 2022 and remaining on the front bench in opposition; Dennis Hood, who was elected for Family First in 2006 and moved to the Liberals after the failure of its successor party Australian Conservatives in 2018, winning promotion to the shadow ministry in July 2025; Nicola Centofanti, who entered parliament in 2020 and has served in the shadow ministry since 2022; and Laura Curran, a conservative who entered parliament in 2022.

Other candidates

The Greens' seat in 2018 was won by Tammy Franks, who quit the party in May 2025. Franks did not contest the party's preselection in 2024, but later said she had made way for parties motivated by “ambition and self-interest”, and that she was considering running as an independent. The ticket is now headed by Melanie Selwood, former Adelaide Hills deputy mayor and chief-of-staff to the party's remaining upper house member, Robert Simms. Second on the ticket is Katie McCusker, office manager to Senator Barbara Pocock.

Having quit the Liberal Party in January 2025, Jing Lee is seeking re-election under the Better Communities banner. Lee was born in Malaysia and entered parliament in 2010, serving as parliamentary secretary through the Liberals' term in office from 2018 to 2022. Despite winning promotion to the shadow ministry and deputy upper house leadership after the 2022 election, Lee was expected to lose a looming preselection at the time she quit the party. She had lost support among the increasingly ascendant conservatives after it emerged she had contacts with the pro-Beijing SA Xinjiang Association, and when she complained of being pressured into reneging on a pairing arrangement over a bill to limit access to abortion.

One Nation's candidate is Carlos Quarebma, Victor Harbor councillor, construction business owner and the party's state president.

Sarah Game won One Nation's first ever seat in South Australia in 2022, but quit the party in May 2025 and launched her own Fair Go for Australians party. The party initially endorsed Adelaide councillor Henry Davis as its lead candidate, but he was replaced in December 2025, which he said he learned of upon reading it in The Advertiser. At around the same time, Davis convened a meeting of the party's incorporated association, at which he was the only member present, and declared that Game and her key allies were no longer members due to non-payment of their fees. Davis's replacement was Jake Hall-Evans, managing director of a signage and graphic business and the Liberals' federal candidate for Hindmarsh in 2019.

Former Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras will make another run as an independent after polling 0.86% on his “Real Change” ticket in 2022. As The Advertiser describes it, Pallaras was “promoted by then Premier Mike Rann as the state's answer to famed Mafia crime-buster Elliot Ness”, and is “gaining a new statewide profile holding True Crime events”