The 2026 Texas House of Representatives election will be held on November 3, 2026, alongside elections for the state senate. The winners of this election will serve in the 90th legislative session. All 150 seats in the Texas House of Representatives are up for election.
Primary elections were held on March 3, 2026, with runoff primaries scheduled for May 26, 2026 in districts where no primary candidate secured a majority of the vote.
Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since the 2002 election. The 2024 election marked a considerable shift towards the right among the membership of the House of Representatives. Fifteen Republicans lost their primary elections, with the majority of their challengers backed by governor Greg Abbott over the issue of school vouchers. Republicans flipped two seats in the heavily-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley in the general election, increasing their majority to 88 out of 150 seats, with the Democrats holding the other 62.
During the regular session, the legislature passed a number of bills to advance a conservative agenda. The session began, however, with the election of Dustin Burrows as Speaker of the House with the support of most Democrats and some Republicans, over more insurgent Republican David Cook.
Long a priority of the most conservative Republicans in the legislature, especially in the Senate, that had historically faced major hurdles in the more moderate House, the passage of school voucher legislation marked the most significant sign of the conservative shift of the chamber in recent years. In 2021, only 29 Republicans had voted in favor of vouchers. Greg Abbott began pushing the issue more strongly in 2022, gaining support from many incumbent Republicans and funding the primary challengers of those who still opposed it. By the time the measure came up for a vote in the 2025 regular session, only two Republicans, Gary VanDeaver and former Speaker Dade Phelan, voted against it, alongside all present Democrats. The bill allocates $1 billion of public funds for children to attend private schools or for their parents to homeschool them, prioritized based on income and disability. President Donald Trump, lent his support to the effort and endorsed all Republican legislators who voted in favor of the bill should they seek reelection.
Other conservative hallmarks related to education included requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, banning diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from public schools, and restricting free speech on college campuses in the wake of Gaza war protests at universities. Other new laws included the tightening of bail, restricting the rights of transgender people, easing access to vaccine exemption, and cutting property taxes. On a more bipartisan basis, the legislature passed bills to alleviate water supply issues, clarify medical exceptions in the state's abortion ban, and ease the construction of housing in amidst the state's growing housing crisis.
Tort reform legislation backed by the influential Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), failed due to opposition from the hardline wing of the Republican caucus.
Greg Abbott had already planned to call a special session to address legislation that did not pass in time during the regular session or that Abbott vetoed, such as a ban on THC products, as well as to address new issues such as deadly flooding in central Texas. At the request of President Donald Trump, Abbott added congressional redistricting to the agenda with the goal of flipping five Democratic-held U.S. House seats to the Republicans in the 2026 elections. In response, most House Democrats left the state on August 3 in order to prevent the establishment of a quorum in the chamber, blocking all legislative activity. The walkout lasted for the entire remaining duration of the first special session, after which Abbott immediately called a second one. Democrats returned to the chamber for the second session. The legislature passed new congressional maps shortly afterwards, and they later passed additional legislation to punish lawmakers who break quorum in the future.
In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump won 96 districts, while Democrat Kamala Harris won 54 districts. Democrats now hold 8 districts in which Trump won, while Republicans hold no districts won by Harris. Republicans made massive gains across the historically-Democratic Rio Grande Valley region in 2024. Most of the Democratic-held districts won by Trump come from this region. Republicans have fielded candidates in 6 of these districts.