Polling day brings with it strict rules about what we can and cannot say across all our platforms. On 7 May, there’ll be no reporting of issues directly connected to the election, no analysis of the busy campaigning of the previous weeks.
But it won’t be a quiet time for our teams of presenters, correspondents, producers and technical staff. Behind the relative calm, there’ll be a hum of activity as the final preparations are made for our marathon results programme that will tell the full story of how Scotland voted.
Across three floors, the BBC Scotland HQ in Pacific Quay, Glasgow, is being transformed into a broadcasting hub for a live results programme that will air from 9.30am on BBC One Scotland and BBC iPlayer on 8 May.
The all‑day results programme – Election 2026 Scotland – is a huge collective effort, built on months of planning and decades of experience.
When the numbers start to come in, we want our audience to feel informed and engaged in the developing story, whether they dip in through the day for catch-ups or stay with us throughout the programme.
Presented by Martin Geissler with Laura Miller and Gary Robertson in Glasgow, and Rebecca Curran in Holyrood, the programme will combine live declarations, interviews, and reporting from every count location.
There’ll be 160 people at our outside broadcasts alone as well as scores more at Pacific Quay. State-of-the-art graphics and augmented reality will help to animate the story further and steer viewers through the complexities and nuances.
BBC Scotland News online will have breaking news, explainers, and in-depth analyses of the outcomes from individual constituencies and from the regional lists, and BBC Radio Scotland will simulcast Election 2026 Scotland.
For our Gaelic audience, Derek MacKay will be live all day on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal from Inverness with An Taghadh 2026 which will be visualised on the BBC Naidheachdan website. And at 7pm on BBC ALBA Derek A. Morrison will present a live election special, An Taghadh 2026, also from Inverness.
As Scotland decides, our role is clear: to report accurately, to explain what it means, and to do so with the authority and fairness our audience expects.
These are the high standards that have been maintained throughout the campaign during numerous hustings, set-piece interviews, debates, analyses of the key issues, and reporting of the breaking news across all our services, as well as on a range of prominent social media platforms.
Although aspects of this Scottish Parliament election may feel different – it is being contested in a more clearly multi‑party environment than in recent history, and the count will take place during the day rather than through the night – there has been an important constant from the perspective of BBC Scotland.
Our role has been, and remains, to guide audiences through the issues that matter, to explain what is being proposed, to reflect the choices facing voters across the country, and to use all our editorial resources to deliver an ambitious results service with fairness and accuracy.
