Reform UK, the political group headed by Nigel Farage, has seen its membership numbers in Wales rocket, the group says. Support for the organisation is growing in Wales and a number of polls have projected Reform could take around 20 seats in the Senedd at the May 2026 election which would be a huge change in terms of politics in Cardiff Bay.
Currently there are 60 seats in the Senedd but at the next election that will increase to 96. There will also be changes to the constituencies MSs represent and the voting system used to elect them. You can see more on that here. Reform has councillors in Wales after three councillors in Torfaen defected to the party but the Senedd elections will be their first Welsh-specific test after gaining four MPs in the general election in July 2024.
Reform UK has told WalesOnline they now have 7,800 members in Wales. Wales spokesman Oliver Lewis said: “Reform’s membership in Wales is surging as we prepare for next year’s next election. Whilst the other parties argue about their failures in office and opposition Reform are organising and ready to offer Wales real change. Reform has all the momentum in Wales and we are only just getting started. Wales is broken. Wales needs Reform.”
The 7,800 figure from Reform would appear to put them ahead of the Conservatives in Wales as it has been reported the Conservatives in Wales now have fewer than 5,000 members – a figure the party did not dispute when we put it to them. Since such figures are not automatically made public this cannot be independently verified.
Asked whether the 5,000 figure was right, and any response they had to Reform’s membership figure claim, a Welsh Conservative spokesman said: “We never discuss membership specifics but you can be assured that the Welsh Conservatives have many thousands of members plus thousands of activists. We have been winning in by-elections across Wales since the general election and are looking forward to taking the fight to our political opponents in the Senedd elections in May 2026.”
The Conservatives are understood to have lost support to Reform at the last Westminster election. In a study of how people voted in the general election in 2024 Cardiff University professors Jac Larner and Richard Wyn Jones looked at exactly what happened to each party. About 39% of those who voted Tory in 2019 stayed with the Conservatives but equal numbers moved to Reform UK while Dr Larner said there were also “substantial” numbers moving to Labour, plenty who did not vote, and a large number of people who voted Conservative in 2019 died before the 2024 election. Dr Larner said the “vast majority” of those who voted Reform UK in 2024’s general election previously voted Conservative. You can read more on that here. Former Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies has also recently written a piece about the threat from Reform UK, saying the party must “evolve or die” and has warned against the Tories becoming a “lighter” version of Reform and saying they must be the “real deal”.
Reform UK is not a political party in the traditional sense as it is a business with Mr Farage and Richard Tice in charge but at their conference in Newport in November Mr Farage said their plan was now to form branches and a traditional structure. He said Wales would become his “biggest priority” ahead of the Senedd elections in May 2026. You can read his interview with us here.
When asked in that interview if he would appoint a leader in Wales, or any policies they would have in any manifesto, he would not answer. Instead he referred to the party as something new and called for people to “give us time” but he admitted the structure will change.
“That will all change. I set it up that way because I didn’t want it to be hijacked, which could very easily happen with political parties. I set it up that way but now the party has reached a level of maturity, I’ve made a promise, I’ve had a vote on it at our national conference, and we will turn it into a completely different structure owned by the members,” he said.