Legislative elections were held in Austria on 28 September 2008 to elect the 24th National Council, the lower house of Austria's bicameral parliament. The snap election was called after Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) withdrew from the ruling grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) in July. Due to dissatisfaction with the governing parties, the opposition and minor parties were expected to make significant gains. Opinion polling indicated that up to seven parties could potentially win seats.

The SPÖ and ÖVP each suffered their worst election results in history up to this point, losing 6.1 and 8.3 percentage points respectively. The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) captured the largest portion of these lost votes, each recording a six and a half-point swing. The Greens took small losses, while Liberal Forum (LiF) and Citizens' Forum Austria (FRITZ) both fell well short of the 4% electoral threshold, defying earlier expectations that they could enter the National Council. The result was perceived as a success for the right-wing populist and Eurosceptic parties.

Following the elections, Wilhelm Molterer resigned as chairman of the ÖVP and was replaced by agriculture minister Josef Pröll. The Greens' federal spokesman Alexander Van der Bellen, who had served since 1997, also resigned and was succeeded by his deputy Eva Glawischnig. Due to the Liberal Forum's failure to win seats, party founder Heide Schmidt and financier Hans-Peter Haselsteiner both announced their retirement from politics. Less than two weeks after the election, BZÖ leader and governor of Carinthia Jörg Haider died in a car accident.

A coalition between the SPÖ and the ÖVP was agreed upon on 23 November 2008 and was sworn in on 2 December 2008.

On 11 January 2007, the Gusenbauer cabinet (a grand coalition of SPÖ and ÖVP) was sworn into office. The newly formed government was criticised from the beginning from parts of the opposition and left-wing circles in the SPÖ for having failed to push through in the coalition negotiations most of the pledges and promises made in the election campaign.

The SPÖ began to fall back in the polls almost immediately. The government was frequently unable to agree on important decisions: The SPÖ demanded an antedated tax reform in 2009 instead of in 2010, which the ÖVP disagreed on; the proposal to help households hit by inflation with a tax gift of €100 was also denied by the ÖVP. The coalition partners also disagreed on the badly necessary health system reform. In the Tyrolean state election on 8 June 2008 the former ÖVP member Fritz Dinkhauser led his newly founded Citizens' Forum Tyrol to become the second-largest party, causing large losses to ÖVP and SPÖ and small losses to the Greens. Following this, internal criticism within the SPÖ of Gusenbauer grew, leading to the decision to designate infrastructure minister Werner Faymann as its new party leader. According to the plans at that time, Gusenbauer would have remained the leading candidate in the 2010 elections.

On 26 June 2008, Faymann and Gusenbauer wrote a letter to the editor of the leading Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung, declaring they were in favour of referendums on important EU topics, like new treaties after the already ratified Treaty of Lisbon or the accession of Turkey to the European Union. They did this without seeking the approval of either the party leadership or their coalition partner ÖVP; it was widely perceived by Austrian and foreign media as a populist action and in acquiesce to the Eurosceptic position of Kronen Zeitung. On 7 July 2008, ÖVP leader Wilhelm Molterer declared that he could not continue to work with the SPÖ (the precise words with which he opened the news conference were "That's enough!", Es reicht!). The ÖVP declared as the main reasons for the snap elections the change in the SPÖ's position on Europe and the planned dual leadership in the SPÖ, which the ÖVP claimed would make agreement on difficult issues even harder.

The snap election was officially called in a parliamentary session on 9 July 2008 through a joint resolution by SPÖ, ÖVP and Greens, which FPÖ and BZÖ supported; the election date of 28 September 2008 was confirmed by the government and the main committee on 10 July 2008. The term of the legislature was the third-shortest in Austrian history (after 1970–1971 and 1994–1995). SPÖ and ÖVP agreed to a so-called Stillhalteabkommen, an agreement according to which neither of the two parties would try to outvote the other with the votes of the opposition parties, although this agreement was revoked by Faymann on 25 August 2008.