General elections were held in Nepal in two phases on 26 November and 7 December 2017 to elect the 275 members of the fifth House of Representatives, the lower house of the Federal Parliament of Nepal.

The election was held alongside the first provincial elections for the seven provincial assemblies.

A political deadlock between the governing Nepali Congress and the winning left-wing coalition over the system used to elect the upper house led to delay in forming the new government.

Following the announcement of the final result by the Election Commission, K. P. Sharma Oli of Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) was sworn in as Prime Minister on 15 February 2018 by the President according to Article 76 (2) of the constitution. He passed a Motion of Confidence on 11 March 2018 with 208 votes.

The previous House of Representatives, elected in May 1999, was dissolved by King Gyanendra on advice of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in May 2002 in order to hold new elections. Elections could not take place due to the ongoing civil war which eventually led King Gyanendra to stage a royal coup in February 2005 after dismissing four Prime Ministers. Following the democracy movement of 2006, the King reinstated the earlier legislature. On 15 January 2007, the House of Representatives was replaced by an Interim Legislature. The Interim Legislature consisted both of members appointed by an agreement between the Seven Party Alliance and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

The Interim Legislature was followed by the first Constituent Assembly whose task was to form a new constitution. The failure of the assembly to write a constitution within the stipulated time led to the formation of the second Constituent Assembly which approved the Constitution of Nepal on 20 September 2015. After the promulgation of constitution, the second Constituent Assembly was converted into a unitary Legislature Parliament. The constitution set the tenure of the Legislature Parliament until 21 January 2018 or the date of filing of nomination for the Pratinidhi Sabha, whichever is earlier. Per this provision, the tenure of the Legislature Parliament ended on 14 October 2017.

A five-member Constituency Delineation Commission was formed under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court Justice Kamal Narayan Das to redraw the constituency boundaries to 165, a reduction from the 240 used in the 2013 elections. It submitted its report to the government on 30 August 2017. The boundaries set by this commission will remain unchanged for the next 20 years as per Article 286 (12).

The 275 members of the legislature were elected by two methods; 165 were elected from single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting and 110 seats were elected by closed list proportional representation from a single nationwide constituency. Each voter received separate ballot papers for the two methods. A party or electoral alliance had to pass the election threshold of 3% of the overall valid vote to be allocated a seat under the proportional method.