Early general elections were held in Italy on 25 September 2022. After the fall of the Draghi government, which led to a parliamentary impasse, President Sergio Mattarella dissolved Parliament on 21 July, and called for new elections. Regional elections in Sicily were held on the same day. The results of the general election showed the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy, a national-conservative party, winning an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament. Meloni was appointed Prime Minister of Italy on 22 October, becoming the first woman to hold the office.

In a record-low voter turnout, Meloni's party became the largest in Parliament with 26% of the vote; as per the pre-election agreement among the centre-right coalition parties, she became the prime ministerial candidate supported by the winning coalition. The League and Forza Italia suffered losses, polling 8% each, and Us Moderates polled below 1%. The centre-left coalition slightly improved its 2018 results in terms of vote share and seats in percentage with the Democratic Party polling 19% and the Greens and Left Alliance passing the 3% threshold; More Europe and Civic Commitment failed to reach the election threshold. The Five Star Movement defied single-digit polls before the campaign and reached 15%. The Action – Italia Viva alliance polled 7%. Among the others to be represented in Parliament were two regionalist parties: South calls North and the South Tyrolean People's Party. Due to the Rosatellum and its mixed electoral system using parallel voting, the centre-right coalition was able to win an absolute majority of seats, despite receiving 44% of the votes, by winning 83% of the single-member districts under the first-past-the-post of the system.

As a result of the 2020 Italian constitutional referendum, the size of Parliament was reduced to 400 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 200 members of the Senate of the Republic to be elected, down from 630 and 315, respectively. In addition, the minimum voting age for the Senate was the same as for the Chamber (18 years old and no longer 25), which marked the first time the two houses had identical electorates.

Observers commented that the results shifted the geopolitics of the European Union, following right wing populist and far-right gains in France, Spain, and Sweden. It was also noted that the election outcome would mark Italy's first far-right-led government and the country's most right-wing government since 1945. The newly elected legislature was seated on 13 October, and proceeded to elect Ignazio La Russa, a known admirer of Benito Mussolini, and Lorenzo Fontana, a strong opponent of LGBT rights, as President of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, respectively. The Meloni Cabinet was sworn in on 22 October, and received parliamentary approval through two votes of confidence (one in each House of Parliament) a few days thereafter.

In the 2018 Italian general election, held on 4 March, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament. The centre-right coalition, in which Matteo Salvini's League emerged as the main political force, won a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, while the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes. The centre-left coalition, led by Matteo Renzi of the governing Democratic Party (PD), came third. Due to the PD and centre-left's poor results, Renzi resigned on 12 March, his place being taken ad interim by Maurizio Martina.

The League continued the Italian nationalist turn it took into the 2018 general election. In October 2018, the League was founded as a sister party to promote Salvini's candidature as Prime Minister of Italy. Political commentators have since described it as a parallel party of the League, with the aim of politically replacing the latter, which had been burdened by a statutory debt of €49 million. The League's statute presented it as a nationalist and souverainist party. On 22 January 2020, four days before the regional elections, Di Maio resigned as the M5S leader, and was replaced ad interim by Vito Crimi.

As a result of the hung parliament, protracted negotiations were required before a new government could be formed. The talks between the M5S and League resulted in the proposal of the self-declared government of change under the leadership of Giuseppe Conte, a university law professor close to the M5S. After some bickering with President Sergio Mattarella, Conte's cabinet, which was dubbed by the media the "first all-populist government" in Western Europe, was sworn in on 1 June.

The 2019 European Parliament election was a win for the League, which obtained 34 percent of the vote and 20 seats, more than any other party in the country. In August 2019, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced a motion of no confidence against Conte after growing tensions within the majority. Many political analysts believe the no confidence motion was an attempt to force early elections to improve the League's standing in the Italian Parliament, ensuring Salvini could become the next Prime Minister. On 20 August, following the parliamentary debate in which he accused Salvini of being a political opportunist who "had triggered the political crisis only to serve his personal interest", Prime Minister Conte resigned his post to President Mattarella. Meanwhile, the M5S started a decline in both opinion polls, deputies and senators, and election results, starting with the 2019 European Parliament election. After the meagre results, Di Maio won a vote of confidence in his leadership and pledged to reform the party. In the general election held in March 2018, the M5S had won 227 deputies and 112 senators; by February 2022, the party had declined to 157 deputies and 62 senators, though it remained the biggest party in the parliament.