Roberto Vannacci’s Futuro Nazionale (National Future) has overtaken Forza Italia in voting intention and is now Italy’s fourth-largest party, seven months after it was founded.
An SWG poll carried out for the broadcaster La7 and published on August 31 put the movement on 7.5 per cent, ahead of Forza Italia on 7.1 per cent and the League on 5.7 per cent. The same survey put Brothers of Italy first on 26.8 per cent, the Democratic Party on 20.7 per cent and the Five Star Movement on 12.7 per cent.
A BiDiMedia survey at the end of August had already shown Futuro Nazionale on 8 per cent.
Both readings place it behind only Brothers of Italy, the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement.
The former paratroop general registered the party on February 6 after leaving Matteo Salvini’s League on February 3. He had stood on the League list as an independent at the 2024 European election, joined the party in early 2025 and was made its deputy secretary.
A founding congress in Rome on June 13-14 presented him as the voice of voters who want a harder line on migration, crime and what he calls traditional values. The two-day assembly at the Auditorium della Conciliazione adopted a statute, a programme and a party anthem.
Salvini called him ungrateful and said the matter was a closed chapter. Vannacci answered that it was Salvini who had betrayed him.
Vannacci says he represents the “real right” and has so far ruled out joining Giorgia Meloni’s coalition, from which his support is largely drawn.
He gained prominence after writing a best-selling book, Il mondo al contrario (The World Upside Down), in which he attacked what he saw as official dogma on gender, family and identity.
It caused the Defence Ministry to suspend him from duty for 11 months in February 2024, with half pay and a matching loss of seniority. The regional administrative court for Lazio rejected his appeal that November.
The row made him a national figure.
Standing for the League at the 2024 European election he took a large personal vote of about half a million preferences, the second highest of any candidate in Italy. Supporters cite a long career in special forces, a plain military manner and a strong stance on mass immigration, including “remigration” of people he says have not integrated.
Critics on the Left still call him an extremist.
The numbers are a problem for Meloni before the 2027 election.
Polls show her three-party alliance trailing a centre-left bloc unless Futuro Nazionale is counted in.
Adding Vannacci would lift the right above 47 per cent in some surveys; leaving him out leaves the incumbent short. A BiDiMedia scenario at the end of August put the centre-right with Futuro Nazionale on 47.2 per cent against 44.7 per cent for the opposition bloc, and on 39.2 per cent without it.
He is taking votes from both the League and Brothers of Italy, and a smaller slice from former abstainers.
Whether he stays outside or bargains his way in will decide if the record-breaking Meloni government has a path to a second term. The administration passed 1,410 days in office at the end of August, making it the longest-serving of the Italian Republic.
Vannacci was an Army incursore, one of Italy’s special-forces operators, in the 9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment “Col Moschin”.
He led detachments in Somalia, Rwanda and Yemen, later commanded the whole regiment from 2011 to 2013, and in Afghanistan was the first commander of Task Force 45, the Italian special-operations group at Herat and Farah. He also served as deputy commander of the Joint Special Forces Operations Command and as chief of staff of NATO special forces in Kabul.
As a brigadier he ran the Folgore parachute brigade and, in 2017, the Italian contingent in the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition in Iraq. He left as a divisional general, decorated by the United States with the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit.
Since the split he has sat in the European Parliament outside the group system, first as a non-attached member and, from February 24, with the Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
Italy, SWG poll:
FdI-ECR: 27%
PD-S&D: 21%
M5S-LEFT: 13%
FN-ESN: 8% (+1)
FI-EPP: 7%
AVS-LEFT|G/EFA: 7%
LEGA-PfE: 6%
Azione-RE: 3%
IV-RE: 2%
+E-RE: 1%
NM-EPP: 1%
ORA!-*: 1%+/- vs. 29 July 2026 – 03 August 2026
Fieldwork: 26-31 August 2026
Sample size: 1,200— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) August 31, 2026
