Former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini's social-democratic Voice – Social Democracy (Hlas-SD), which split from Smer-SD in 2020, came in third with 27 seats.

The classical liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) won eleven seats, tying the 2012 election as their worst result since the party's founding.

[4] Prior to the previous election, the Slovak Republic experienced a period of political turbulence, triggered by the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in 2018.

[9] All citizens 21 years of age or older on the election day and are permanent residents of Slovakia, were allowed to run as candidates except for prisoners, convicted felons, and those declared ineligible to perform legal acts by court.

2023 election issues included high inflation, Slovakia's position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the related global energy crisis, COVID-19, internal fights within the previous government, corruption scandals and immigration;[22][23] questions of rights and values (particularly LGBTQ+ issues) were covered during the campaign by Al Jazeera English, BBC[23][24] and Pravda.

[25] By the week of the election, popularity polls indicated that the two strongest parties were the Progressive Slovakia (led by pro-European Michal Šimečka, a member of the European Parliament (EP) since 2019, and EP Vice-President since 2022, who has committed to maintaining support for Ukraine) and Smer-SD (headed by Robert Fico, three-time former prime minister, who has committed to ending Slovakia's support for Ukraine); however, neither appeared to be commanding a majority, and the BBC projected neither would top 20% of the vote,[24] so each would have to attempt to build a coalition with other parties to achieve the majority needed to rule.

As analysts predicted, Peter Pellegrini's Hlas-SD played the role of kingmaker in the "jockeying" that characterized the election's aftermath.

On 3 October, she held "informal discussions" with PS's leader Michal Šimečka about the possibility of a PS-led coalition before meeting with Pellegrini and KDH's Milan Majerský.

"[33] One week later, on 19 October, Čaputová announced she would not approve the coalition government's nominee for Minister of Environment, Rudolf Huliak (SNS), due to his avowed climate change denialism.