The Federal Council is the federal cabinet of the Swiss Confederation. Its seven members also serve as the collective head of state and government of Switzerland. Since World War II, the Federal Council is by convention a permanent grand coalition government composed of representatives of the country's major parties and language regions.
While the entire Federal Council is responsible for leading the federal administration of Switzerland, each Councillor heads one of the seven federal executive departments. The president of the Swiss Confederation chairs the council, but exercises no particular authority; rather, the position is one of a first among equals and rotates among the seven Councillors annually.
The Federal Council is elected as a body by the 246 members of the Federal Assembly of Switzerland for a term of four years after each federal parliamentary election, without the possibility of recall or a vote of no confidence. Incumbents are not term-limited and are by convention almost always re-elected; most serve around 8 to 12 years in office.
The chancellor of Switzerland serves as the general chief of staff of the Federal Council, and not as an eighth member.
As of 2026, the members of the Federal Council are, in order of seniority:
The Federal Council was instituted by the 1848 Federal Constitution as the "supreme executive and directorial authority of the Confederation".
When the Constitution was written, constitutional democracy was still in its infancy, and the founding fathers of Switzerland had little in the way of examples. While they drew heavily on the United States Constitution for the organisation of the federal state as a whole, they opted for the collegial rather than the presidential system for the executive branch of government (directorial system). This accommodated the long tradition of the rule of collective bodies in Switzerland. Under the Ancien Régime, the cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy had been governed by councils of pre-eminent citizens since time immemorial, and the later Helvetic Republic (with its equivalent Directorate) as well as the cantons that had given themselves liberal constitutions since the 1830s had also had good experiences with that mode of governance.
Today, only four other states, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Andorra, San Marino, and Nicaragua have collective rather than unitary heads of state. However the collegial system of government has found widespread adoption in modern democracies in the form of cabinet government with collective responsibility.
The 1848 constitutional provision providing for the Federal Council – and indeed the institution of the Council itself – has remained unchanged to this day, even though Swiss society has changed profoundly since.
Free Democratic hegemony, 1848–1891
The 1848 Constitution was one of the few successes of the Europe-wide democratic revolutions of 1848. In Switzerland, the democratic movement was led – and the new federal state decisively shaped – by the Radicals (presently FDP. The Liberals). After winning the Sonderbund War (the Swiss civil war) against the Catholic cantons, the Radicals at first used their majority in the Federal Assembly to fill all the seats on the Federal Council. This made their former war opponents, the Catholic-Conservatives (presently the Christian Democratic People's Party, CVP), the opposition party. Only after Emil Welti's resignation in 1891 after a failed referendum on railway nationalisation did the Radicals decide to co-opt the Conservatives by supporting the election of Josef Zemp.
Emerging coalition government, 1891–1959
The process of involving all major political movements of Switzerland into the responsibility of government continued during the first half of the 20th century. It was hastened by the FDP's and CVP's gradually diminishing voter shares, complemented by the rise of new parties of lesser power at the ends of the political spectrum. These were the Social Democratic Party (SP) on the Left and the Party of Farmers, Traders and Independents (BGB; presently the People's Party, SVP) on the Right. In due course, the CVP received its second seat in 1919 with Jean-Marie Musy, while the BGB joined the council in 1929 with Rudolf Minger. In 1943, during World War II, the Social Democrats were also temporarily included with Ernst Nobs.
The 1959 elections, following the resignation of four councillors, finally established the Zauberformel, the "magical formula" that determined the council's composition during the rest of the 20th century and established the long-standing nature of the council as a permanent, voluntary grand coalition. In approximate relation to the parties' respective strength in the Federal Assembly, the seats were distributed as follows:
Free Democratic Party (FDP/PRD): 2 members,
Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC): 2 members,
Social Democratic Party (SP/PS): 2 members,
Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC): 1 member.