Centre Party (Finland)
registered political party in Finland
The Centre Party (Finnish: Suomen Keskusta [ˈsuo̯men ˈkeskustɑ], Kesk; Swedish: Centern i Finland, C), officially the Centre Party of Finland, is an agrarian political party in Finland.
Ideologically, the Centre Party is positioned in the centre of the political spectrum. It has been described as being liberal. The party's leader is Antti Kaikkonen, who was elected in June 2024 to succeed former minister Annika Saarikko. As of June 2023, the party has been a part of the parliamentary opposition.
Founded in 1906 as the Agrarian League (Finnish: Maalaisliitto; Swedish: Agrarförbundet), the party represented rural communities and supported the decentralisation of political power from Helsinki. In the 1920s, the party emerged as the main rival to the SDP. Kyösti Kallio, the party's first prime minister, held the office for four times between 1922 and 1937. After World War II, the party settled as one of the four major political parties in Finland, alongside the SDP, the National Coalition Party and the Finnish People's Democratic League until the 1980s. Urho Kekkonen served as President of Finland from 1956 to 1982, by far the longest period of any president. The name Centre Party was adopted in 1965 and Centre of Finland in 1988.
“Centre Party (Finland)” enters the record as registered political party in Finland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Centre, Party and Finland can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q506591. VIAF identifies the subject as 295885109. The Library of Congress control number is n82045373. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2023, 1906 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Centre Party (Finland)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.