Seven Ethiopian groups announced on Sunday, September 20, 2026, that they had formed an alliance seeking to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. Al Jazeera reported that the coalition calls itself the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival and says it intends to establish an inclusive transitional government.
The alliance includes the Amhara Fano National Movement, the Oromo Liberation Army and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Its four other members are the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, the Benishangul Peoples’ Liberation Movement and the Gumuz Peoples’ Democratic Movement.
Reuters reported that the alliance’s statement was read by Fano leader Zemene Kassie on Tigrayan television. “We, the peoples’ forces concerned with the survival of Ethiopia’s peoples, bear the historic responsibility of overthrowing this regime,” the statement said.
The composition matters because some of the signatories have recently been enemies. Fano forces fought alongside the federal government against the TPLF during the 2020-2022 Tigray war, while the Oromo Liberation Army has fought federal forces in Oromia since 2018. That history does not mean every member has fought every other member, but it does make a formal coalition politically significant.
Important divisions remain. Amhara and Tigrayan actors continue to dispute territory in western Tigray, and the coalition’s members do not share a single established political program beyond their opposition to Abiy’s government.
Abiy came to power in 2018 promising political reform. His government released journalists, activists and other political prisoners, welcomed opposition figures back from exile and lifted bans on political organizations.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Abiy the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his peace initiative with neighboring Eritrea and his wider efforts toward international cooperation. That award remains an important part of his international profile, but it preceded the war that erupted in Tigray in November 2020.
The federal government and the TPLF signed the Pretoria cessation-of-hostilities agreement on November 2, 2022. The African Union later highlighted the handover of heavy weapons, restoration of basic services and establishment of an interim regional administration as early achievements of the agreement.
Those gains did not resolve disputes over territory, disarmament or the TPLF’s legal and political status. Fighting broke out again in western Tigray in August 2026, and Al Jazeera reported that the TPLF had declared the Pretoria agreement “effectively dead” in mid-July.
The alliance therefore arrives after the peace framework had already been badly weakened. It also connects the renewed confrontation in Tigray with conflicts that have continued in Amhara and Oromia.
That does not make the coalition a unified national army. Reuters quoted Magnus Taylor, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, warning that cooperation could be obstructed by the weakness of some members, the distances between them and their political differences.
Al Jazeera also quoted Ethiopian academic Eyob Tilahun describing what the participants believe is holding them together. “Those allied forces believe that they all face a survival threat from the government,” he said. That is the alliance’s position, not an independently established fact, but it helps explain why movements with conflicting histories have entered the same coalition.
The federal government’s position also belongs in the account. Reuters reported that many alliance members accuse the government of centralizing power and marginalizing Ethiopia’s regions, while the government says it has established a national dialogue to address political divisions and internal conflicts. Spokespeople for Abiy and the federal government did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on the alliance announcement.
The human stakes extend beyond the contest over Addis Ababa. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 country report, covering events in 2025, documented continued fighting between federal forces and armed groups in Amhara and Oromia, civilian harm from reported drone strikes, displacement and renewed instability around Tigray.
A wider conflict would compound those existing crises. It would also make independent verification more difficult in a country where conflict reporting has repeatedly been restricted and competing sides make sharply different claims about battlefield events and civilian harm.
Two limits should remain clear. The announcement does not prove that the seven groups can coordinate military operations, and it does not establish that a transitional government formed by them would remain cohesive. Both outcomes would require political trust and operational cooperation that the alliance has not yet demonstrated publicly.
What the announcement does establish is narrower but still consequential. Armed movements rooted in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz have formally placed themselves inside one anti-government coalition.
Abiy’s trajectory gives that development its force. He entered office as a reformer in 2018, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, led the country through the Tigray war and signed the Pretoria agreement in 2022. Four years later, the peace framework is under severe pressure and seven armed groups say they are now allied to remove him.
Whether the alliance can achieve that aim remains uncertain. Its creation already shows that Ethiopia’s separate regional conflicts can no longer be understood only as isolated confrontations between the federal government and individual movements.