Austria's far-right party, which has been tasked for the first time with trying to form the next government, has been part of ruling coalitions several times before in the Alpine EU member.
But each time, the coalition involving the Freedom Party (FPÖ) -- founded in the 1950s by former Nazis -- has collapsed.
First steps with the left
In 1983, the FPÖ broke a glass ceiling when the left-wing Social Democrats (SPÖ) invited it into a coalition.
The FPÖ had gained less than five percent in the national election, but its support was enough to give the SPÖ, which won 48 percent, a parliamentary majority, and itself some credibility.
The FPÖ held the vice-chancellorship, trade, justice and defence portfolios, but trouble erupted in 1985 when one of its ministers went to the airport to welcome a war criminal freed after serving time in prison in Italy.
Things worsened a year later when the party elected a radical, Joerg Haider, president. The SPÖ ended the coalition and called early parliamentary elections.
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The FPÖ actually managed to double its result in that poll, but it was more than 13 years before it would return to power.
European shock
In 1999, the FPÖ finished second in parliamentary elections, scoring almost 27 percent, behind the SPÖ.
But after the SPÖ failed to form a majority coalition, the third-placed conservative People's Party (ÖVP) convinced the FPÖ to let it take the chancellery in exchange for key portfolios.
The FPÖ's return to power in 2000 provoked months of unprecedented EU diplomatic sanctions and mass protests at home.
In 2005, Haider founded a new, less radical, party, while the FPÖ was exiled into opposition under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, a former neo-Nazi.
Corruption scandal
More than a decade later in 2017, the FPÖ managed to return to power in a coalition under charismatic ÖVP leader Sebastian Kurz.
The government passed a raft of anti-immigration measures -- many of which were overturned by the country's Supreme Court.
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The then-foreign minister Karin Kneissl also caused outrage by inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to her wedding, just months after the UK accused Moscow of poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain.
A spectacular corruption scandal, dubbed Ibizagate, brought down that government after one and a half years in office.
Video footage secretly filmed on the Spanish resort island of Ibiza showed FPÖ leader and vice chancellor Strache offering public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece, in exchange for campaign help.
Strache resigned from his posts and the FPÖ's sharp-tongued ideologue, Herbert Kickl, took over the party in 2021.
Tapping into voter anxieties over migration, the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state of the economy, the FPÖ's popularity surged in line with that of other far-right parties across Europe.
In September, the FPÖ topped national elections for the first time, with almost 29 percent of the vote.
Conservative-led talks to form a government without the FPÖ failed over the weekend, clearing the way for Kickl to lead coalition negotiations with the ÖVP.
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