DUBLIN — Ireland’s prime minister, Enda Kenny, announced on Wednesday that Parliament would be dissolved and a general election held on Feb. 26.

Mr. Kenny had been fast approaching a legal deadline of March 9 to dissolve Parliament and call an election. His decision was signed by the president, Michael D. Higgins, on Wednesday in a largely formal gesture. There was speculation in November that Mr. Kenny would call for an election but he delayed the move, in part to avoid coinciding with a politically delicate inquiry into the European Central Bank’s role in the collapse of Ireland’s banking sector in 2010.

Mr. Kenny is widely expected to be re-elected, given the country’s strong economic recovery under the coalition government he has led for the past five years. If he wins, he would be the first leader of his center-right Fine Gael party to win a second term since the Irish Free State was established in 1922.