While extensive research shows that economic crises can cause governments to collapse, little attention has been paid to how such conditions influence the formation of new governments. In this paper, I address this gap by examining whether the governments that form during economic crises differ from those that form in stable times. Based on insights from research on government termination, party goals and economic voting, I argue that we ought to expect economic crises to affect government formation by creating opposing incentives for parties: to either cooperate broadly and form surplus governments, or to limit cooperation and form smaller, more ideologically cohesive cabinets. However, using data on 28 European democracies from 1945 until 2022, I find that parties are largely unresponsive to economic conditions when forming governments. Despite previous research showing that certain government types are more vulnerable during crises, parties appear no more likely to avoid them than in non-crisis periods.