Nicola Sturgeon will stand down as Scotland’s First Minister after eight years in the role.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced her resignation as the leader of Scotland's national government, according to media reports.

The Scottish National Party leader said that she knew "in my head and in my heart" that this was the right time to step down.

She made announcement at a hastily-arranged news conference in Edinburgh.

It is not thought that her departure will be immediate, allowing time for a successor to be elected.

Ms Sturgeon has been the country’s longest-serving First Minister after taking over from Alex Salmond in November 2014 .

She said: “Since my very first moments in the job, I have believed that part of serving well would be to know, almost instinctively, when the time is right to make way for someone else.

“And when that time came to have the courage to do so, even if to many across the country and in my party it might feel too soon.

Several UK media outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian newspaper, had reported Sturgeon's planned resignation. The BBC reported a source close to Sturgeon as saying: "She's had enough."

Sturgeon suffered a major setback in November when the UK's Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government needed approval from the British parliament to hold a second referendum on independence.

The Scottish leader had also recently become embroiled in a dispute over transgender policies, with the legislature in Edinburgh passing a bill to make it easier for people to change their legal gender. 

The UK government used a rarely invoked power to block the law, arguing that it could undermine UK-wide equality legislation guaranteeing access to single-sex spaces for women and girls.