Electronic excitations of polyene cations with chain lengths of up to 101 CH units were investigated as model systems for lightly doped polyacetylene (PA). Since high level ab initio calculations such as complete active space perturbation theory (CASPT2) are limited to systems with about 14 CH units, the performances of time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) were evaluated. It turned out that TDDFT excitations energies are much more accurate for polyene cations than for neutral polyenes. The difference between TDHF and TDDFT excitation energies for the first allowed excited state of C49H51 + is only 0.30 eV with pure DFT and 0.21 eV with a hybrid functional. For open-shell systems, pure DFT is found to be superior to DFT-hybrid functionals because it does not suffer from spin-contamination. Pure TDDFT excitation energies and oscillator strengths for small open-shell polyene cations compare well with high level ab initio results. Excitation energies are found to be almost independent of the geometry, i.e., the size of the defect. Localization of the defect, however, shifts oscillator strengths from the HOMO-LUMO transition to higher lying excited states of the same symmetry. Lightly doped PA is predicted to exhibit several strong absorptions below 1 eV. © 2007 American Chemical Society.