This guide was originally published by PassBlue on 18 November 2025. It was written by 1 for 8 Billion’s Ben Donaldson and has been updated to reflect the official start of the race.
As the United Nations gears up to select its next leader for the 2027-2031 term, here are the key rules and conventions to guide the process. The basics of the process are outlined in the UN Charter, Article 97, which states, “The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”
For the UN’s first 70 years, the decision was dominated by the five permanent members of the Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States) with no input from the wider UN membership on candidates and no formal nomination process. During this period, the General Assembly’s role was viewed as rubber-stamping the Security Council’s choice.
Despite the General Assembly asking for more transparency in the 1990s, it wasn’t until 2015-16 that the selection process was dragged out of the shadows, facilitated by General Assembly resolution 69-321. This brought a new era of transparency, providing a public list of candidates, vision statements and candidate hearings in the General Assembly, where all countries and civil society participated. The process involved 13 candidates from different regions competing for the position, culminating in the appointment of António Guterres as the UN’s ninth secretary-general. (He was reappointed for a second term, 2022-2026, with no competition.)
Since 2015, the Assembly has consolidated and built on the rules through a series of resolutions. This guide brings together the agreed rules while reflecting on past practices and conventions that are likely to influence the upcoming race. Unless otherwise stated, the elements laid out below reflect consensus-agreed positions adopted in the Assembly.
Starting the race
The president of the General Assembly and the (monthly rotating) president of the Security Council jointly run the selection process.
The race will officially begin when the joint presidents send a letter to all member states calling for the nomination of candidates. This step took place on 25 November 2025 (the window for the start date was set by the General Assembly to be the last quarter of 2025).
The letter invites nominations from member states and outlines the guiding principles and key rules of the selection process.
No official candidates could exist before this letter was sent, although some member states have announced their intention to nominate candidates. See 1 for 8 Billion’s candidate monitoring page for more information as the race progresses.
Nominations
Nominations must be submitted to the joint presidents.
Candidates must be nominated by one member state or by a group of member states.
Each member state may nominate only one candidate, individually or jointly with other states.
Candidates do not need to be a citizen of the state or states that submit their nomination.
As part of their nomination, candidates are expected to provide a vision statement, a CV and disclose the extent and sources of all funding associated with their candidature.
Candidates with UN jobs have been instructed by the GA to consider suspending their work in the UN system during the campaign to avoid any conflict of interest that may arise from their functions and adjacent advantages.
The General Assembly has invited nominations to be presented in a timely manner. Groups of states have tried to firm this up to ensure sufficient time for candidates to consult with stakeholders; for example, through the suggestion of April 1 as a cut-off date for nominations, but such suggestions have not been adopted by the Assembly. So, unless the joint letter starting the process addresses this point, candidates can be nominated at any time during the process; however, given the widespread interest in early nominations, a late nomination may adversely affect a candidate’s chance of success.
The General Assembly, as well as world leaders through the Pact for the Future, have encouraged all states to consider nominating women candidates. Beyond these documents, research conducted by New York University and Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, in partnership with 1 for 8 Billion, show that there are at least 92 member states that have made a strong vocal commitment to appoint a woman secretary-general. (Brazil, for example, has already stated its backing that a woman be selected.)
The GA has encouraged all states to publicize the call for nominations, including with civil society and other stakeholders with the aim of identifying potential candidates.
Circulating candidacies, maintaining candidate details, withdrawing candidacies
The joint presidents will inform member states as nominations are received. In the 2016 race, most nominations were forwarded by the joint presidents to all member states on the same day that the nomination was received.
The GA has asked the joint presidents to publish a dedicated, public website for the race, with the following information for each candidate: name, nominating state(s), vision statement, curriculum vitae and campaign financing disclosures.
Given that the instruction for the joint presidents to “maintain and regularly update” a public repository of information, candidates should be expected to keep the joint presidents informed of changes to their candidacy, such as an increased source of funding, so the presidents can maintain accurate and current information publicly.
A nominating member state may withdraw a candidate at any time during the process.
If a candidate withdraws, the nominating member state may subsequently nominate another candidate.
Person specifications and regional considerations
Drawing on language in Article 101(3) of the UN Charter, multiple GA resolutions as well as the 2015 and 2021 joint letters state that the secretary-general should embody “the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity.”
Additionally, the resolutions and joint letters state that candidates should also have “a firm commitment to the purposes and principles of the United Nations, proven leadership and managerial abilities, extensive experience in international relations and strong diplomatic, communication and multilingual skills.”
Another expectation relates to candidates’ independence. Article 100 of the UN Charter states that “the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization.” The General Assembly has specifically raised this requirement in the context of the secretary-general selection process, stating, for example, that “candidates’ independence should be considered.” The emphasis is widely viewed as a reaction to the unacceptable practice that has compromised the independence and integrity of previous selections whereby powerful countries made their support for candidates conditional on the promise of top jobs for their nationals. Earlier this year, the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency group addressed this issue explicitly in its 2025 nonpaper. The issue is also frequently raised in the post-selection process, with states calling out the “ringfencing”of top UN jobs.
In 2018, the General Assembly noted that in identifying and appointing the best candidate for the post of secretary-general, “due regard shall continue to be given to regional rotation and to gender balance.” A 2025 resolution reaffirmed “continued efforts towards achieving equal and fair distribution in terms of the gender and geographical balance with regard to appointments of executive heads of the Organization, including the Secretary-General, while meeting the highest possible standards.”
While there is no strict rule obliging that selections must follow regional rotation, many states will prefer that a candidate come from an under-represented region. For more detailed information on regional rotation, see Security Council Procedure’s 2025 briefing note.
Campaigning
Each candidate will be given the chance to present her or his vision in the General Assembly and answer questions from member states and civil society. The GA has stated that it will convene webcast interactive dialogues “with all candidates,” suggesting that participation in the GA hearing is a pre-requisite of a candidacy.
○ Past practice will inform the modalities for 2026. In 2016, the format of each two-hour hearing encompassed a 10-minute presentation by candidates based on their written vision statement, followed by questions from member states and 2-3 pre-selected questions from civil society. The president of the GA (PGA) at the time, Mogens Lykketoft, and his team also monitored social media from the online audience during the dialogues and “picked a few key questions in real time and passed them on” for the candidates to answer. In 2021, the meeting lasted three hours with four planned civil society questions. In some cases, where time was short for all questions to be answered the candidate responded to the questions in writing at the end of the meeting. The events were broadcast live on UN TV.In 2016 the PGA also:
○ arranged for each candidate to answer questions from journalists after their hearings at a UN press stakeout, which typically lasted about 30 minutes.
○ organized a Town Hall event at UN headquarters, in collaboration with Al Jazeera. Ten candidates took part, which was split into two parts, with five candidates appearing together on stage in each segment. Candidates took questions from an Al Jazeera presenter and diplomats and civil society members. The event was broadcast live on UNTV and Al Jazeera Media Network across multiple broadcast and social media channels
○ invited candidates to attend three sets of high-level meetings in New York in the first half of 2016.Beyond the formal process, it is expected that candidates will make bilateral representations to member states and engage widely with civil society and the media. For example in 2016, the United Nations Association-UK held hustings events with most of the candidates. Similar events or interviews were organized by IPI and WomanSG, among others. Numerous candidates also briefed parliamentarians in the UK and elsewhere.
A note on the format of candidate hearings: There is consensus that the hearings held in 2016 could be improved for the 2026 selection process. Several post-2016 debriefing conversations between diplomats and civil society (including informal discussions organized by the PGA) noted that the dialogues were not well structured. This point was also made by the ACT group in its 2017 note to the secretary-general and presidents of the GA and SC, and in its 2025 nonpaper. Ideas for improvements include: a more active role for the PGA in moderating the conversation to avoid duplication and formulaic questions; thematic segments to ensure better coverage within hearings, as well as greater consistency between them; additional events to augment the GA hearings and test for different skills, including thematic dialogues, closed-door discussions with groups of states, off-site retreats to encourage frank, in-depth conversations; events outside New York in other UN locations, such as Nairobi, Bangkok or Geneva, where diplomats and stakeholders have different areas of expertise.
A note on civil society participation in the formal process: There is a strong feeling within civil society that the previous participation of outside stakeholders was tokenistic. While enhancing this aspect may face opposition from certain member states, there is also strong state support for building on the baseline set in 2015/16, which has been well established and consolidated in multiple GA resolutions and has inspired other appointments, including the PGA. ACT has been a vocal supporter for strengthening participation, calling for an “expanded role for civil society and other stakeholders during the informal dialogues” as well as in other elements of the selection.
Enabling stakeholder participation is an increasingly important aspect of the PGA’s role, and it will be important to ensure that the arrangements put in place for this selection process are not seen as a climb-down from 2016.
Deliberation on candidates
While the process in the Security Council remains uncodified, the Council is expected to hold closed-door meetings with candidates, followed by private deliberations on all candidates. These are expected to take place after the GA hearings and will likely culminate in “straw polls” — an informal voting mechanism — to determine their recommendation. The joint letter initiating the 2015-16 process announced the Council’s intention to begin its selection “by the end of July 2016.” Some member states want to dispense with straw polls in favor of official votes by secret ballot, done during private meetings. This method was recommended by a former Japanese permanent representative to the UN, Koro Bessho, who presided over the first 2016 straw poll.
In 2016, six straw polls were organized across four months, organized by the relevant rotating Council president. This involved each Council member casting a secret ballot “encouraging,” “discouraging” or expressing “no opinion” on each candidate with a tally of the votes circulated to all Council members. After several rounds of straw polls, color-coded ballots were introduced to indicate the votes of permanent members. The Council did not publicly release the results of these votes or even transmit them to the PGA. However, in each instance, the results were almost immediately leaked and posted online, reflecting a sense of frustration with the Council’s lack of transparency.
There is also considerable frustration among the wider UN membership that no similar deliberative process exists for the GA, even though the Council and Assembly play complementary roles in the process; the process is stewarded by the PGA, and the Assembly makes the final decision, per the UN Charter.
In recent GA negotiations, most member states, including the Non-Aligned Movement and ACT, supported the notion of the PGA doing straw poll votes by secret ballot (or similar method) to determine the GA’s favorite candidates. After consulting member states, this measure was included in the initial draft of the 2025 resolution but not the final version. However, the final version leaves the door open for GA straw polls by instructing that “the President of the General Assembly will engage closely, in a transparent and inclusive manner, with Member States.”
Even if this step is not pursued, it is expected that the PGA will find ways to informally gauge the views of member states on candidates after the hearings have been concluded.
The appointment
After its deliberations, the Security Council is expected to adopt a resolution recommending the appointment of a candidate. While it is assumed that the resolution will contain the name of a single candidate (a convention that dates back to 1946; not a strict rule) there have been growing calls for the Council to provide the GA with two or more candidates from which a selection can be made, consistent with the UN Charter and supported by an an overwhelming majority of UN member states.
Whether or not multiple candidates are recommended to the GA by the Council, the Assembly can actively consider any recommendation received and, if necessary, reject it and ask the Council to think again.
The question remains which body — the Security Council or the General Assembly — sets the term length for the secretary-general. With notable exceptions, the GA has traditionally deferred the matter to the Council, but there is evidence of increasing appetite for the GA to take control of this element (see here and here), consistent with the UN Charter.
After the adoption of a GA resolution appointing the candidate, the PGA will schedule a swearing-in ceremony at which the secretary-general designate will take an oath of office. It includes the appointee committing to not “seeking or accepting any instructions” from any government, reinforcing the calls for no promises being made on senior appointments.
The GA has indicated that the appointment should be made in the final quarter of 2026 bearing in mind the need to allow the Secretary-General-designate sufficient time to prepare for her or his term in office.”
1 for 8 Billion is a global campaign advocating for a fair, open, inclusive process to select the UN secretary-general. Please visit our website to read our dedicated briefings on the selection process and for news as the race develops. If you are an NGO, you can sign up to be a supporter here. If you are an individual, you can sign up to receive updates here.