The Race to Become the Next UN Secretary-General, Explained

On December 31, 2026, António Guterres will walk out of the United Nations headquarters in New York after a decade as secretary-general — and the organization still has not picked his replacement. The race to succeed him is one of the strangest hiring processes on earth: eight declared candidates, secret straw polls held behind closed doors, a fifteen-member Security Council vote where any one of five countries can veto the whole thing, and a final rubber stamp from 193 nations. Here is how the next leader of the world's largest multilateral institution actually gets chosen.

Guterres, the ninth UN secretary-general, is finishing his second five-year term. His final General Assembly high-level week — the annual gathering of presidents and prime ministers — ran from September 22 through September 28, 2026, with roughly 130 heads of state expected at the podium, according to Diplomatic Watch. The new secretary-general will take office on January 1, 2027. What remains unclear, less than a hundred days out, is who that person will be.

Who Is Running

The candidate field, as tracked by the SDG Knowledge Hub, built up through 2026. Rafael Grossi of Argentina, the current head of the UN nuclear watchdog, was nominated in November 2025. Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet followed in February 2026, backed by Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, who leads the UN's trade and development arm, entered in March, alongside Macky Sall of Senegal, nominated by Burundi. María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador and Guyana's ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett joined in May and June, and Ecuador's Ivonne Baki became the eighth contender in mid-August after Tonga formalized her nomination. One early candidate, Argentina's Virginia Gamba, withdrew in March.

Three names have separated from the pack. In a second informal straw poll on August 21, 2026, Rodrigues-Birkett led the field with eight favorable votes, according to diplomatic sources cited by specialist media — eight being exactly the threshold the Security Council needs. Grynspan, the front-runner after the first vote, slipped to second, with Grossi third. But straw polls are non-binding and held in secret; they measure momentum, not outcomes.

How the Next UN Secretary-General Gets Chosen

The process sounds simple and acts anything but. The fifteen-member Security Council picks a single name by recommendation, which requires at least eight votes — and, crucially, no veto from any of the five permanent members: the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. The General Assembly then appoints the recommended candidate. A joint letter from the Assembly president and the Security Council president in November 2025 formally opened this cycle, pledging transparency and inclusivity — principles adopted to open up a process that was, for most of the UN's history, a pure backroom deal.

The secrecy persists in practice. Straw polls use a balloting system that dates back decades — Uganda's Olara Otunnu, himself a candidate this cycle, introduced the straw-ballot formula for electing the secretary-general during his 1981 Security Council presidency, a procedure Uganda's foreign ministry proudly calls the "Otunnu Formula." The paradox is built in: member states promised an open contest in 2016, when Guterres emerged from a field of thirteen, yet the decisive votes still happen behind closed doors, with the results leaking through diplomats and specialist outlets.

What the Winner Inherits

The next UN chief will not be managing growth. Reductions in American funding have forced the organization to scale back humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, and Guterres's final years were consumed by staff reductions, budget control, and staving off a deeper financial crisis, as Republic Policy reports. Meanwhile, divisions among the US, China, and Russia have paralyzed Security Council action on Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, and Iran — the very conflicts a secretary-general is supposed to help defuse.

This is the counterpoint the candidates rarely address head-on: the job's power has been shrinking while its crises multiply. Critics argue Guterres's decade was defined by managing decline — eloquent warnings about climate and conflict that changed little on the ground. Defenders say no diplomat could have moved a Security Council split between great powers, and that keeping the institution functioning through a decade of geopolitical fracture was itself the achievement. Both readings are partly true, which is why the selection matters more than it looks.

Why Gen Z Should Care About a Diplomatic Hiring Process

The secretary-general does not command armies, but the office controls the agenda of the only institution that claims to speak for all 193 member states. Peacekeeping missions, refugee funding, climate negotiations, and the humanitarian responses to the conflicts dominating your feeds all pass through this office's priorities. A leader chosen for donor-country comfort will run a different UN than one chosen to pressure them.

The near-term timeline: expect the Security Council to converge on a name in the coming weeks, with the Assembly's formal appointment before year's end. If no candidate clears the veto gauntlet, the process can drag — the fallback would be a caretaker arrangement nobody wants. Watch whether the eventual pick is a woman (several strong contenders are, and the UN has never had a female secretary-general), which region they come from, and what their first speech signals about where a cash-strapped UN will focus. The strangest hiring process in the world is about to produce one of its most consequential hires.

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