UN Secretary-General Race: Rodrigues Birkett Takes the Lead While Grossi Collects Discourage Votes
Status
Two informal straw polls have been held in the Security Council on the succession to António Guterres, whose second five-year term expires on 31 December. Neither produced a candidate with nine encourage votes, the threshold that would signal a Council majority. The declared field has doubled since March, from four candidates to eight. The lead changed hands between the first poll and the second.
The successor takes office on 1 January 2027.
Process
The race opened formally on 25 November 2025, when Sierra Leone, then holding the Council presidency, and General Assembly president Annalena Baerbock sent a joint letter soliciting nominations. Candidates must be nominated by a member state. Baerbock set 1 April as the deadline for nominations that would qualify a candidate for the interactive dialogues, held at headquarters on 21 and 22 April and broadcast publicly. A candidates’ debate followed in Geneva on 9 June, and a town hall in the General Assembly Hall on 23 July.
Under Article 97 of the Charter, the General Assembly appoints the Secretary-General on the recommendation of the Security Council. In practice the Council decides and the Assembly ratifies. The straw polls are the mechanism by which the Council narrows the field without anyone having to cast a formal veto and own it in public.
Council members agreed the poll modalities in May through a non-paper that was never published. Attendance is capped at the permanent representative plus two delegates per member, three for the presidency. Two tellers are drawn by lot the day before each poll. No Secretariat staff are present, no official record is kept, and the presidency shreds the ballots at the end. Results reach the public through leaks.
The field
| Candidate | Nominating state | Date | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rafael Grossi (Argentina) | Argentina | 26 Nov 2025 | Latin America and Caribbean |
| Michelle Bachelet (Chile) | Brazil, Chile, Mexico | 2 Feb 2026 | Latin America and Caribbean |
| Macky Sall (Senegal) | Burundi | 2 Mar 2026 | Africa |
| Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica) | Costa Rica | 3 Mar 2026 | Latin America and Caribbean |
| María Fernanda Espinosa (Ecuador) | Antigua and Barbuda | 11 May 2026 | Latin America and Caribbean |
| Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett (Guyana) | Guyana | 15 Jun 2026 | Latin America and Caribbean |
| Olara Otunnu (Uganda) | Uganda | 24 Jul 2026 | Africa |
| Ivonne A-Baki (Ecuador) | Tonga | 17 Aug 2026 | Latin America and Caribbean |
Five women, three men. Chile withdrew its nomination of Bachelet on 24 March, leaving her carried by Brazil and Mexico. The Maldives nominated Virginia Gamba on 11 March and withdrew her on 25 March. Sall and Otunnu are the only candidates outside the Latin American and Caribbean group, which by the informal rotation is where the post should go this cycle. Sall’s nomination came from Burundi as chair of the African Union; Senegal itself only backed him later.
Grynspan runs UNCTAD and took leave to campaign. Grossi runs the IAEA and has not. Rodrigues Birkett is Guyana’s permanent representative and a former foreign minister. Bachelet is a former Chilean president and former High Commissioner for Human Rights. Espinosa is a former president of the General Assembly. Sall is a former president of Senegal. Otunnu was Uganda’s permanent representative in the 1980s and later Under-Secretary-General for children in armed conflict.
Poll record
First straw poll, 30 July. Grynspan led with 10 encourage, 1 discourage, 4 no opinion. Rodrigues Birkett followed at 9-2-4, Grossi at 7-2-6, Espinosa at 5-2-8. Bachelet drew six encourages against five discourages. Espinosa and Otunnu each took eight no-opinion ballots.
Second straw poll, 21 August. Rodrigues Birkett moved into first at 8-3-4. Grynspan fell to seven encourages and four discourages. Grossi matched her seven encourages but took six discourages. Bachelet dropped from six encourages to two. A-Baki, voting for the first time, drew no encourages at all, with more than half the Council discouraging her. Otunnu posted the sharpest proportional gain in the round.
Ballots in both rounds were identical for the five permanent members and the ten elected members. Nothing in the published numbers identifies which discourages carry a veto.
Assessment
Grossi’s numbers describe a blocked candidacy, not a competitive one. Seven encourages against six discourages in a fifteen-member body means the opposition is close to half the Council. At that spread the probability that no permanent member is among the objectors is low. The Iran file is the obvious source: his agency’s reporting on Iranian obstruction of inspections has made him a figure with fixed enemies, which is a liability in a job selected by consensus. He remains nominally third. Read against the discourage column, he is finished unless something changes at the capital level.
The Grynspan-to-Rodrigues Birkett handover is smaller than it looks. One vote separates them. Grynspan’s collapse is in the discourage column, from one to four, which matters more than losing three encourages. Rodrigues Birkett has the softer opposition profile and had already shown unusual reach outside the Council: an informal Bloomberg survey taken in the Assembly Hall straight after the 23 July town hall put her at 49 percent on who had convinced attendees most, against 14 percent for Grynspan and 10 for Espinosa. Assembly opinion does not choose the Secretary-General. It does shape what the Council can plausibly recommend.
Bachelet’s fall from six to two is the clearest exit signal in the round. Her nomination was already weakened when Chile pulled out. A-Baki’s zero-encourage debut suggests her entry was a placeholder rather than a serious bid.
The withholding is the anomaly. Roughly 34 percent of ballots in the first 2026 poll were no-opinion, against about 21 percent at the equivalent point in 2016. That is either genuine indecision or deliberate concealment while capitals negotiate elsewhere. Either reading points the same way: the race is not settled, and the numbers published so far are a weak guide.
There is a historical footnote worth registering. Otunnu, now a candidate, introduced the straw ballot to the Council in 1981, as Uganda’s permanent representative during the deadlock in which China blocked a third term for Kurt Waldheim while the United States blocked Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania. The instrument now being used to narrow the field was his invention.
Watch list
Further rounds are expected during France’s September presidency. The transition to colour-coded ballots, which separate P5 votes from the elected ten, is expected late September or early October; that is the first moment the veto structure becomes legible, and the first moment a leader can be confirmed as dead. Assembly high-level week runs 22 to 28 September and provides the bilateral cover for a late entry, though a late entry only works if the front-runner has genuinely stalled. The Council aims to adopt a recommending resolution in October, leaving a transition window before 31 December.
Judgment
Rodrigues Birkett leads on a one-vote margin in a poll that hides the only information that matters. Grynspan’s position is weakening at the wrong end of the ballot. Grossi’s discourage count is consistent with a permanent member having already decided against him, though the undifferentiated ballots make that inference rather than fact. Until the colour-coded round, the Council is publishing a popularity contest while conducting a veto negotiation, and only the second one determines the outcome.