Selecting the Next UN Secretary-General: The Ultimate Test for Multilateralism

On November 25, the Presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council formally opened the 2026 Secretary-General race with a joint letter inviting nominations. With that letter, a largely procedural process becomes a litmus test for multilateralism in a fractured international landscape.

Since António Guterres’s appointment in 2016, UN member states have faced a structured and codified process to decide who should lead the organization beyond its eightieth anniversary. Beneath the procedural order is the ultimate test for multilateralism: can a rules-based process produce a politically authoritative leader in a fragmented world?

From Closed Doors to Glass Walls

The “most impossible job in the World” was once chosen in secrecy. Until 2015, the Security Council’s five permanent members held decisive control, conducting opaque straw polls and veto-driven bargaining that excluded the wider membership.

That changed with the landmark General Assembly resolution 69/321, which opened the process to public scrutiny, introduced candidate hearings, and created a joint leadership role for the Presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council (GA-SC).

The 2016 race was heralded as the UN’s democratic moment. For the first time, candidates presented vision statements and campaigned openly. The legitimacy this transparency conferred allowed António Guterres’s selection to be accepted without controversy, despite defying predictions of a first female or Eastern European Secretary-General.

Fast-forward a decade. Resolution 79/327, adopted in September 2025, refines this framework with more explicit rules, greater ethics oversight, and stronger visibility for the General Assembly. Nominations will open in late 2025 through a joint GA–SC letter, and each member state will be limited to one nominee. Candidates should disclose campaign financing, suspend their work in the UN system during campaigns, and engage in public dialogues. A dedicated UN web page will track every step.

2026: Reform Meets Realpolitik

The new process will provide greater transparency into the 2026 selection. But it will unfold while the legitimacy of multilateralism itself is contested. Three political stakes, embedded in the selection process, will shape the 2026 campaign.

First, the reaffirmation of member state control. The 2021 controversy over Arora Akanksha’s self-nomination—deemed invalid without a state sponsor—prompted the General Assembly to clarify that candidates must be nominated by at least one member state. This may seem procedural, but it reasserts a crucial political reality: the Secretary-General is chosen by member states, not by global public opinion. The campaign remains an intergovernmental bargain within diplomatic channels.

Second, the politics of transparency. The publication of funding sources, joint GA–SC updates, and real-time webcasts serves a dual purpose: they deter backroom deals and protect the eventual outcome from charges of bias. In a polarized world, procedural openness is the only legitimacy shield against accusations that the process is “rigged.”

Third, the implicit contest over authority between the Security Council and the General Assembly. While the General Assembly has gained procedural visibility, the Security Council retains decisive control: it recommends the candidate for the Assembly to appoint. Resolution 79/327 carefully avoids infringing on that prerogative. The power to nominate, however, is expanding horizontally, where smaller and mid-sized states, including those in the Global South, now have formal entry points to shape the conversation.

What Will the Next Secretary-General Stand “For?”

The 2026 selection is signaling a new kind of political realism. The next Secretary-General will inherit a UN system facing three simultaneous crises: financial insolvency, increasing geopolitical tensions, and a credibility deficit among both publics and states. The campaign will therefore become a proxy battle over what kind of multilateralism the UN represents.

As the 2026 race is slowly emerging with the first official candidates announcements, public debate is already gravitating toward questions of profile. While questions of gender and regional origin matter and signal how member states understand fairness and representation, they also risk obscuring a more substantive question: what the next Secretary-General will be expected to achieve. The selection is not a casting exercise. It is a choice about priorities, authority, and strategic direction for a system under strain. The Secretary-General’s ability to operate as an “honest broker” is more constrained but crucial than ever. Candidates will be judged on what priorities they stand for, and how they can navigate them in the geopolitical minefield between Washington, Beijing, Moscow, and emerging coalitions such as BRICS.

2026: What to Watch

The 2026 selection of the UN Secretary-General is arguably the most consequential test of multilateral coherence the system has ever faced. The process will reveal whether the UN can uphold the credibility of collective decision-making when its major powers disagree on the meaning of multilateralism itself.

In 2016, transparency legitimized the outcome. In 2026, amid the UN80 reform initiative, legitimacy will depend on whether transparency can coexist with effectiveness.

The challenge is not only to choose a leader who embodies “the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity” (as the Charter demands), but one capable of navigating the UN’s political contradictions: principle vs. power, equality vs. hierarchy, universality vs. sovereignty.

The process will begin formally this autumn with the joint GA–SC letter inviting nominations. The first public dialogues are expected by early 2026, followed by informal Security Council straw polls midyear, and final appointment before December. Diplomats should watch for four indicators of where the politics are heading:

• Who nominates whom. Cross-regional nominations could signal coalitions beyond traditional blocs.
• The treatment of late entrants. A “late candidate” introduced to break a deadlock (as in 2016) could expose fractures among P5 members.
• The role of civil society and media. Though not formally recognized in the 2025 resolution, external scrutiny will shape perceptions of legitimacy.
• How the President of the General Assembly manages neutrality. The co-management role of the GA and SC presidents will be critical in preserving procedural balance.

Will 193 member states converge on a leader capable of rebuilding trust and purpose in a divided world? At stake in the 2026 race is more than the selection of the next Secretary-General. It is a referendum on the health of multilateralism itself.

This think-piece is based on the policy brief the author contributed to, published with CIC, “The Process for Selecting the Secretary-General of the United Nations,” October 2025.

CIC will host a dedicated event on the 2026 Secretary-General selection process on December 2, 2025 (1:15–2:30 p.m. EST). More details here.