IEBC Gives Parties October 15 Deadline to Submit Officials’ Details for 2027 Election

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has instructed every political party that wishes to contest the 2027 General Election to provide the names and specimen signatures of their authorised representatives by Thursday October 15, 2026.

Submissions must be delivered to the commission’s headquarters at Anniversary Towers, South Tower, seventh floor in Nairobi, between 0800 hours and 1700 hours, according to a notice released on Wednesday October 14, 2026.

The requirement forms the first major step in the IEBC’s electoral preparedness calendar, which sets out the legal and administrative obligations parties must satisfy before the poll scheduled for Tuesday August 10, 2027.

Further milestones include certification of each party’s nomination rules by the Registrar of Political Parties on October 30, 2026, with the certified rules to be lodged with the IEBC by November 6, 2026. The commission also expects parties to file their membership registers by March 16, 2027, although another source cites a deadline of April 12, 2027; both dates appear in the published timetable. On the same day, parties must submit the names of aspirants who will contest their primaries and disclose the dates and venues for those nomination exercises.

The timetable mandates that internal primaries and any related dispute-resolution processes be concluded by May 8, 2027, and that independent candidates submit their names and intended symbols by that date as well. Public officers who intend to run for elective office are required to resign from their posts by February 10, 2027. Presidential hopefuls must also gather at least 2,000 registered-voter signatures from a majority of counties by May 24, 2027. Candidate registration is slated for the period May 29 to June 11, 2027, with disputes to be filed and resolved by June 23, 2027, and the official campaign period running from May 29 to August 7, 2027.

In its August 2026 update, the IEBC reported that 2,936,516 voters had been added to the register since continuous registration began in September 2025, and it projects a final register of roughly 28.5 million voters, up from 22.1 million in the 2022 election. The commission also plans to broaden diaspora registration from 12 to 26 countries.

The deadline comes amid an ongoing constitutional dispute; a recent High Court judgment argued that the next election should have taken place in August 2026, but the ruling’s implementation was suspended, leaving the election date of August 10, 2027 in place.

The IEBC has warned that any campaigning outside the authorised period will be deemed unlawful, and that failure to meet the stipulated deadlines could jeopardise a party’s ability to field candidates in the 2027 polls.