MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – Somalia’s Electoral Commission on Thursday 15 October set elections for both houses of the federal parliament on 15 April 2027 and the presidential vote on 15 May 2027, a year after the four-year mandates of parliament and of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud ran out in April and May 2026 by the count of the opposition and Puntland. The National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission published the timetable in a written statement, reopened registration of voters and political organisations from 1 to 22 November, and tied the presidential date to the five-year term counted from the day of swearing-in under the constitution parliament amended this year. Within hours the opposition Salvation Forum called it election theft, former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo warned of rival elections, and the federal information minister welcomed it.
The Electoral Commission’s Calendar
The Electoral Commission’s statement set out the steps in order. Registration of voters and political organisations reopens on Sunday 1 November and closes on 22 November, the same day candidate lists for both houses fall due. A provisional voter list is due on 21 January 2027, campaigning for parliament opens on 27 February, and the final register is to be published on 15 March, a month before polling day. The commission said it fixed the parliamentary date under Article 18(2) of the national elections law, which requires a polling date to be announced 180 days ahead. It cited Article 112 of the constitution for a presidential term, and terms for the other federal institutions, of five years.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was elected on 15 May 2022 under the provisional constitution of 2012, which gave him four years. Parliament passed the amendments that lengthened federal terms to five years earlier this year while the opposition boycotted the vote, and in May the government declared a transition period when no election had been held. Puntland’s cabinet said on 21 May that it no longer recognised President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as a legitimate president, putting the end of his term at 15 May and the end of parliament’s at 14 April, and it called for a national consultative meeting on an inclusive electoral process.
On Sunday 3 May the commission published dates for South West State, Hirshabelle, Galmudug, Banadir and the north-east, and most of them slipped. Galmudug voted on 30 July after two postponements, the Supreme Court voided the result on 24 August, and the Electoral Commission said two days later that it accepted the ruling and named no new date. Its rerun was held on 30 September without Towfiiq, the party that had won the court challenge, and the Justice and Solidarity Party took 67 of the 89 seats. On Wednesday 14 October the commission set the Galmudug Speaker’s election for 18 October and the state presidential vote for 22 October, one day before it published the federal calendar.
Election Theft and a Welcome
Mohamed Aden Jimale, known as Koofi, the secretary of the Salvation Forum, rejected the timetable the same day and accused the federal government of election theft and of seizing power. “The disease that caused Somalia’s destruction began with a stolen election and the misuse of state power,” he said. Forty years later, he added, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud wanted to prescribe the same disease as a cure, “and it will not happen.” His forum, known in Somali as Madasha Samatabixinta, is a coalition of opposition politicians that first set out its terms more than a year ago.
The Salvation Forum published twelve demands at the end of August 2025, among them the reversal of the president’s amendments to the 2012 constitution, an end to the use of the army for political ends and a national conference that would include Puntland and Jubaland. It said then that it would accept no term beyond the presidential election due on 15 May 2026. The forum also named the electoral law, the political parties law and a commission appointed by the president as the instruments of a term extension, and it asked for a consensus model that could be carried out in the time remaining and would improve on the vote of 2022. The Electoral Commission’s statement on Thursday put the presidential vote a year past the date the forum had set.
Information Minister Abdifatah Qasim Mohamud welcomed the announcement and said the country was moving toward one person, one vote elections at the federal level. “One person, one vote elections are your right and your country’s future,” he said. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a BBC interview in September 2025 that the government had no authority to set the election timetable, that an independent commission could set it and ask for more time if time ran short, and that the constitution was “not a Quran.” The commission’s chairman, Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan, said on Thursday that it was beginning preparations for one person, one vote elections to both houses, on a schedule that places the presidential vote five years to the day after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s election in 2022.
Farmaajo and the Warning of Rival Elections
Former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who held office from 2017 to 2022 and leads the Nabad iyo Nolol party, condemned the Electoral Commission’s timetable in a statement after the announcement as a unilateral decision. He said an election held without consensus, without the federal member states and without the political opposition amounted to authoritarian politics and an attempt to hold on to power. He warned that a one-sided process could produce rival elections and civil conflict. Farmaajo asked the presidents of the federal member states and the country’s political leaders to stand together for a credible vote, and he called on neighbouring states and the international community to help settle the dispute.
In April 2021 the House of the People voted to extend Farmaajo’s own four-year term by two years, the Senate rejected the move, and forces loyal to the opposition fought government troops in Mogadishu over the last weekend of the month. On 28 April he announced that he would not seek the extension and asked parliament to endorse the electoral process agreed the previous September. The indirect vote that followed elected President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on 15 May 2022, and parliament had chosen him over Farmaajo himself in the final round.
In September 2026 Farmaajo wrote an open letter asking President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to lead a national dialogue, reach a political agreement on the electoral process and hold elections within a short time, weeks before the Electoral Commission published any federal calendar. Turkish mediators proposed in June to give representatives aligned with him seats on the technical committees, and the Future Council refused to recognise a third political bloc.
In June an opposition coalition put its own direct election proposal to Somalia’s international partners, and the Future Council, Nabad iyo Nolol and the National Unity Council have described the model they submitted to the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations as one person, one vote, with no return to indirect elections. Their objection, in Farmaajo’s statement and the forum’s, is to a calendar issued by the Electoral Commission without any political agreement behind it.
Seven Months, Puntland and the Electoral Commission
On Monday 31 August accounts of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s written reply to the opposition said he had accepted elections within seven months, struck the wording that would have tied the presidential vote to that window, recast the international partners’ role from mediation to facilitation and downgraded their standing from guarantors to observers. Both sides agreed in principle to form a taskforce to manage the elections, and they had agreed neither its size nor a timetable by the start of September. Counted from that reply, seven months end on 31 March 2027. The Electoral Commission’s parliamentary date falls in the middle of April, and its presidential date a month after that.
Puntland and Jubaland walked out of the federal election talks in July after backing a transitional direct elections model that Mogadishu’s negotiators rejected. Both also declined Turkish-mediated talks, questioning Ankara’s neutrality. Both reject the constitutional amendments and the electoral framework built on them, and Puntland said in February that it could hold its own elections if no national agreement was reached. No statement from Garowe or Kismayo on the new federal dates had been reported by Thursday afternoon.
In Mogadishu, federal troops deployed around the Wadajir homes of former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire on the night of Saturday 10 October, and NISA accused Sheikh Sharif’s guards of harassing its officers. Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi said on Tuesday 13 October that troops had removed 260 armed young men from a site in the capital. The Supreme Court accepted a challenge to the new constitution on Monday 12 October, three days before the Electoral Commission dated the presidential election by the term that constitution sets. Registration opens on 1 November in a country where Puntland and Jubaland, two of the federal member states, reject the constitution the timetable rests on.
