Election Preview: The 2026 Bosnian General Election and a Familiar Deadlock

The upcoming 4 October Bosnian General Election comes at an important juncture for the country. The peace structure created by the 1995 Dayton Agreement appears weaker than it has been in decades, and the country’s politics have been institutionally deadlocked for eight years. On 4 October, elections will take place for several different contests. At the state level, there are the House of Representatives and the ethnically separated tripartite presidency (which has one Bosniak, one Serb and one Croat member). Within the two ethnically divided entities, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) and Republika Srpska (RS), elections will take place for the entity parliaments, the presidency in RS, and the cantonal parliaments in FBiH. Bosnians will therefore have to cast not one but multiple votes in an extremely complicated election that will determine the country’s political direction for the next four years.

Amongst the wide range of contests, a couple of key races are to be noted. The Bosniak member of the tripartite presidency will be decided by a rematch of  2022’s contenders: the Bosniak ethnonationalist Party of Democratic Action’s Bakir Izetbegović and incumbent Denis Bećirović of the Social Democratic Party. Bećirović won relatively comfortably in 2022; however, it will likely be much closer this time around. There is no nationwide opinion polling in Bosnia, which makes predicting election results difficult. But there is a feeling that SDP’s involvement in statewide government with Milorad Dodik’s illiberal Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) has hurt Bećirović, and that SDA’s non-inclusion in government has galvanised the party and gained some support. Whether this will be enough for Izetbegović is to be seen. 

The Croat contest is likely to be equally interesting, since incumbent Željko Komšić is ineligible for a third consecutive term. Komšić’s position as Croat member of the presidency has been questioned by the ethnonationalist Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZBiH) since he first won election to the role in 2006. In FBiH, voters can choose whether to cast their ballot in the Bosniak or Croat race, and since Bosniaks outnumber Croats by three to one, they can outvote Croats in their contest. Komšić’s victories were largely thanks to votes from Bosniaks rather than Croats, angering HDZBiH and other parties. Komšić has endorsed independent candidate Slaven Kovačević against HDZBiH’s Darijana Flipović for the 4 October elections; however, the last time Komšić was ineligible to stand in 2014, HDZBiH won the vote, and many Bosniaks returned to voting in the Bosniak contest. This may happen again, with repercussions for both the Croat and Bosniak presidential races.

In RS, a close race is expected between the governing SNSD and the opposition bloc of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP). SNSD, under the now barred-from-power Milorad Dodik, has dominated RS politics for twenty years; however, in recent elections, their victory margin has been small and eroding. In the 2025 special election for the RS presidency, after the Constitutional Court removed Dodik, SNSD’s Siniša Karan beat SDS’ Branko Blanuša by only two points (50.5% - 48.1%), and another close race is expected in October. Dodik and SNSD have recently been increasing their ties with Russia, the US and Israel, hoping to mobilise Bosnian Serbs behind their nationalist, anti-Sarajevo line to hold power again. SNSD have created a closed, authoritarian system in RS, and the media is party-influenced; therefore, they can retain power by democratically dubious means. Despite this, the SNSD-SDS/PDP contest is too close to call and is likely to come down to a few thousand votes.

Although some individual contests will be competitive and power may change hands, the power system and general politics of Bosnia will not. In the past few elections, parliamentary mathematics have hardly changed, and will likely remain similar. SDA may gain a couple of percentage points from SDP due to being kept out of power in 2022, but the make-up of both the national parliament and those in the entities will probably be strikingly similar to the current iteration. Bosnian politics, especially in FBiH, have been deadlocked for eight years because of unmet conditions between coalition partners about electoral law, as well as divisive rhetoric. But this environment suits ethnonationalist parties that gain a majority of votes across the country. Division, tension and ethnic conflict help these parties remain electorally legitimate and attractive, and ethnonationalist forces of all colours effectively work to retain the status quo that allows their success. 

Beyond this, voting preference in Bosnia is not decided by a party’s programme or policies (as these do not translate into reality) or their governmental performance, but by a person’s relationship with the party, their geographical location and their ethnicity. Corruption and clientelism are widely present in Bosnia, and ethnonationalist parties use state capture and vote-buying to guarantee support in their ‘territories,’ often mono-ethnic rural areas. When change has occurred, it has either been temporary or one party replacing another.  Furthermore, no party has been able to gain large popularity across the three main ethnic groups, with even non-ethnic civilian and liberal parties only successful within one group. 

The Bosnian election is therefore likely to result in more of the same: division, stagnation, and the same corrupt parties returned to office. Whilst the presidential contests appear competitive and may result in different outcomes to 2022, the structure of the country and general staying power of parties and politicians mean that October’s election is unlikely to result in tangible political change. Tangible change seems unlikely in the current environment where half of Bosnians do not turn out because they feel their vote makes no difference.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Socijaldemokratska partija Bosne i Hercegovine

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