2027 Nominations Timeline: What Parties Must Do
Working back from the published 2027 deadlines: what a party must have done by each date, from certified nomination rules to registered nominees.
Plan backwards from the dates you cannot move
Nominations feel far away until they are not. The 2027 General Election is on 10 August 2027. Long before that, a party has to certify its rules, clean its register, run its primaries, settle its disputes and present its nominees, each by a published date.
This is that timeline, laid out backwards from the deadlines and grouped into what a party needs to have done by each one. Where IEBC’s timelines and the Registrar’s differ, we show both. Plan to the earlier date.
Dates are from IEBC’s Critical Timelines for the 2027 General Election and the Registrar of Political Parties’ published 2027 timelines for political parties. Confirm every date against the Kenya Gazette and your party’s certified nomination rules before you act on it.
Already due: authorised persons and nomination rules
By 15 October 2026, parties submit the names of their authorised persons and their specimen signatures. These are the officials who can sign nomination documents on the party’s behalf. If yours are not lodged, nothing they sign later will carry weight.
The Registrar’s timelines ran the submission of nomination rules for certification from 28 September to 16 October 2026. IEBC’s timelines expect the rules certified by 30 October 2026, and the certified rules submitted to the Commission by 6 November 2026.
If your party is behind on any of these, everything else in this timeline depends on catching up first. Your nomination rules are the rulebook every later decision will be measured against.
Now to January: build the records
With the rules certified, the work moves from paperwork to records. This is the quiet window, and it is the most valuable one.
Clean the membership register: one register, one owner, duplicates merged, members placed in the right ward, joining dates recorded. Open an aspirant file for every person who expresses interest, and keep it complete as they go. Set up a payment process that ties every application fee to a named applicant, with receipts both sides can check. Agree who sits on vetting committees, what they check, and how their decisions are recorded.
Nothing in this list is urgent today. All of it is impossible to do well in March.
By 10 February 2027: public officers resign
IEBC’s timelines require any public officer who intends to contest in 2027 to resign from public office by 10 February 2027. For a party, that means knowing which of your aspirants hold public office, and keeping proof of their resignation in their file.
An aspirant who missed this date is a nomination that will not survive scrutiny. Check early.
By mid-March 2027: membership lists and primary details
IEBC’s timelines expect parties to submit their membership lists, and the names of aspirants in their primaries with the dates and venues of those primaries, by 16 March 2027. The Registrar’s timelines have party membership registers submitted in March for certification by 23 March 2027.
This is the deadline that exposes a neglected register. Whatever state your register is in on this date is the state it will be judged in for the rest of the cycle.
Mid-March to April 2027: primaries
The Registrar’s timelines set the nomination period, when parties hold their primaries and other nominations, between 17 March and 10 April 2027.
For each primary you need the certified list of eligible voters, fixed in advance; trained officials; a result recorded for every polling centre and signed; and a declared result that can be traced back to those centre results. Plan the logistics per constituency, not per county. The volume is in the seats, not the regions.
By 8 May 2027: primaries concluded and disputes resolved
IEBC’s timelines expect all party primaries to be concluded and intra-party disputes resolved by 8 May 2027; the Registrar’s timelines put it at 9 May. Plan to the earlier date.
A dispute that is still open in May threatens the nominee’s place on the ballot. This is where the records built in October pay for themselves: a party that can produce a complete aspirant file in hours resolves disputes in days.
Pre-election coalition agreements also go to the Registrar by 9 May 2027 under the Registrar’s timelines. Coalition political party agreements are due earlier, by 12 April 2027.
May to June 2027: nominees to IEBC
The Registrar’s timelines have parties submit the names of their nominees to the Commission between 10 and 20 May 2027. Nominees then appear before IEBC for registration between 29 May and 11 June 2027, on dates set by seat.
IEBC’s timelines also require disputes arising from nomination to be lodged within 24 hours of occurring, and no later than 12 June 2027. The campaign period opens on 29 May and runs until 48 hours before election day.
Who owns each deadline
Deadlines are missed when everyone assumes someone else has them. Give each one a named owner now. The secretary general or executive director usually owns rules, authorised persons and submissions to the Registrar and IEBC. The membership officer owns the register. The nominations or elections board owns aspirant files, vetting and primaries. The treasurer owns application fees and their reconciliation. The party’s internal dispute body owns complaints and their deadlines.
Write the list down, share it with the national executive, and review it monthly. A deadline with an owner is a task. A deadline without one is a surprise.
Where parties usually fall behind
Not on the big dates. Parties rarely forget primaries. They fall behind on the dependencies: the register that was not cleaned in time for the March submission, the payment process that was improvised when the first fees arrived, the vetting criteria that were agreed after the first applications were already in.
Each of those is a small task in November and a crisis in March. The timeline above is really a list of things that must be finished before each deadline, not things that happen on it.
If your party is small
Smaller parties face the same deadlines with fewer people. That is an argument for starting earlier, not for skipping steps. A party fielding candidates in a handful of seats may run a few dozen aspirant files, not thousands, and can keep them complete with modest effort, provided it begins now.
The deadlines that catch small parties out are usually the administrative ones: authorised persons not lodged, rules not certified on time, a register that was never submitted for certification. These have nothing to do with the size of the party and everything to do with whether someone owns them.
If your secretariat is one or two people, put every date in this article into a shared calendar today, with the owner’s name on each one.
What to do this month
If you do one thing in October, confirm that your authorised persons and certified nomination rules are lodged with IEBC. If you do two, appoint a single owner for your membership register and start finding every list. If you do three, decide how your party will match every application fee to a named aspirant before the first payment arrives.
Everything after that is easier for having started now.
Then put a date in the diary for one month from today, and go through this timeline again. Dates move, gazette notices are published and rules are certified. A timeline that is reviewed every month is one that will not surprise you in March.