Nomination Day is scheduled for Thursday, April 16th when persons intending to contest seats in the 2026 general election are expected to make their candidacy official.

Parliamentary Commissioner, Harrison Thompson spoke with ZNS News on Tuesday about the process. He said, “the nomination process is from 9 am to 12 noon and you must come within that time frame. If you come after that then you will not be on the list for the general election.”

Asked about the amount of candidates that are expected to nominate Thompson speculated that the number could be in the three figure range. “You know we have three parties now who have indicated that they have 41 candidates so that a hundred plus there. Then we have some independents who have expressed an interest in running and then there’s some other parties. There’s at least one smaller party saying they may have about ten candidates. So again, it’s not easy to say how many candidates we expect but we expect that it will probably be about around 200 – 300 candidates, if not more,” he said.

The Parliamentary Commissioner also revealed that approximately 206,000 Bahamians are registered to vote. He said, “we have quite a number of young people between 18 and 35 who are on the register. That demographic seems to be the highest for this election. We have from 18-25, 26-35 in those two categories quite a number of people we believe will impact the elections.”

There are 111,647 female voters and 93,978 male voters. This year’s register also includes 13,628 new registrants since July 2025.