Paraguay’s municipal elections will be held on October 4, 2026, with voters choosing 263 mayors and 5,664 members of the Municipal Councils for the 2026–2031 period. Voting will take place in every district in the country and will determine both the heads of local government and the bodies responsible for approving regulations, voting on budgets and overseeing municipal administrations.
The Municipal Councils will have 2,832 principal members and 2,832 alternates. Asunción will elect 24 councilors. In the other municipalities, 150 districts will choose 12 principal members, while 112 districts will elect nine, according to the administrative category and the number of registered voters established by Law No. 3,966, the Municipal Organic Law.
Mayors and councilors will serve five-year terms. The previous election, originally scheduled for the 2020–2025 period, was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and held in 2021. The Congress of Paraguay temporarily shortened the term, but later restored the five-year period.
Municipal Council seats will be allocated under the D’Hondt system, a proportional representation method that successively divides each list’s valid votes by 1, 2, 3 and so on. The resulting highest averages receive the available seats. A blank vote appears as a separate option on voting machines, is counted among valid votes and affects the overall percentage, but is not assigned to candidates or included in the division used to allocate seats.
Preferential voting, also called open-list voting, will be in effect for principal council candidates. Paraguay has used the system since 2019, allowing voters to choose a specific candidate within a party list. Congress did not approve extending the mechanism to alternate candidates.
After voting ends, party observers will monitor the initial count and sign the paper records. The Electoral Tribunals of each constituency, the bodies responsible for adjudicating the records and proclaiming the winners, will conduct the final stage from October 5 to 23. Credentials are scheduled to be delivered on October 30, and the new municipal authorities will take office on November 3, 2026.
Voters can consult the candidates and practice using the voting machine on the official TSJE simulator, provided by Paraguay’s Superior Court of Electoral Justice.