The window for candidate registration in Egypt’s parliamentary elections was scheduled to close on 15 October, with the National Election Authority (NEA) saying that the initial list of candidates would be announced on 16 October.
NEA Chairman Hazem Badawi said earlier this week that the First Instance Courts in Egypt’s 27 governorates were receiving nomination papers every day from 9am to 5pm, except on the final day when papers must be submitted before 12pm.
The registration window has been open since 8 October. The candidates need to be Egyptian nationals aged 25 years or above and have completed their basic education and military service.
The Administrative Court will adjudicate appeals over a 10-day period from 19 to 21 October. The final list of candidates will be announced on 23 October, the same day on which election campaigning will begin.
The two-round poll kicks off on 7 November and ends on 18 December. Of the 568 seats up for grabs, 284 will be filled by candidates elected via the individual candidacy system and 284 seats through closed party lists.
The first stage, running from 7 November to 4 December, will include 14 governorates: Giza, Fayoum, Beni Sweif, Minya, Assiut, the New Valley, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, the Red Sea, Alexandria, Beheira, and Marsa Matrouh.
The second stage, running from 21 November to 18 December, will include 13 governorates: Cairo, Qalioubiya, Daqahliya, Menoufiya, Gharbiya, Kafr Al-Sheikh, Sharqiya, Damietta, Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, North Sinai, and South Sinai.
Some 2,191 people have already registered as independents, and the political parties have been scrambling to form national coalitions ahead of the closing of the registration door. The National Unified List Coalition, led by the pro-government Mostaqbal Watan Party, was forced to delay submitting its applications.
Sources said internal divisions had made it impossible for it to submit a final list of candidates early this week. The list of the National Unified List Coalition is expected to be submitted to the NEA on Wednesday.
Other sources indicated that in addition to the National Unified List Coalition, another bloc called the Free Patriotic List Coalition, which comprises the Democratic Generation Party in partnership with other parties, is also expected to run for the party list seats.
Nagi Al-Shehabi, head of the Democratic Generation Party, said that the Free Patriotic Coalition’s lists are in their final stages and that they will include influential local leaders with clear contributions.
However, there is a widely held belief that the National Unified List Coalition including candidates from 12 political parties will be the only runner for the 284 seats covered by the closed party lists.
Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat, head of the liberal-oriented Reform and Development Party, said that only a few political parties can form a coalition capable of contesting the 284 seats allocated to the party lists.
“Forming such a coalition is a very cumbersome and costly process, to the extent that most political parties will prefer to join the National Unified List Coalition,” he said, indicating that “most Egyptian political parties can’t form a coalition to run and campaign in a district including six or seven governorates with millions of people in the population and thousands of miles to cover.”
Al-Sadat said that the House of Representatives election will be similar to that for the Senate. “There will be a single National Unified List Coalition that will win the 284-seat closed list unopposed,” he said.
As for the individual seats, he expressed hope that there will be stiff competition as the number of candidates exceeded 2,100 on Monday and is expected to reach around 2,500 on Thursday.
“This is a big number that could make the election battle tough and competitive,” he said.
Parliamentary sources revealed that several prominent figures have been excluded from the National Unified List Coalition. These figures are mostly the current heads of parliamentary committees, with most of them affiliated with the Mostaqbal Watan Party.
The list of the excluded individuals comprises head of the Local Administration Committee Ahmed Al-Sigini, head of the Industrial Committee businessman Ahmed Al-Sallab, head of the Transport Committee Alaa Abed, head of the Youth Committee Mahmoud Hussein, head of the Budget Committee Fakhri Al-Fiqi, and head of the Human Rights Committee Tarek Radwan.
Abdel-Hadi Al-Qasabi, head of the Social Solidarity Committee and former parliamentary spokesman of the Mostaqbal Watan Party, will also be excluded from the list of candidates. Al-Qasabi was appointed this week by President Abdel-Fatah Al-Sisi as a member of the Senate.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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