President of the United Nations General Assembly

Election

The session of the assembly is scheduled for every year starting in September—any special, or emergency special, assemblies over the next year will be headed by the president of the UNGA.

Under rule 30 of the rules of procedure, as amended in 2002, the assembly elects its president and 21 vice-presidents at least three months before the session over which they are to preside opens, and those elected take up their functions only when that session begins. In practice the election is held in early June for a session opening in September. If a president has not been chosen by the time a session opens, rule 31 provides that the previous president, or the head of the delegation that supplied them, presides until an election is held.

Rotation and contested elections

The presidency rotates annually between the five geographic groups: African, Asia-Pacific, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean, and Western European and other States.

The group whose turn it is normally settles on a single candidate in advance, and the assembly then elects that person without a ballot. When a group cannot agree, the whole membership votes by secret ballot, an outcome that has been rare. It happened in 1991, when the Asian group put forward three names; not again until June 2012, when Vuk Jeremić of Serbia defeated Dalius Čekuolis of Lithuania by 99 votes to 85; in 2016, when Peter Thomson of Fiji beat Andreas Mavroyiannis of Cyprus 94 to 90; and in 2026, when Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh defeated Andreas Kakouris of Cyprus 99 to 91.

Because of their powerful stature globally, some of the largest, most powerful countries have never held the presidency, including the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Japan.

A few countries had a national elected as president of UNGA twice: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Germany, Hungary, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. Five women have held the office: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in 1953, Angie Brooks in 1969, Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa in 2006, María Fernanda Espinosa in 2018 and Annalena Baerbock in 2025.

Transparency of the selection process

The way candidates are chosen has itself been a subject of reform. In resolution 71/323 of 2017 the assembly decided that candidates for the presidency should publish vision statements and take part in informal interactive dialogues with member states before the vote, a step intended to make the process more transparent and inclusive; civil society organisations and members of the public may submit questions for those sessions. The same resolution invited member states to consider nominating women, with a view to improving gender balance across senior United Nations posts. Dialogues have been convened before each subsequent election, including those held on 13 May 2026 for the eighty-first session.

Role and powers

Presiding over the assembly

Rules 35 and 36 give the president the general powers of a presiding officer: declaring meetings open and closed, directing debate, ensuring that the rules are observed, according the right to speak, putting questions to a vote and announcing decisions, as well as ruling on points of order and maintaining order in the hall. Under rule 37 the president does not vote, and instead designates another member of their own delegation to cast the vote for their country. If the president must be absent, one of the vice-presidents takes the chair with the same powers; if the president becomes unable to serve, a replacement is elected for the remainder of the term.

The president also chairs the General Committee, which is made up of the president, the 21 vice-presidents and the chairs of the six Main Committees, and which assists in the general conduct of the assembly's work, including recommendations on the agenda. By rule 62 the president invites delegates to observe a minute of silent prayer or meditation immediately after the opening and before the closing of each session.

Convening and representation

Beyond the chair, the president convenes high-level thematic debates on current issues during the resumed part of the session, appoints co-facilitators to steer intergovernmental negotiations, and represents the assembly in its dealings with the Secretariat and the other principal organs. Successive revitalisation resolutions have also established a practice of monthly coordination meetings between the president of the assembly and the president of the Security Council. When an emergency special session or a special session is convened during the year, the sitting president presides over it as well.

Selection of the secretary-general

Resolution 69/321 of September 2015 gave the presidency a formal part in choosing the secretary-general. It called on the presidents of the assembly and of the Security Council to open the process with a joint letter soliciting candidates, and provided for informal dialogues in which nominees present themselves to the full membership and answer questions from member states. The first such joint letter was issued in December 2015 and has been described as the first public job announcement for the post; twelve candidates took part in the dialogues that followed, which were webcast. Where a selection process spans two sessions, the outgoing president hands it on to their successor, as Annalena Baerbock did in a letter to member states of 4 September 2026 before Khalilur Rahman took over the process for the eighty-first session.

Office of the President

The president is supported by the Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA), headed by a chef de cabinet. The office is financed from the United Nations regular budget together with a voluntary trust fund, and is staffed partly by officials seconded from permanent missions and from parts of the United Nations system, an arrangement member states have repeatedly asked to be put on a more systematic footing.

Because the office is rebuilt around a new president every year, continuity has been a recurring difficulty. A 2025 report on revitalisation recorded that the office had retained roughly half its team from the previous session to preserve institutional memory, that all five regional groups were represented on the staff and that women made up more than half of it, while also noting that unpredictable funding at the start of each session and high staff turnover continued to hamper the office's work.

Ethics and accountability

Scrutiny of the presidency increased sharply in October 2015, when John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda, who had presided over the sixty-eighth session in 2013–14, was charged by United States prosecutors with taking more than a million dollars in bribes from Chinese businessmen, including payments he solicited on the stated basis that they would fund his office. Ashe denied wrongdoing and died in 2016 before he could be tried.

Contemporary reporting pointed out how little oversight the post carried: presidents could hold other jobs without disclosing them, had wide discretion over an office budget then worth roughly US$330,000 a year, could accept additional money from member states without telling anyone, and went through no formal vetting. A task force set up by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported in 2016 that the office operated with weak financial oversight and no code of ethics, and made eighteen recommendations, among them a code of conduct for presidents, disclosure of all funds received by the office and screening of private donors.

Member states responded in resolution 70/305 of 2016, which introduced an oath of office for incoming presidents and annexed a Code of Ethics for the President of the General Assembly. The code requires the president to observe the highest standards of ethical conduct from the date of election, to act impartially and in good faith, and to avoid using the office or its resources for private gain, showing unwarranted preference to any state or person, or acting in ways that would damage confidence in the organisation. Recent presidents have undertaken to finance their official activities solely through the regular budget and the OPGA trust fund and have participated in the United Nations financial disclosure programme; Miroslav Lajčák, president of the seventy-second session, was the first to publish a summary of his personal financial disclosure on taking up and leaving the post.

Vice-presidents

In addition to the president, a slate of 21 vice-presidents are elected for each General Assembly session. The vice-presidents have the same powers and duties as the president, and the president may designate one of them to cover his or her absence from any meeting or part thereof. The seats are distributed under a pattern set by resolution 33/138 of 1978: six for African states, four for Asian states, one for Eastern European states, three for Latin American and Caribbean states, two for Western European and other states, and one each for the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Symbols and traditions

The president presides with a distinctive gavel presented to the United Nations by Iceland in 1952, carved by the sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson and offered on the basis that the country's parliament, the Althing, is among the oldest in the world. It is used to open and close meetings, mark the adoption of the agenda and of resolutions, and call the hall to order. The original broke in October 1960 in the hands of Frederick Boland as he tried to restore order during the session at which Nikita Khrushchev disrupted proceedings; a replica was supplied, and the gavel in use today was carved from pear wood in 2005 by the Icelandic sculptor Sigríður Kristjánsdóttir. At the close of each session the outgoing president hands the gavel to their successor in a short ceremony.

List of presidents

Abbreviations

Pre-1966

• COS: Commonwealth Seat
• EAS: Eastern European and Asian Seat
• LAS: Latin American Seat
• MES: Middle Eastern Seat
• WES: Western European Seat

Since 1966

• Africa: African Group
• Asia-Pacific: Asian Group, since 2011 the Asia-Pacific Group
• EEG: Eastern European Group
• GRULAC: Latin American and Caribbean Group
• WEOG: Western European and Others Group