Guinea-Bissau General Elections: What is at Stake?

The Guinea-Bissau election of 2025 takes place against a backdrop of recurrent political instability in the small West African country. Since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has seen multiple coups, attempted coups, political fragmentation and weak institutions.

The current president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló (in office since 2019), has been at the centre of some of these tensions. He dissolved the National People’s Assembly in December 2023, citing an “attempted coup” that prevented him from returning home from a climate conference abroad.

This backdrop is critical for understanding the stakes of the 2025 election: the contest is shaped not merely by partisan rivalry, but by deeper questions about institutional legitimacy, the balance of power among the presidency, parliament and the military, and the broader struggle of democratic consolidation in a country with weak checks and balances.

The opposition accuses Embaló of undermining national institutions and seeking to entrench his power.

The 2025 election covers both the presidential election and the parliamentary election for the National People’s Assembly (Assembleia Nacional Popular). The president is elected using a two-round system. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority in the first round, a second round is held between the top two candidates.

On the parliamentary side, the Assembly’s 102 seats are filled mostly via closed-list proportional representation across 27 multi-member constituencies, with two additional single-member seats representing citizens abroad.
Initially, the parliamentary elections were scheduled for 24 November 2024 and presidential elections for December 2024, but were postponed amid institutional disputes.

Incumbent Embaló is seeking a second term, which would be historic in the country as he could be the first president to secure a second term in three decades, underscoring the contestation associated with the presidency of Guinea Bissau.

Embalo faces 11 other candidates, the most prominent challenger being Fernando Dias da Costa, aged 47, who is backed by the major opposition coalition. Former president José Mário Vaz (2014-2020) is also running again, despite his previous term being marked by political infighting.

The opposition claims that it is being disadvantaged through institutional exclusion (for example, the Supreme Court disqualified the PAI-Terra Ranka coalition from the election for failing to submit candidates on time).