Voters in Benin will head to the polls this Sunday for crucial parliamentary and local elections, just one month after a failed military coup shook the West African nation.
The elections are set to define the political landscape ahead of the presidential race in April, with President Patrice Talon’s ruling coalition widely expected to consolidate its already significant power.
The ballots come at a fraught time for the country, which is still reeling from the attempted coup on December 7, 2025, that was quickly suppressed by the military.
The main opposition party, the Democrats, faces major obstacles. While they are running in the parliamentary race, they have been barred from participating in the local and presidential polls for failing to gather enough signatures to register.
This leaves them at risk of ceding even more ground to Talon’s three-party bloc, which currently holds a commanding 81 of the 109 seats in the National Assembly.
President Talon, who is nearing the end of his second five-year term, is constitutionally barred from running again.
However, his hand-picked successor, Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni, is the strong favorite to win the presidency in April. Critics accuse Talon of using his near decade in power to restrict political opposition and civil liberties, a sentiment echoed by Amnesty International, which recently warned of a “shrinking civic space” in the country.
The electoral rules themselves present a major challenge for the opposition.
A law requiring parties to secure 20% of registered voters in all 24 voting districts to stand for parliament has been described by political scientist Joel Atayi Guedegbe as a “relatively insurmountable” threshold for any group outside the ruling coalition.
Along with these hurdles, security remains a key concern for voters, as northern Benin has been increasingly affected by a spillover of jihadist violence from neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
