NEW YORK — The race to replace António Guterres as the United Nations’ next secretary-general officially opened this week following a joint Nov. 25 letter from UN leaders inviting member states to nominate candidates for the top job, and putting Latin American names Rebeca Grynspan, Michelle Bachelet and Rafael Grossi in focus early in headquarters here. The abnormally premature race is being moulded through an informal regional rotation that does Latin America the greatest good, and through surging pressure to get a woman into the job at last, Dec. 3, 2025.
The letter, signed by Michael Imran Kanu of Sierra Leone, president of the 15-member Security Council this month and Annalena Baerbock of Germany, president of the 193-member General Assembly, calls for a job that requires the “highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity”, and it explicitly encourages countries to “strongly consider nominating women,” a first in its history. The next U.N. secretary-general will take office on Jan. 1, 2027, after the Security Council agrees on a name to submit to the General Assembly for approval, Reuters reported, citing simultaneous launches of the joint appeal.
Gender and the U.N. race for secretary-general
The opener lays the groundwork for a predominantly Latin American field. Costa Rica has nominated economist and UN trade chief Rebeca Grynspan, a former vice president widely perceived as a centrist consensus-builder, while Chile is proposing former president and ex-human rights chief Michelle Bachelet. Argentina has since rallied behind the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, breathing life into long-standing whispers by openly seeking the post of UN secretary-general.
Grynspan, now head of UNCTAD, asserts that if equality rather than discrimination prevails this time round, the UN will at last have its first female secretary-general. Bachelet carries the profile of a two-term president who also served as UN human rights chief, and Grossi has emerged as a frequent face in global crisis diplomacy thanks to his leadership of the nuclear watchdog. Between them, they represent the regional and gendered dynamics shaping this race for United Nations secretary-general, even as other Latin American candidates, like David Choquehuanca, a Bolivian politician, hope to seize this region’s moment.
The effort to secure a woman at the helm of the UN has been gathering momentum for years. A civil-society campaign launched in 2015 placed pressure on the Security Council with hashtag activism, “Time for a woman,” and seven female candidates were among the contenders in 2016 (two of whom — UNESCO head Irina Bokova and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark — were still standing). Clark’s own bid for the top UN job, which took place publicly, gave a clear signal how close the organisation came to breaking the glass ceiling — but instead had member states opt for Guterres.
A series of reforms adopted for the 2016 race, including public hearings with candidates, was credited with opening up a once-opaque selection process. Those reforms are now baked into the UN’s official selection and appointment procedures, which include formal presentations of candidates’ vision statements, town hall dialogues with member states and civil society, and a more predictable timetable for Security Council “straw polls” in mid-2026.
Yet diplomats caution that the critical bargaining will remain centralised among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Council, who must all sign off on any name presented as UN secretary-general. That world is already informing campaign strategies: Latin American campaigns are testing quietly to see whether a woman from the region — often mentioning Grynspan or Bachelet — can cobble together support in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, London and Paris without generating a veto; Grossi’s backers suggest that his nuclear-security qualifications would be an asset at a dangerous time of broader conflict.
For now, the declared and running field is unusually large, with candidates from Europe, Africa, and small states, joined by Latin America’s leading contenders in the 2026 UN secretary-general selection. But as wars continue to grind on, climate impacts pick up speed and the U.N.’s finances come under strain, whoever emerges from this race will take over an institution under pressure to demonstrate its relevance — and this time, many diplomats and activists argue that the person leading the race to become U.N. secretary general must match up with the historical scale of that test.
