Costa Rica prepares to elect president this Sunday between continuity and change

For these elections, 20 candidates registered for the presidency

San José.- The citizens of Costa Rica will go to the polls this Sunday to elect the president of the country and the 57 deputies of the Legislative Assembly for the period 2026-2030, between the continuity of the controversial political project of President Rodrigo Chaves promised by the right-wing official candidate Laura Fernández, and the change of direction sought by the opposition. The deadline for publishing polls ended last Wednesday and all of them favored the officialist Fernández, even with support exceeding the 40% needed to win in the first round, while the opposition parties have focused their messages to voters on avoiding continuity and pointing out risks of a “dictatorship”. Fernández, who has promised a firm hand against crime, has presented herself as the “heir” of Rodrigo Chaves, a right-wing economist with high levels of popularity, who during his term has maintained strong clashes with Congress, the Judiciary, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the General Comptroller’s Office of the Republic and critical media outlets.

You may be interested in: Previous series on the occasion of the elections in Costa Rica on February 1st

The candidate of the ruling Sovereign People’s Party, 39 years old and a political scientist, was Minister of the Presidency and Planning of the Chaves government and has asked voters to give her a resounding majority of deputies in Congress to reform the State and the Judiciary and to carry out a policy of a firm hand against crime. This has been described by opposition candidates as authoritarianism and they have warned of the risk of a dictatorship being established.

This Saturday, opposition candidates such as the center-leftist from the Citizen Agenda Coalition, Claudia Dobles, and the social democrat from the National Liberation Party, Álvaro Ramos, who are vying for second place according to the polls, will hold some private activities or with their followers, and others will attend to media and international observers who were accredited to participate in the process.

TSE President Calls to the Polls

In its last press conference prior to the general elections, Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) guaranteed on Friday the “protection” of the electoral process and asked Costa Ricans to go out and vote to strengthen the country’s democracy.

“The first call is to go to the polls. To honor our ancestors, our grandparents, our grandmothers who fought to build the Costa Rican democratic process,” declared the president of the TSE, Eugenia Zamora.

3.7 million Costa Ricans will be called to the polls to elect the country’s president and the 57 deputies of the Legislative Assembly for the period 2026-2030.

The TSE president stated that there is a “shielding” of the electoral process to ensure that the popular will is respected and emphasized that the entity has fulfilled this work for the last 76 years since its creation. Around 90,000 people will participate in the elections as party prosecutors, members of the 7,154 vote-receiving boards, electoral agents, and international and national observers. The election day will begin at 6:00 local time (12:00 GMT) and will close at 18:00 local time (00:00 GMT on Monday). The TSE will communicate the preliminary results on the same Sunday starting at 20:45 local time (2:45 GMT on Monday). For these elections, 20 candidates for the presidency registered, of whom 75% are men and 25% are women. In the case of the deputies, there are 1,207 candidacies, 49.1% are women and 50.9% are men.