Key Facts
- When: Voting day is Wednesday, 4 November 2026; special voting is Monday and Tuesday, 2 and 3 November.
- Scale: 136,790 certified candidates compete for 10,526 council seats in 257 municipalities.
- Who votes: More than 29 million registered voters, according to the Electoral Commission.
- Why you care: Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub, may get a new coalition and a new mayor.
- Prediction markets: Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated US exchange, gives Helen Zille 51% for Johannesburg mayor (26 October, 11:22 a.m. ET).
South Africa is about to hand a vote of confidence, or of no confidence, to the parties that run its cities. Our South Africa local elections hub follows every step before the vote on Wednesday, 4 November.
The numbers are large: 136,790 candidates certified by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), the independent body that runs elections, are chasing 10,526 council seats. Another 5,096 were disqualified during statutory reviews.
Who Is on the Ballot
The vote covers 257 municipalities: eight big metropolitan councils, 44 district councils and 205 local municipalities. Voters are choosing councillors, and councils in turn choose mayors.
That is why the biggest cities draw so much attention. Whoever can assemble a majority of councillors, alone or in a coalition, picks the mayor of Johannesburg, Tshwane (Pretoria) or Cape Town.
How Voting Works
Special voting for people who cannot reach a station on the day runs on Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 November, from 08:00 to 17:00 South Africa Standard Time (SAST). That is 01:00 to 10:00 US Eastern Time, because US clocks go back on 1 November.
On election day, voting stations open at 07:00 SAST, which is midnight in New York. Eastern-time readers will see the first reports overnight.
The ballot papers differ by place. In the eight metros, voters get two papers: one to pick a ward councillor and one for proportional representation (PR), where parties win seats in line with their vote share.
In local municipalities, voters get three papers, adding a district PR ballot.
Why Johannesburg Is the Prize
Johannesburg is South Africa’s economic engine and the city foreign investors know best. The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s main opposition party, has nominated Helen Zille, 75, a former Cape Town mayor and former Western Cape premier.
The governing African National Congress (ANC) ran the country alone from 1994 until 2024. It now shares power in a national unity government after losing its parliamentary majority, so every council it loses feeds the story of a party in decline.
ActionSA, a party founded by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, is also in the race. Where no party wins a majority of councillors, coalition deals decide who governs.
What Prediction Markets Say
On 26 October at 11:22 a.m. ET, Kalshi’s market on who will be mayor of Johannesburg after the elections priced Zille at 51.0%, David Makhura at 14.0% and Mashaba at 7.0%. Kalshi is a US exchange regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and 13,557 contracts had traded.
Polymarket, a crypto-based exchange, runs separate mayor markets for Tshwane, eThekwini (Durban), Nelson Mandela Bay and Ekurhuleni. Each has between US$27,000 and US$47,000 traded.
These prices are bets, not polls, and they can move quickly on news. Why we show this: prediction markets turn real-money bets into a live probability that moves within minutes of the news, which is why investors, campaigns and newsrooms in the United States now follow them closely. We show them next to polls and official results, never instead of them.
What It Means for You
For US investors and travellers, the main effect is on city services: water, electricity and roads in Johannesburg and Tshwane depend on stable councils. A fragile coalition can delay budgets and contracts, so local results often matter more to business than the national headline.
Official results come from the IEC, and we will follow them in our hub. Prediction-market prices will be one signal beside them, not a substitute.
What Is Not Known
No independent institute has published a poll we can verify for every metro, so we do not print seat forecasts. How many councils will need coalition deals, and how many voters will turn out, will only be clear after the count.
We have not confirmed the closing time of stations on 4 November and will add it once the IEC publishes it. Turnout and the final seat split are also open.
Sources
Electoral Commission of South Africa, SAnews (government news agency), South African Government, Kalshi and Polymarket (read 26 October 2026, 11:22 a.m. ET).
Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief · Editorial standards · Report an error
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Frequently Asked Questions
When do South Africans vote?
Local elections are on Wednesday, 4 November 2026. Special voting takes place on 2 and 3 November.
How many ballot papers will voters get?
Metro voters get two ballot papers, ward and proportional representation. Voters in local municipalities get three, including a district proportional representation ballot.
Who chooses the mayors?
Newly elected councils choose mayors, so coalition deals after the vote decide who runs big cities.
What do prediction markets say about Johannesburg?
On 26 October Kalshi priced Helen Zille at 51% to become mayor. These are market prices, not polls.