Election of the Director General in 2026

The term of office of the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will expire on September 30, 2026. Consequently, as set forth below, WIPO Member States are engaged in the process of the election of the next Director General, whose term of office will begin on October 1, 2026.

Invitation for proposals

On July 24, 2025, in accordance with the constitutional provisions and the procedures governing the nomination and appointment of Directors General of WIPO, Ambassador James Baxter, Permanent Representative of Australia to WIPO, in his capacity as Chair of the WIPO Coordination Committee, issued Circular Note 4222 inviting the Government of every State member of WIPO, if it so desires, to propose the name of one of its nationals as candidate for nomination by the WIPO Coordination Committee.

The proposals submitted for candidates for nomination to the post of Director General that were received by the deadline of 5 p.m. on Friday, October 24, 2025, are listed below.

Timeline for the nomination and appointment of the Director General

During the 66th Series of meetings of the Assemblies of the Member States of WIPO, which were held from July 8 to 17, 2025, the WIPO General Assembly, the WIPO Coordination Committee and the Paris and Berne Union Assemblies approved the timeline of procedural steps for the election of the Director General in 2026, including the convening of the extraordinary sessions of the relevant bodies, as follows:

Extraordinary Session of the Coordination Committee to nominate a candidate for appointment to the post of Director General (February 12 and 13, 2026);
Extraordinary Sessions of the General Assembly, the Paris Union Assembly, and the Berne Union Assembly to appoint the Director General (April 21, 2026).

Proposed candidates

The following list provides, in the order in which they were received, the candidates proposed by their respective governments for nomination to the post of Director General of WIPO in 2026, together with the notifications of the respective submissions as issued by the Chair of the WIPO Coordination Committee:

Candidate	Proposed by	Relevant documents
Mr. Daren Tang	Republic of Singapore	Circular [PDF]
Mr. Johanny Stanley Joseph	Republic of Haiti	Circular [PDF]

Following the closure of the deadline for submissions, a formal document consolidating all proposed candidates was prepared for consideration by the WIPO Coordination Committee.

Constitutional provisions

The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO Convention) contains the following provisions on the nomination and appointment of the Director General.

Provision regarding the nomination

Article 8(3) WIPO Convention

“The Coordination Committee shall:

“…(v) when the term of office of the Director General is about to expire, or when there is a vacancy in the post of the Director General, nominate a candidate for appointment to such position by the General Assembly; if the General Assembly does not appoint its nominee, the Coordination Committee shall nominate another candidate; this procedure shall be repeated until the latest nominee is appointed by the General Assembly”;

Provisions regarding the appointment

Article 6(2) WIPO Convention

“The General Assembly shall:

“(i) appoint the Director General upon nomination by the Coordination Committee”;

Article 6(3) WIPO Convention

“(g) For the appointment of the Director General…the required majority must be attained not only in the General Assembly but also in the Assembly of the Paris Union and the Assembly of the Berne Union.”