A small-circle election for the powerful electoral body that chooses Hong Kong’s chief executive will be held on November 22 this year, the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau (CMAB) has said. Hong Kong officials open a ballot box at the Election Committee by-elections counting station on September 7, 2025. File photo: GovHK. A total of 982 members will be elected to the Election Committee, according to a CMAB document uploaded to the Legislative Council (LegCo) website on Wednesday.
The members will be elected by special interest groups including representatives from different industries, as well as from district-level committees and national bodies including the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
In the 2021 elections, 4,389 people from these groups cast their votes. See also: Explainer: Hong Kong’s Election Committee determines who leads the city – what is it and how does it work? The elected members will join hundreds of other appointed and ex officio members to make up the 1,500-strong body. Their term, lasting five years, will begin on February 1 next year and end on January 31, 2032.
The November poll comes ahead of the chief executive elections that will be held next year. The city’s current leader John Lee, who finishes his term on June 30, 2027, was elected in a single-candidate election in 2022. Chief Executive John Lee delivers the 2025 Policy Address on September 17, 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. Besides having a vote in the chief executive elections, the Election Committee is also responsible for electing 40 of the 90 members in the Legislative Council (LegCo).
The city held LegCo elections in December last year. The next ones will be in 2029.
HK$260 million to hold election
The CMAB’s Registration and Electoral Office (REO) will recruit some 1,000 civil servants with experience handling elections “to perform various electoral duties on the polling day,” the bureau said in the document.
The REO will conduct training sessions and drills in preparation for the election.
Earlier this year, authorities said the total cost of the election will be around HK$260 million. The sum includes HK$135 million in staff costs, HK$9 million in publicity, and HK$116 million in other expenses such as venue bookings, printing, transportation, and postage. Police officers patrol the entrance of the HKCEC, where ballots for the 2021 Election Committee election were counted Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. The paper ballots will be counted at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre after the polls close at 6pm on election day.
A separate LegCo document noted this year’s voting hours would be shortened. Whereas polling hours were from 7.30am to 10.30pm in the 2021 elections, the timeframe will be shortened this year, running from 9am to 6pm instead, following legislators’ suggestions.
The REO will “step up publicity, and put a prominent message on the poll cards, envelopes for sending the poll cards and the Introduction to Candidates to alert voters, reminding them of the new polling hours,” it said.
Lawmakers also urged the government to step up its electronic ballot counting system to prevent a repeat of a system failure that plagued the 2023 District Council polls.