Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) completed the registration of federal candidate lists from all five parliamentary parties for the 18–20 September State Duma elections, chairwoman Ella Pamfilova announced on 23 July. The registered lists comprise 390 candidates from United Russia, 329 from the Communist Party (KPRF), 297 from New People, 260 from A Just Russia, and 246 from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR). The move formally sets the field for the 450-seat chamber, with the CEC confirming that all candidates had passed eligibility checks, including the closure of foreign accounts and divestment of prohibited assets.

Simultaneously, the CEC’s publication of candidate income and property declarations has focused attention on the personal wealth of several front-runners. According to the disclosures, United Russia candidate and Novatek co-owner Leonid Simanovsky reported 5.6 billion roubles in 2025 income, with over 10 billion held in bank accounts. New People leader Alexei Nechaev declared 1.4 billion roubles, largely from a microfinance firm and interest on deposits. By contrast, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, heading the United Russia federal list, reported 32.5 million roubles. The declarations also revealed that war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, a top-five United Russia candidate, held shares in Apple, Intel, Procter & Gamble, and Nebius Group. United Russia’s press service stated that Poddubny had taken all necessary steps to divest foreign financial instruments before registration, a requirement that in 2021 led to the disqualification of Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin.

United Russia, which a study by Moscow-based political analysts Alexei Martynov and Pavel Danilin rated as the most effective faction in the outgoing Duma with 58% of its bills adopted, is building its campaign around an updated “People’s Programme.” Party chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on 22 July that almost 3 million proposals had been submitted, exceeding the 2.5 million received in 2021, with the largest share addressing regional development disparities. Medvedev identified demography as the country’s main challenge and pledged to make “preservation and multiplication of the people of Russia” the programme’s key priority. The party intends to use the document as a concrete action plan with measurable indicators, not merely a formal platform.

Public interest in the declarations coincided with a temporary outage of the CEC website on 23 July, which the monitoring service ping-admin confirmed was inaccessible globally, though the commission had previously restricted foreign access for security reasons. In a separate electoral development, Morocco’s Istiqlal party validated its first wave of candidates in 70 of 92 local constituencies for legislative elections also scheduled for September 2026, with Secretary-General Nizar Baraka standing in Larache. The next formal step in Russia is the campaign period ahead of the three-day vote, with the CEC having already issued registration certificates to all parliamentary party candidates.