Slovenia will hold a presidential election on 23 October, Parliament Speaker Urska Klakocar-Zupancic announced on Wednesday, after signing the decision to call the election.

Election deadlines begin on 22 August, by which time candidacies should be submitted, after which official electioneering begins. In the event of an election run-off, involving two candidates with the most votes, the vote will be held within three weeks.

The newly elected president is scheduled to take the oath of office in parliament on 23 December, a day after the second five-year term of incumbent President Borut Pahor expires.

This will be the seventh presidential election since 1992. Only the first president, Milan Kucan, managed to win two consecutive terms, in 1992 and 1997, in the first round.

Borut Pahor was elected for a second term in a run-off against Danilo Turk and then against Marjan Sarec.

Apart from Danilo Turk, who was president from 2007 to 2012, the late Janez Drnovsek, who ran for president in 2002, after serving as prime minister for a number of years, served only one presidential term.

According to public opinion polls in the last two weeks, after the potential candidates for the presidential elections were unofficially presented to the public, the most likely candidates for a likely run-off election are high-profile lawyer Natasa Musar-Pirc, former foreign minister in the Jansa government Anze Logar, and former diplomat Marta Kos, who will be nominated by Prime Minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement party.