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Balkan Insight (8 September 2025)

Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Local elections due in North Macedonia in October are likely to be more than just a simple contest in the country’s ethnic Albanian bloc between two main political forces.

With only weeks to go, the VLEN [It’s Worth It] party, part of the government coalition, and the opposition Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, have already framed the polls as a symbolic referendum on who should represent ethnic Albanians in a country where they make up roughly a quarter of the 1.8 million residents.

The DUI, relegated in last year’s general elections to the opposition benches, despite winning more votes than VLEN, after spending most of the past two decades in government,  is fighting to reclaim its lost mantle.

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