The Local Elections (also known as the Municipal Elections) are elections that decide lower-government leadership for different regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As you may know, Bosnia is made up of 2 entities — the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and Republika Srpska (RS) — while the Brčko District is considered to be a condominium of both FBiH and RS entities.

In FBiH, there are 10 cantons that are subdivided into municipalities while RS is divided directly into municipalities.

As it stands, FBiH has 79 municipalities and RS has 64 municipalities.

Although the Brčko District isn’t technically called a municipality, it is treated as such for statistical purposes. This is also why you won’t see an option to select the Brčko District as an option on (but FBiH and RS are both options) on the PRP-1 form for new voters and the PRP-2 form for voters who voted in the 2018 elections.

What are municipalities?

Municipalities are the smallest administrative unit of the country. Each of these municipalities have a council and a municipality head.

While municipalities sometimes represent entire cities, this isn’t the case for all municipalities. For example, the capital city of BiH, Sarajevo, consists of 4 municipalities.