Barcelona presidential elections: Who are the 2026 candidates, and why the role of president matters

Barcelona will spend the next six weeks in full campaign mode after president Joan Laporta formally triggered the 2026 presidential race, setting March 15 as the date on which more than 140,000 socios will decide who steers Europe’s last member-owned super-club through its next five-year cycle.

Laporta and the entire board will resign at Monday’s General Assembly on February 9, opening a signature-collection window that closes just before the vote. Any hopeful must secure at least 2,321 member endorsements and post a financial guarantee equivalent to 15 percent of the club’s budget—roughly €150 million based on recent accounts—to have their name appear on the ballot. Until those thresholds are met, all declared contenders remain “pre-candidates.”

The timing has already proved contentious. Critics argue that a mid-season election favours the incumbent, whose visibility remains high while rivals scramble for backing. Once the board steps down, a regency of no fewer than six sitting directors will run daily operations, ensuring the club meets fixtures and payroll while candidates barn-storm Catalonia for votes.

Why the fuss? In Barcelona’s unique governance model the president is de-facto CEO, chairing the General Assembly, green-lighting every transfer, renewing or releasing players and coaches, and acting as the global face of the Blaugrana brand. With liabilities still hovering around €2.5 billion and a half-finished Camp Nou renovation draining cash, the next administration will determine whether the club can escape its debt spiral without relinquishing competitiveness on the pitch.

Laporta, 63, is bidding for a third aggregate term after winning in 2003 and again in 2021. He presided over the Messi-Guardiola golden era in his first stint and now touts the new 105,000-seat stadium—targeting the 2029 Champions League final—as the engine that will restore solvency. Yet delays, cost overruns and water leaks have blunted optimism, and opponents claim his “spend-our-way-out” policy merely papers over structural cracks.

Victor Font, 53, the tech entrepreneur who captured 30 percent of the vote in 2021, is back with a platform built on financial prudence and digital reform. He pledges to scrap Laporta’s economic “levers,” shorten presidential mandates to four years, introduce mail-in and electronic voting for overseas socios, and launch a partial-ticket scheme for non-season-ticket holders. Font’s headline promise: bring Lionel Messi home for a Camp Nou farewell tour.

Xavier Vilajoana, 53, CEO of affordable-housing developer Grup Euroconstruc, is making a second attempt after falling short of signatures in 2021. A former La Masia player and ex-board member under Josep Bartomeu, Vilajoana claims credit for the youth pipeline now feeding Hansi Flick’s squad and portrays himself as the continuity candidate without Laporta’s financial baggage. His Bartomeu ties, however, could alienate voters still angry over the previous regime’s collapse.

Completing the early field is sports financier Marc Ciria, architect of “Movement 42,” a radical blueprint to restructure Barça’s balance sheet. Ciria argues that a Messi return is not mere nostalgia but a strategic imperative to boost commercial income and protect the socio ownership model, citing current revenues that lag behind the Argentine’s final seasons at the club.

Whoever emerges must still navigate a €1.5 billion debt mountain, ongoing La Liga salary-cap constraints and the expectation that Camp Nou will finally reopen in late 2026. For Barcelona’s dispersed ownership, the stakes extend beyond trophies: the March 15 ballot will shape the institution’s solvency, identity and place among Europe’s elite for the remainder of the decade.

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