It looks like a rerun with the ending already written. On 15 January, Yoweri Museveni will try to win a seventh five-year term as Uganda’s leader. He is 81.

Museveni has spent nearly half his life in power. The former bush fighter, who leads the National Resistance Movement (NRM), goes into the vote as the clear favourite.

Five other candidates are running against him. But, as in 2021, the contest is likely to boil down to a straight fight between Museveni and opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine.

Opposition crackdown

There is little suspense around the outcome of this rematch. In seeking another term, Museveni has not changed his playbook.

He can still rely on the state machine to campaign – and to squeeze the opposition.

According to the United Nations, more than 300 people have been arrested since September.

As in previous elections, Uganda’s president has presented his candidacy as the only route to peace and the stability needed for economic growth.

He casts the choice as one between “preserving achievements” – his campaign slogan – and the risk of uncertainty.

In 2021, Bobi Wine was standing for president for the first time. He was credited with 35.08% of the vote after a campaign built on rejecting the Museveni system, and on promises of a better future for Uganda’s young people. The political context in which these elections are being held is radically different from 2021

The absence of the long-time opposition figure Kizza Besigye opened the way for him. It also pushed his party, the National Unity Platform (NUP), into the role of the largest opposition force in parliament.

Five years on, everything seems in place for history to repeat itself.

Yet it would be too neat to treat this election as nothing more than a replay of 2021.

“Electorally, it is a remake in the sense that the two main candidates are the same,” says Kristof Titeca, a political science professor at the University of Antwerp.

“But the political context in which these elections are being held is radically different from 2021.”

‘The energy around Bobi Wine’s candidacy is different’

That is true for the government and for the opposition alike.

Five years after his surprise breakthrough, Bobi Wine is again campaigning on a promise to break with four decades of Museveni rule. But he does not seem to have the same momentum this time.

Crushed by repression, his party has also run into structural problems in recent years.

It has struggled to make an impact outside its Buganda stronghold in the centre of the country.

As the new standard-bearer of the opposition, the NUP has also had to deal with internal splits, as well as the departure – amid corruption allegations – of its parliamentary group leader, Mathias Mpuuga.

At the end of July 2025, Bobi Wine told us he was worried about the approaching electoral deadlines, in an interview at his party’s headquarters in Kampala.

Electorally, it is a remake in the sense that the two main candidates are the same

Sitting beneath a portrait of Nelson Mandela bearing the words “It always seems impossible until it’s done”, he argued at length for standing again.

He accused his main opponent of trying to split the opposition.

“Many of our members have been recruited by those in power to make sure they support this poll, and to project the image of a divided opposition, so they can justify keeping this system,” he told us.

“The energy around Wine’s candidacy is different this year,” Titeca says.

“In 2021, he was a threat because he embodied several of the regime’s fears – especially about the youth – and he had an anti-establishment image. That is no longer really the case today.”

A diplomat in Kampala agrees: “In 2021, the authorities were overtaken by the Wine phenomenon, which they failed to understand or anticipate. This time, Museveni has prepared for the threat.”

The shadow of Muhoozi Kainerugaba

The vote feels different for another reason too – the regime’s own internal dynamics.

Museveni, who at the start of his rule criticised leaders who cling to power, will enter 2026 in his 40th year at the head of Uganda.

While his most devoted supporters continue to praise his fitness – and insist he still does dozens of press-ups every day – his likely reelection seems to draw less interest than the debate over who comes next.

Over the past five years, the rise of his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has been one of the defining developments.

He was elevated to head of the army in March 2024, forcing the regime to respond to a new political reality.

The influential general, known for erratic and violent posts on X, has steadily made his language – and his circle – more overtly political.

That has gone hand in hand with the emergence of a structure, the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), with some members holding government posts.

Kainerugaba has been strikingly quiet since the campaign began. Even so, his shadow already hangs over the post-election period. By Romain Gras, The Africa Report