The 2026/27 Political Parties Fund: Sh1.4 Billion, 48 Parties, and DCP's Zero

Updated 2 October 2026.

On Friday 21 August 2026 the Registrar of Political Parties gazetted the Political Parties Fund allocations for 2026/27.

• Total: about Sh1.4 billion, across 48 approved parties.
• UDA: Sh549.97 million.
• ODM: Sh293.78 million.
• Jubilee: about Sh128.9 million.

UDA and ODM between them take roughly Sh843.75 million — more than half the entire fund. The other 46 parties, Jubilee among them, share what is left.

DCP, which won a parliamentary by-election in July 2026 and intends to contest every ward in the country, received nothing.

How the formula works

The Fund is established under the Political Parties Act and financed by the national government with not less than 0.3 per cent of the national government's share of revenue. It is disbursed quarterly, as Treasury releases it.

The distribution is weighted:

• 70 per cent on the total number of votes each party secured at the previous general election.
• The remainder on representation of special interest groups and on the party's total elected members.

That is the whole story of DCP's zero. The party did not exist in 2022, therefore it has no 2022 vote share, therefore it receives nothing from the 70 per cent that matters. Its by-election MP counts for very little against a formula dominated by a national vote total from four years earlier.

Why this shape matters more than the totals

A funding rule that pays on the last election is, by construction, a rule that entrenches the last election's winners.

Three effects follow.

New parties are structurally underfunded in their first cycle. Every new Kenyan party contests its first election on donations and the personal resources of its principals. That is a large part of why Kenyan politics is expensive and why wealthy individuals are so central to it.

Losing compounds. A party that loses badly loses its income and therefore its ability to maintain the branches and registers it would need to compete next time. We wrote about that cycle in why Kenyan parties die.

Old shells have value. A dormant registered party with a small allocation and a symbol is a tradeable asset. This is a real reason movements adopt existing parties rather than registering new ones.

What is being proposed to change it

Lawmakers have called for stronger oversight of political party financing ahead of 2027. A Political Parties (Amendment) Bill has proposed creating a Women Inclusion and Political Participation Fund, administered separately from the main Fund, to support training and mentorship for women seeking office.

The Registrar has also warned that non-compliant parties face loss of funding and even deregistration — a reminder that the fund is conditional on filing audited accounts and meeting the Act's requirements, which not every party reliably does.

What this means for a candidate

Be honest with yourself about how much of your campaign your party will fund.

In most cases the answer is: very little of your ward or constituency campaign, whatever the party's national allocation. The Fund pays for national operations, secretariats and central campaigns. It does not typically pay for your polling agents, your fuel or your coordinators.

Which means your budget is your problem from the beginning, your agent coverage is your problem, and the cost of both is far more manageable if it is planned across eleven months rather than compressed into six weeks. See the campaign budget guide.

Funding is conditional, and parties do lose it

The Registrar has warned that non-compliant parties face loss of funding and even deregistration. Compliance means the ordinary obligations of the Political Parties Act — audited accounts, proper records, filings made on time.

That is worth knowing if you are considering a small party as a route to the ballot. A party whose funding is at risk for non-compliance is also a party whose nomination-rule certification and membership-list certification may not happen on schedule, and those two deadlines are what put you on a ballot.

Quarterly, when Treasury releases it

Allocations are disbursed quarterly upon receipt of funds from the National Treasury. That phrasing does real work. A gazetted allocation is an entitlement, not a bank balance, and Kenyan parties have historically waited.

So a candidate planning around party support should plan around the timing as well as the amount — and should assume that the money, when it arrives, funds the national campaign rather than their ward.

Related: why Kenyan parties die.