Around 25,000 citizens voted at polling stations in diplomatic representations abroad.

[3] Local elections took place in a rather heated political environment, being preceded by one week by an illegal referendum in the Republika Srpska entity on the 9 January holiday, which had been declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.

The political discourse in the pre-electoral period focus on ethno-national issues rather than local administration.

For the first time, a 40% gender quota was applied to candidate lists; however, only seven women were elected as mayor out of 143.

Elections in Stolac were suspending following violent incidents and later repeated on 19 February.