A total of seven lists: Four parties and three electoral alliances, are registered to run.

This denser competition between parties and electoral alliances than usual may spell a greater voter turnout in an area noted for low voter participation compared with the national norm.

For instance, at the October 2021 local elections, voter turnout in Narva was 46 percent, compared with nearly 55 percent nationwide.

Electoral alliances are peculiar to local elections and provide a regional-specific alternative to the mainstream parties. In practice, they often end up in coalitions with some of those parties.

Jaan Toots, former mayor and current mayoral candidate from one of the major contenders, the Center Party, historically predominant in the town, told "Aktuaalne kaamera": "The electoral battle is currently between the three big ones — Stalnuhhin's list, Raik's list, and the Centre Party. Certainly, to some extent this matter may also be changed by [electoral alliance] Plan B together with its electoral coalition, because there are always those who give protest votes, and in Narva those come easily."

Plan B's mayoral candidate Urbo Vaarmann, meanwhile, said he did not consider his electoral coalition to be a collector of protest votes, although their plan is indeed to sweep the ground clean in Narva.

"Our opponent is the entire system of the city government, deputies, and mayor, who are exercising power right now. They are all responsible for what is happening. If we talk about the price of heating, if we talk about how the floods are or how the city funds have been handled, then in Narva the protest votes will come, as Narva people are tired," Vaarmann said.

According to the latest Norstat poll, Center would be the most voted-for party by some margin, if polling day were today. Center concedes this, though has exercised caution in stating all will be revealed in due course.

The pro-Kremlin KOOS party is also running in Narva, population a little under 53,000, most of whom are Russian-speaking. The Reform Party and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) are also running lists.

On the other hand, three major parties nationwide: The Social Democrats (SDE), Eesti 200, and Isamaa are not running lists.

Current mayor Katri Raik is also running her own list, as is Mihhail Stalnuhhin, a former Center MP ejected from the party in 2022 after comments he made about the national government removing Soviet-era monuments and other relics.

In any case, the more parties and alliances in the resulting coalition, the harder to manage that coalition will prove to be, in a city whose politics have been noted for their rambunctiousness in the past, city secretary Üllar Kaljuste said. "Past experience shows that the more colorful the company is there in the council, the more difficult it is to manage that council."

The deadline for filing candidate lists was Tuesday. The precise lists are due to be published Friday.

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