The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) will require all candidates to submit a birth certificate when filing their certificates of candidacy (COCs) starting with the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) on November 2, 2026, as part of new measures to strengthen candidate verification.

In an ambush interview, COMELEC Chairman George Erwin Garcia said the policy will also apply to succeeding elections in the country. He explained that the move aims to ensure that all aspirants are natural-born Filipinos and to prevent cases of misrepresentation or foreign citizenship issues among candidates.

Garcia said the additional requirement is intended to speed up the verification process of a candidate’s citizenship and reduce the number of disqualification cases filed during and after the election period.

He stressed that there is no legal prohibition preventing COMELEC from requiring birth certificates as an attachment to COCs, noting that the commission is exercising its mandate to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process.

The poll body is expected to issue an official resolution detailing the implementation guidelines in the coming days ahead of the BSKE 2026 filing period.