Voting opens today in the only election this year where every party stands with a left wing and a right wing.<\/p>\n
Polls open at 9am Friday, 4 September\u00a0for Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau | Bird of the Year 2026. In its 21st year, more than 70 native birds are standing across six parties with the support of volunteer campaign managers making noise for their favourite birds. Voting will close at 5pm on Sunday 20 September with the winner announced on 21 September.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s time to pick your party and back your bird,” says Rebecca Hatch, Forest & Bird’s Group Manager, Growing Support. “Everyone gets up to five votes, which is four more than you get in that other election.<\/p>\n
“For election year, we\u2019re leaning all the way in. As well as competing for Bird of the Year votes as individual candidates, the birds have grouped into parties. Naturally, those parties come complete with manu-festos<\/a> \u2013 with lots of puns.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery vote cast for a bird will also count towards its party’s total, so we’ll discover in 2026 not only which bird wins Bird of the Year, but which flock claims the top perch.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year\u2019s chaos comes complete with polls, swing voters, endorsements, and the odd bit of flocka-jumping if someone changes sides. It\u2019s democracy, but for birds, and it is about to get loud.\u201d<\/p>\n Every election needs reporters asking hard questions and Bird of the Year has a newsroom staffed entirely by introduced predators, with some familiar New Zealand voices. The Beaking News team for Bird of the Year 2026 includes Kim Hedgehill, voiced by broadcast legend Kim Hill, and journalist Paddy Gower as Catty Gower, reporting from the Beak-hive. Studio Stoat, voiced by former RNZ broadcaster Simon Morton, anchors.<\/p>\n The jokes might be funny, but the stakes are real. More than 80% of our native birds are in some or serious trouble.<\/p>\n “Every vote puts a bird in the spotlight, and every bird in the spotlight is a bird more people will care about and fight for. That’s the whole point.”<\/p>\n Voting is free and open to everyone at birdoftheyear.org.nz<\/a>. Voters need to click the verification link they’re emailed, because an unverified vote isn’t counted. The winner will be announced on Monday 21 September.<\/p>\n The wildest election has a serious ground game<\/p>\n Bird of the Year has never been just online, and this year the campaign trail runs right through the country’s classrooms, offices and high streets.<\/p>\n Schools got off the mark early: nearly 400 have signed up to run their own classroom votes. Schools are a bit like special voters. Their votes are counted at the end and can change the outcome.Workplaces can join the fray with downloadable workplace kits<\/a> to rally the team.New Zealand businesses are backing the birds with limited-edition products<\/a>, with a share of every sale going back to nature.Four new BOTY Brick Kits<\/a> are available with genuine LEGO parts, designed by Mike Murray (@bricks.by.mike_<\/a>).The winner will have a song created in its honour. Listen to last year\u2019s K\u0101rearea by Delaney Davidson and Troy Kingi here<\/a>.Wordle for bird nerds, launched last year, is at Birdle.nz<\/a>. By early May 2026, more than 600,000 games had been played by 61,000 unique players.If you hadn\u2019t got it already, check out our Bird of the Year book<\/a>.Pop-up voting activations will be at Westfield Malls in Auckland on 10-11 September, and in Christchurch on 17 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voting opens today in the only election this year where every party stands with a left wing and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[42707,42493,1389,42704,273,42709,42706,42702,42703,42708,7397,2061,42705,111,43,139,69,3694,406],"class_list":["post-589817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-best-fish-guide","tag-bird-of-the-year","tag-conservation","tag-conservation-volunteers","tag-environment","tag-high-country","tag-join-our-conservation-organisation","tag-marine-environment","tag-marine-protection","tag-marine-reserve","tag-native-species","tag-nature","tag-nature-lodges","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sustainability","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}