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President Miloš Zeman has collected enough signatures from Czech citizens to be able to run for office for a second time. His official campaign manager, his wife Ivana, said during a short briefing on Wednesday that he had gathered just under 60,000 signatures.

Mr. Zeman’s drive to collect signatures from voters was launched at the end of April. He has become the second candidate to surpass the threshold of 50,000 signatures, after businessman and songwriter Michal Horáček.

Six months ahead of the presidential election, two candidates for the post have already collected 50,000 signatures needed to officially register as candidates, Czech Radio reported on Saturday. According to Czech Radio, it is almost certain that lyricist Michal Horáček and the current head of state Miloš Zeman will take part in the upcoming elections. Jiří Drahoš, a former head of the Academy of Sciences, said he was also getting close to the target figure. Political parties are planning to announce their candidates after the parliamentary elections in October, Czech radio reported.

President Miloš Zeman will continue touring the regions of the Czech Republic from September but such visits do not represent part of a campaign to win re-election next January, his spokesman Jiří Ovčáček said. However, Jan Outlý from the state agency that oversees party financing says that Mr. Zeman should at least consider including the cost of regional visits in his total campaign budget, which has a cap of CZK 50 million. Mr. Ovčáček says the president has been touring the regions since 2013 and is making good on a promise to speak directly to citizens. Mr. Zeman has said he will not actively campaign for re-election or take part in debates with other candidates.

Veteran Civic Democrat politician Jaroslav Kubera has refused to confirm whether he will stand for president, despite the news this week that he had collected the necessary signatures from other senators to enter January’s election. In an interview with Lidovky.cz on Saturday, Mr. Kubera said his current activities a “probe” and could help provoke another candidature that he himself would support. Aged 70, Mr. Kubera is a former mayor of Teplice and is known as a strong advocate of smokers’ rights.

Senator Jaroslav Kubera of the Civic Democratic Party has collected enough signatures among his colleagues from the upper chamber of parliament to be able to run for president, the news site idnes.cz reported on Thursday. Ten signatures were needed to support his candidacy, while he collected fifteen. Kubera, who has been a mayor of Teplice since 1994 and a senator since 2000, said he would leave his decision to run for the post until the very last moment.

Vratislav Kulhánek, former Škoda Auto boss, has officially announced his decision to run in the 2018 presidential elections. Kulhánek, who is 73, will run as a candidate of the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA). He now needs to collect the 50,000 signatures to officially register as a candidate. Among the runners for the presidential post are the current head of state Miloš Zeman, lyricist Michal Horáček, and former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš. Vratislav Kulhánek is currently a member of the executive committee of the International Chamber of Commerce and serves on the scientific committee of the Faculty of Economics in Prague.

The former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences Jiří Drahoš would win if he advanced to the second round of the presidential election next year against incumbent Miloš Zeman, a new poll conducted by the Median agency for the news website Seznam News suggests. According to the survey, Mr Drahoš would clinch 53.5 percent of the vote and Mr Zeman, 46.5. The poll also showed a rise in the number of voters, 55 percent, for whom Mr Zeman is unacceptable as a candidate. The findings also suggest, however, that Mr Zeman would have the edge in the first round among a broader field of candidates and also that no other candidate besides Mr Drahoš would currently beat Mr Zeman head-to-head.

Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek and the speaker of the Senate Milan Stěch are being considered as the Social Democratic Party’s potential candidates in the 2018 presidential elections. Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told the news site idnes.cz that since there was no obvious left-wing candidate in the running the party had decided to field its own. Up until recently it was not certain the party would field a candidate of its own, but pressure for it to do so mounted with growing opposition to President Miloš Zeman over his handling of the government crisis. Zeman, who is running for a second term in office, is still considered a hot favourite in the race.

The Social Democrats are considering fielding a candidate for the Czech presidency, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Tuesday. The party’s leader said the Social Democrats did not at present see any left-wing candidate who could stand up to the “power tandem” between President Miloš Zeman and ANO chief Andrej Babiš. Mr. Sobotka ruled out running himself. Mr. Zeman is a former leader of the Social Democrats but Mr. Sobotka said he had lost a lot of support in the party over his handling of the current government crisis. The president has refused to follow the PM’s call to dismiss Mr. Babiš as finance minister.

The former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš will start collecting signatures in support of his presidential candidacy on Monday, the ctk news agency reported. President Miloš Zeman, who announced on Friday that his wife Ivana would personally head his presidential campaign, will start collecting signatures on the same day. Entrepreneur Michal Horáček is already doing so. According to Czech law, candidates running as independents have to collect 50,000 signatures in support of their candidacy. In a new amendment to the law supporters have to provide their full name and ID number in order to make their signature verifiable.