In power since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko is assured of a new five-year term in a vote that the exiled opposition describes as a sham. It has called on Belarusians to tick a box that allows them to reject all the candidates on offer.
Early voting for the election began on Tuesday and will run through Saturday before election day on Sunday.
Lukashenko, 70, has cast himself as a leader too busy working for the nation to be able to engage in an election campaign.
"To be honest I don't follow it. I simply don't have time for it," he told factory workers last week.
There is no obvious successor in sight to the burly, moustachioed leader who at various times has both embraced and rejected the label of Europe's last dictator - and who in recent months has started freeing some opposition figures from jail in an apparent bid to start repairing relations with the West.
Thousands protested the 2020 presidential election results in Minsk. (AP PHOTO)
Mass protests nearly swept him from power after the last election in 2020, when Western governments backed the opposition's claim that he falsified the results and stole victory from its candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Lukashenko's security forces detained tens of thousands of protesters, according to human rights groups, and all leading opposition figures were jailed or forced into exile.
Sunday's vote is taking place in a country where independent media are banned and blocked. Human rights group Viasna, which is labelled as an extremist organisation, says there are around 1250 political prisoners; Lukashenko denies there are any.
Ivan Kravtsov, secretary of the opposition's co-ordination council in exile, conceded that it was fighting an uphill struggle to connect with Belarusians.
"For most of the people, politics is not top of the agenda. Survival is top of the agenda," he said in a phone interview.
"The priorities have shifted. In 2020 people perceived the campaign as a real opportunity to change power. Now, you know, sometimes the opposition leaders in exile are struggling to be relevant inside the country."
But while the outcome is not in doubt, Lukashenko faces major challenges in navigating relations with both Moscow and the West as he heads into his seventh term against the backdrop of likely peace talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he allowed Moscow to use Belarus as a launch pad for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 - and paid the price in the form of Western sanctions. The following year, Putin announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
If the war were to end - something incoming US President Donald Trump has promised to bring about quickly - then political analysts expect Lukashenko to seek a thaw in ties with Europe and the US and try to get the sanctions lifted.
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