Three months before the session starts, the General Assembly elects its President, 21 Vice-Presidents and the Chairs of the six Main Committees. For this 73rd Session María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés will be the President (PGA). She was the Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations in Geneva from October 2014 to May 2017 and the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister from then until June 2018.
In advance of the session the Secretary-General picks a state at random, to sit in the “first” seat at the front left of the Assembly. On this occasion, the first country picked was Mali. All other countries then sit in alphabetical order following Mali.