A quick intro to Vancouver municipal politics

Municipal politics tends to fly under the radar, despite its importance for housing, because it doesn’t get as much coverage as federal and provincial politics. I wrote up a guide to the upcoming municipal election for a general audience, aiming to be neutral and non-partisan, and assuming as little as possible about what people already know. Feel free to pass it along to anyone who might be interested.

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We’re about a year away from the October 2026 election. With the end of the year coming up, there’s a lot of announcements happening.

Current mayoral contenders:

• Ken Sim (ABC)

• Kareem Allam (Vancouver Liberals)

• Rebecca Bligh (Vote Vancouver)

• Colleen Hardwick (TEAM)

• William Azaroff / Amanda Burrows (OneCity)

If you’d like to get involved, each of the parties welcomes volunteers.

In the April 2025 by-election, a lot of people voted for both Sean Orr (COPE) and Lucy Maloney (OneCity). By-election results.

OneCity will run a mayoral candidate, and is holding an open nomination race: the mayoral candidate will be decided by a vote of OneCity members. William Azaroff and Amanda Burrows have announced that they’re seeking the OneCity nomination. If you’d like to vote in the race, you can join OneCity, as long as you don’t already belong to another municipal party. The deadline to join in order to vote in the mayoral nomination race is January 11, and the vote will happen on February 11.

COPE is also planning to run a mayoral candidate, and is holding an open nomination race. No candidates have made an announcement yet. If you’d like to vote in the COPE nomination race, you can join COPE instead.

Pete Fry may run as the mayoral candidate for the Green Party. He’ll make a decision in the new year.

There’s also the NPA and the Conservative Electors Association, although they haven’t made any public announcements yet. The graphic may end up becoming pretty crowded.

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The two major responsibilities of municipal elected officials are land-use decisions and the annual budget.

The mayor is the most visible elected official, and the chief spokesperson for the city, but has only one of 11 votes on council. The current council has an ABC majority of 7/11, with the mayor plus six councillors: Lisa Dominato, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner, Brian Montague, and Lenny Zhou.

The four non-ABC councillors are Rebecca Bligh (formerly ABC, now Vote Vancouver), Pete Fry (Green), Sean Orr (COPE), and Lucy Maloney (OneCity).

In Vancouver, there’s no wards: councillors are elected “at large,” to represent the entire city. So the ballot is typically quite long, with many candidates from each party. To make it fairer, the names are in random order. You can vote for one mayoral candidate, and up to 10 council candidates. (You can vote for fewer if you like, to maximize the chances of your most-preferred candidates winning.) For the mayor, whoever gets the most votes wins. For council, whoever places in the top 10 wins a seat on council.

Municipal elections are run by Elections BC.

For media coverage of municipal politics, see:

• Justin McElroy (CBC)

• Dan Fumano (Vancouver Sun)

• Frances Bula (Globe and Mail)

• Isabella Zavarise (CTV News)