Vancouver's 2026 election: a guide to the choices

We want more mid-rise housing in Vancouver, corner stores within walking distance, bike lanes that actually connect and crossings where people on foot go first. You should know that before you read the rest of this.

The party sections below stick to what each campaign has published.

Start with the voting details, or skip ahead to the parties.

There are two October elections now. The provincial election called September 22 ends on October 24, one week after Vancouver's local vote. October 17 is also a provincial advance-voting day. The ballots and voting places are separate; our two-election story explains the dates and why the local race still needs attention. Elections BC's election announcement

Voting at a glance

Election day is Saturday, October 17, 2026. Vancouver voters will elect one mayor, ten councillors, seven Park Board commissioners and nine school trustees. There are also three capital borrowing questions and two plebiscite questions. City election page

Advance voting is on October 3, 7, 10 and 13. Advance and election-day voting hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can vote at any Vancouver voting place open on your chosen day. Check the City's map for locations and accessibility. Voting places and hours

For a mail ballot, check the City's current pickup and return instructions. The City must receive your completed ballot by 8 p.m. on October 17. Its voter guide explains registration, identification, eligibility and arrangements for people without a fixed address. UBC and University Endowment Lands residents have different voting entitlements; check those before using a Vancouver ballot guide. Official voter guide

Who is running for mayor?

The City lists eight mayoral candidates. The names below are alphabetical; the ballot uses a different order.

The City finalized the candidate list and drew the ballot order on September 18. Each candidate has a ballot number. This table remains alphabetical; use the City's numbered list when planning your ballot. Election Office announcement

Council deserves attention too. The City lists 56 candidates for ten seats, including parties without a mayoral candidate and people with no party affiliation listed. Council candidates

The parties

Here are the proposals we thought were worth pulling out, with links to the campaigns' own pages. The parties are listed alphabetically.

ABC Vancouver

Mayoral candidate: Ken Sim

ABC's current priorities centre on public safety, core services and taxes. It promises property-tax freezes in 2026 and 2027, followed by increases tied to inflation, and continued investment in police and mental-health nurses. ABC priorities

Sim also advocates stronger restrictions on public drug use and provincial action on voluntary and involuntary care. ABC's August safety proposal

On September 21, ABC released the first part of its 2026 platform. It pledges a zero per cent property-tax increase in 2027, free residential permit parking and removal of paid parking at parks and community centres. It cites $400 million for community centres and $104 million for roads and sidewalks. Those figures appeared in the City's capital-plan consultation before the campaign launch; Council approved the plan in July. The City lists $558 million for community facilities overall and $703 million for streets, which are broader categories. ABC says the second part of its platform will arrive September 28. ABC platform release · City capital-plan approval · City consultation booklet

A tax freeze makes every other spending choice tighter. ABC's language about investment doesn't say how much the police budget would grow once inflation is counted, or which housing and bike projects would still get money.

A September 16 Daily Hive review of nine of ABC's 93 campaign promises from 2022 found a mixed record. It hit its target of 100 new police officers, but revised the 100-nurse pledge down to roughly 57 mental-health workers. Property taxes rose 22.1 per cent over the term despite Sim's 2022 attack on prior tax hikes, and co-op housing grew by about 334 net units against a promised 6,000. Daily Hive, September 16 · Our full scorecard on all nine promises

Affordable Housing

No mayoral candidate on the City's current list

Eric Redmond is listed under Affordable Housing in the City's Council directory. We haven’t found enough detail on his current proposals for a useful summary yet. Official Council listing

Bright Future Vancouver

Mayoral candidate: Muhammad Ahmad

Bright Future proposes putting 20 per cent of monthly rent into renter equity and fare-free transit for Vancouver residents. The big questions are who would qualify and how the party would pay for them. The Blueprint

COPE

No mayoral candidate on the City's current list

COPE's Council page gives several concrete candidate priorities. It describes Sean Orr pursuing tenant purchases of rental buildings for conversion to co-ops. Chloe Leslie supports public groceries, tool libraries and repair cafes. Devyani Singh supports free transit and better libraries. COPE Council candidates

The separate Fight for Housing page is explicitly a 2025 by-election platform. It is useful background, but it doesn't answer every question for the 2026 slate. 2025 housing platform

Green Party of Vancouver

Mayoral candidate: Pete Fry

Fry's current campaign page stresses housing, renters, small businesses, climate and accountability. A more specific example is his July proposal for a staff report on restoring a renters office, with a role in coordinating help and tracking problems. Council rejected the report-back motion on July 28. Council minutes, page 8 · Campaign page · Renters-office proposal

On September 16, Fry unveiled the Greens' first housing plan of the campaign. It proposes pre-approved and prefabricated housing designs, faster permitting for low-rise apartments, row homes, townhomes and infill, Canadian-procurement and mass-timber requirements on major developments, and retrofit partnerships to preserve existing affordable homes. It also promises to update lot-size and building-form rules, without naming specific zoning changes. Housing plan · Daily Hive, September 16

The separate Green priorities page still identifies its last full update as May 2023. The new housing plan is the first current-cycle platform section to replace it. Dated priorities page

OneCity Vancouver

No mayoral candidate on the City's current list

OneCity's September 13 transportation announcement proposes a connected walking and cycling network, transit-priority streets with TransLink, and investment directed first to neighbourhoods with poorer access. It would publish a neighbourhood mobility report card and explore public ownership of Mobi. Connect Vancouver

Its August housing and climate announcement proposes direct installation of cooling in roughly 500 high-risk homes. The campaign puts the gross cost at $4 million to $7.5 million. It hasn't said who else would pay, so the City's share is still open. Built to Last

OneCity's older full platform remains online and refers to 2026 as a future election. Treat its detailed housing permissions as old news until the campaign restates them. Older platform

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver

Mayoral candidate: Colleen Hardwick

TEAM proposes neighbourhood-led planning, protection of older rental buildings, additional co-ops and restored parking minimums. It says development should fit neighbourhood scale and context. Housing and planning

Its transportation platform prioritises bus access, sidewalks and parking. Its safety page supports enforcement of public-drug-use laws and working with the Province on care beds. Transportation · Safety

On September 18, Hardwick released a four-part public safety and recovery plan, criticizing ABC's safety plebiscite as a non-binding substitute for action. It proposes zero-tolerance enforcement against open drug use, district-based community policing with a new victims' response standard, a violence-against-women prevention strategy with a City Women's Safety Lead, and smaller recovery homes with mandatory sobriety and behaviour rules in place of a low-barrier model. Public safety and recovery plan · Daily Hive, September 18

The housing test is how much additional capacity those neighbourhood plans would permit. On drug policy, enforcing existing laws is a different commitment from strengthening them, and TEAM's new plan still falls on the enforcement side of that line. The distinction matters when comparing parties' answers.

TrueBlue Vancouver

No mayoral candidate on the City's current list

TrueBlue's platform overview emphasises spending control, policing, treatment and recovery. It proposes protecting road capacity and parking and auditing underused bike lanes. Auditing a bike lane isn't the same as opposing the next one. Platform overview

Vancouver Liberals

Mayoral candidate: Kareem Allam

The Vancouver Liberals propose consolidating housing approvals, aligning the local building code with provincial rules, adding 400 unionized frontline workers and making SkyTrain to UBC their top transportation priority. Campaign plan

In a May interview with The Tyee, Allam called for police-budget accountability before settling the funding question. That is not the same as promising to cut it. The Tyee interview

For housing, the distinction worth following is between processing an application faster and allowing something that could not previously be built. Faster approvals are not the same as permission to build six storeys on a side street, and the plan doesn't claim otherwise.

Vote Vancouver

Mayoral candidate: Rebecca Bligh

Bligh proposes working with community land trusts and other community organisations on co-op and community housing while retaining community ownership of public land. Her transport platform promises to complete the Broadway bike lane and improve its connections. Housing · Transportation

We’ll be watching for a budget and an opening date for that bike lane.

Candidates without a party listed

Amauri Caliman and Scott Gilbert are on the mayoral list without party affiliations. The Council list also includes candidates without a party label. Their official entries link the public campaign material they have supplied. They deserve the same attention to individual positions as candidates running with a slate. Mayoral entries · Council entries

Three comparisons worth making

Housing permission and housing delivery. A party can favour co-ops while limiting building scale, or favour quicker permits without changing what a site allows. Compare both the homes that could be built and the way they would be financed and owned. Our own bias is towards mid-rise: four to six storeys with shops underneath, on enough streets to add up to something. Watch for a platform that supports housing in principle and then caps it everywhere it would actually go.

A SkyTrain promise and a street plan. Extending SkyTrain to UBC, getting buses out of traffic and closing the gaps in the bike network all matter, and they run on different money and different timelines. Ask for the route, the budget and the year. A line on a map that nobody has costed is a wish. And remember that a station is only as good as the walk to it. The sidewalk, the crossing and the bike route are the part City Hall actually controls.

Police spending and the response to a crisis. Officer numbers, total spending and spending after inflation are different measures. Support for care beds does not answer whether someone favours supervised consumption services. A comparison should keep those choices visible rather than reduce them to a single safety label.

The other questions on your ballot

The three capital questions seek approval to borrow a combined $790 million: $292 million for transportation and street infrastructure, $438 million for community-serving and civic infrastructure, and $60 million for parks and open public spaces. This borrowing is part of the larger 2027 to 2030 capital plan. Official borrowing questions

The two plebiscites concern stronger laws against public drug use and asking the Province for a secure medical facility with voluntary and involuntary care capacity. They are non-binding. The City says the results do not change laws or require Council to act. Official plebiscite wording

About this guide

Side Street is an independent Vancouver publication. This edition focuses on mayor, Council and selected party proposals; it is not a full assessment of the Park Board or School Board races. Use the City's candidate directory for the complete ballot. Who is running

This guide was first published September 15. Since then, four parties and eight individual candidates have answered our questionnaire. Compare their direct replies and full explanations. The separate compass also shows our readings of published campaign sources, clearly labelled as such.

Spotted something we missed? Send us a link through Side Street's tip page.

Standards & Corrections explains how Side Street researches, edits and corrects its coverage.

Vancouver election guide · Try the Vancouver election compass · Standards and corrections