Vancouver’s 2026 mayoral race: profiles of five leading candidates

The Story

Vancouver voters will head to the polls on Oct. 17 to elect a new mayor for a four-year term, with eight candidates on the ballot, including Mayor Ken Sim seeking a second term.

Among the candidates seeking to lead the city are five nominees representing mainstream parties, including the ABC Vancouver, Vote Vancouver, TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, the Vancouver Liberals, and the Green Party of Vancouver campaigns. Here are their backgrounds and the issues each says will shape their mayorship.

Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh has been a city councillor for two terms. She was first elected to council in 2018 as a member of the NPA, later leaving the party over concerns about the NPA’s board of directors. Bligh ran again in 2022 with Sim’s new party, ABC Vancouver, and was re-elected as ABC Vancouver formed a majority on council. She was later expelled from ABC and formed Vote Vancouver, arguing that affordability includes “child care, it’s transportation and it’s the time families spend holding everything together,” adding that “City hall can’t make raising a family easier, but it can stop making it harder.” Bligh says that within one month of taking office, her administration would identify five parcels of public land for “permanently affordable housing.” She was elected president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in 2024.

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver’s Colleen Hardwick is a former city councillor who was also first elected in 2018 with the NPA. She left the party and became TEAM for a Livable Vancouver’s mayoral candidate in 2022, when she finished third behind Kennedy Stewart and Sim. Hardwick later ran in the April 2025 byelection and finished third behind Lucy Maloney of OneCity Vancouver and Sean Orr of COPE. In this mayoral campaign, Hardwick says she wants to reverse housing policies she links to current and past councils. She argued that Vancouver’s approach has been guided by “a remarkably simple idea: Upzone more land, allow more density, increase market supply and affordability will follow,” while adding that “affordability has not followed.” Hardwick also said “TEAM believes it’s time to challenge the simplistic narrative of supply that has driven housing policy at city hall.” Before entering politics, Hardwick worked in the film industry from the mid-1980s to 2000, later creating a company called New City Productions.

The Vancouver Liberals’ Kareem Allam is a former chief of staff to Ken Sim and launched his own party in January. Allam’s role in municipal politics became prominent during Sim’s 2022 campaign, when he served as campaign manager, and he later became chief of staff to Sim until he was fired in February 2023. The evidence provided says neither the mayor’s office nor Allam released details about that departure, and it also says Allam is involved in a lawsuit filed by Sim. Allam dismissed questions that his campaign is driven by revenge, saying, “I’m running for one reason and one reason alone, and that’s to bring young people back to the city of Vancouver,” adding, “I’m deeply motivated and committed to that objective and that goal, and I’ll be fighting every day for that.” The biography provided also notes Allam has served as a senior policy adviser to federal and provincial ministers, senior civil servants, and Indigenous chiefs and councils.

Green Party of Vancouver candidate Pete Fry has served two terms as a city councillor. He was elected to city council in 2018 alongside longtime Green councillor Adriane Carr and political newcomer Michael Wiebe, with Carr retiring during the most recent term and Wiebe not elected in the 2022 race. Fry is described as living in Strathcona and as having been a critic of ABC Vancouver, including pushing back against Sim’s attempted move to abolish the elected park board, pause construction of net new supportive housing, and efforts to remove the integrity commissioner. The evidence provided includes Fry saying in January, when he announced his mayoral bid, “I think I represent what people would like to see our city become,” and “We do have a fantastic city, but the way things are going aren’t bringing us all together.” It also says he works as an illustrator and designer and previously worked in community development, advocacy and communications, and that he was born in Ireland and has lived in Vancouver since immigrating to Canada as a child.

Incumbent Ken Sim is running for a second term with ABC Vancouver after being elected mayor in 2022. The evidence provided says Sim won 85,732 votes and formed an ABC majority government at city hall, following what it describes as stopping Kennedy Stewart’s bid for re-election. In his campaign, Sim is focusing again on public safety, including plebiscite questions on the ballot related to open-air drug use and involuntary mental health care. He said, “This administration has done everything we can to hit on the public safety side, on the affordability side and actually rebuilding our city—the things that Vancouverites want and deserve, and we’re proud of that,” adding, “And more to come, if we get another term.” The biography provided says Sim graduated from the UBC Sauder School of Business in 1993 with a Bachelor of Commerce in finance, co-founded Nurse Next Door Home Healthcare Services in 2001, and later launched Rosemary Rocksalt Bagels with his wife and other partners.