2026 United Kingdom local elections
7 May 2026
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The 2026 United Kingdom local elections are scheduled to take place on Thursday 7 May 2026 for 5,014 council seats across 136 English local authorities (all 32 London borough councils, 32 metropolitan boroughs, 18 unitary authorities, 6 county councils, 48 district councils) and six directly elected mayors in England. Most of these seats in England were last up for election in 2022. Some of these elections were postponed from 2025.
In December 2025, the government invited 63 councils to raise capacity concerns with ongoing local government reorganisation and request a postponement of their 2026 local election, after also postponing 6 combined authority mayoral elections that were scheduled to occur on the same day. This move prompted criticism from the Electoral Commission which questioned the credibility of the reasoning given and said that it caused "unprecedented" uncertainty. The commission stated that "There is a clear conflict of interest in asking existing Councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters". Opposition parties also criticised the decision, accusing Labour of denying people the right to vote. By February 2026, the government confirmed 30 of the 63 council elections have been postponed. However, following a legal challenge by Reform UK, who made major gains in the previous local elections, on 16 February 2026, the government withdrew its plans to delay elections, with all scheduled elections and delayed elections from 2025 taking place, after receiving legal advice that the move could be unlawful.
These will be the second set of local elections during the premiership of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and will take place amid unpopularity towards the governing Labour Party amid scandals including the relationship of Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, with the Reform UK and Green Party opposition parties rising sharply in popularity polls. After the election of Zack Polanski as leader, the Greens gained a council seat from Reform UK for the first time in a Derbyshire by-election in January 2026. Hannah Spencer won the 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election after attracting left-leaning voters disgruntled by the Labour Government. On 7 May 2026, there will also be devolved elections to the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament.