Your guide to the 2026 Paris municipal elections: Who’s in the running for mayor?

Paris’s 2020 municipal elections were a muted affair. Voters headed to the polls for the first round on 15 March and, two days later, the coronavirus pandemic sent France into lockdown. When the next round was finally held in June, there were no surprises: the incumbent mayor, Anne Hidalgo, won her second term. It’s often said that in moments of crisis, people stick to the status quo. But this year that’s not an option.

In November 2024, after two consecutive terms in office, Hidalgo announced that she would not seek a third term in 2026. She will leave a mixed legacy. Her environmental initiatives have garnered international acclaim: an additional 500km of cycle lanes have contributed to a 44 per cent reduction in traffic-related air pollution in parts of the city, while the Seine has returned to just-about-swimmable conditions for the first time in a century. Domestically, however, the picture is different. Parisians resent her top-down approach to governance and the rest of the country sees her as out of touch. Her presidential bid in 2022 won her just 1.75 per cent of the vote – the worst result in the Parti Socialiste’s (PS) history.

With her preferred successor knocked out of the running in the PS primaries last summer, Paris is set to move away from the Hidalgo era. But France’s wider democratic crisis might lead to a larger disruption of the status quo. While the left has held the city for a quarter of a century, this year’s vote is less predicated on issues than personalities, underpinned by complex alliances and machinations, and inflected by the now-ubiquitous scourge of social media. 

Paris remains a liberal holdout in the face of the far-right’s rise across France – recent polling by Verian for Le Monde indicated a near-even split across the country between those who support Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and those who reject it. But with next year’s presidential elections looming, the result in Paris this March is likely to resonate far beyond Hôtel de Ville. So let’s meet the candidates standing this year’s elections.

The capital’s likely pick: Parti Socialiste nominee Emmanuel Grégoire 

Anne Hidalgo might have backed political unknown Rémi Féraud as her successor but it was her former deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, who won the PS nomination. He has become the frontman for a historic coalition with Les Écologistes (France’s Green Party) as well as the French Communist Party (PCF), with both groups supporting his bid for mayor. 

To the left of him, Sophia Chikirou is standing for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI). The LFI has joined forces with PS before, notably in 2024 when the New Popular Front alliance united to counter the far-right in that year’s legislative elections. Grégoire, however, sees a path to Hôtel de Ville without them.

Despite his record of 10 years working alongside Hidalgo – or perhaps because of it – the outgoing mayor is not a fan of the PS hopeful, blaming him for a lack of support following her abysmal presidential bid in 2022. 

The populist pick: Rachida Dati

If anyone is sucking the oxygen out of the room in this election, it’s Rachida Dati. A longtime player in French politics, who earned her stripes under Nicholas Sarkozy, Dati is famed for her aggressive approach (though she says that her threat to turn former prime minister Gabriel Attal’s dog into a kebab was “just a joke”).

This is her second run for the mayoralty and this time she is taking a leaf out of the populist playbook. Inspired by the UK’s Nigel Farage, Dati’s campaign leans heavily on Tiktok; videos of her joining the bin men of Paris on their morning round have attracted nearly three million views. 

In protest against Dati remaining in her post as culture minister, actress Dominique Blanc recently handed back her Légion d’honeur, the highest distinction that the French state can give its citizens. Dati is also facing corruption charges, with a trial set for September. If she loses, she could be disqualified from public office. 

Dati has been a longtime agitator for reform of the Paris municipal elections. This year’s vote will see the end of the previous electoral college system and the implementation of a direct election approach. Despite the controversy, polls put her at 28 per cent, so this might work in her favour.

Macron and the centre-right’s pick: Pierre-Yves Bournazel

Despite Dati’s position in Macron’s cabinet, the president’s faction, Renaissance, is throwing its support behind someone else: Pierre-Yves Bournazel. It’s here, perhaps, that the macro-crisis engulfing French politics is most clearly on display.

In fine French tradition, Bournazel has written a book ahead of the election. Published last month, La Bataille pour Paris (The Battle for Paris) capitalises on Bournazel’s relationship with Dati, who he worked under when she was Sarkozy’s minister of justice, painting her as “a person in a state of narcissistic intoxication”. In attacking what he perceives to be Dati’s “pro-car policy”, he highlights what is likely to be a significant issue come election day: many celebrate the effect of Hidalgo’s environmental initiatives but the debate around motor traffic has become fraught. Responsibility for Greater Paris’s roads is – quelle surprise – mired in bureaucracy, with a growing number of drivers feeling alienated by a wholesale cars-are-bad approach. Bournazel claims to have a plan but with his polls at about 14 per cent, he will unlikely to be able to implement it. The real question, then, is who he will support in the runoff if he loses in the first round. With his obvious distaste for Dati, he might yet cross the line to come down in Grégoire’s corner.

The far-right pick: Sarah Knafo

When Sarah Knafo, political and romantic partner to conservative pundit turned extreme-right presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour, joined the hosts on TF1’s popular evening news programme to discuss her mayoral bid, a reported one million people switched off. 

Knafo, vice-president of Zemmour’s nationalist party Reconquête, is a media-savvy millennial with a very dim view on immigration. She will, unsurprisingly, be running on a platform centred around security. A regular at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US, her public profile and name recognition may put her in a better position than her far-right competitor, Thierry Mariani.

Mariani, the Rassemblement National’s (RN) candidate, has distanced himself from his party’s position on the war in Ukraine, which it views as an illegal war of aggression by Russia, to make regular appearances on Russian military television. 

With neither candidate polling in double-digits, they’re unlikely to play much of a role; still, the far-right’s popularity is on the rise and the platform offered by this campaign might serve in other ways. The next presidential election is around the corner and incremental gains at a local level could add up to a seismic change when France heads to the polls.