Where Are Local Elections Going Ahead In England In May 2026?
Elections for councils and devolved governments in England, Scotland and Wales will take place on 7 May 2026 (Alamy)
3 min read
With voters heading to the polls in May for local elections in England, explore PoliticsHome's interactive maps to find out where the elections are taking place and where they have been delayed for local government reorganisation.
Sixty-six local council elections in England are going ahead on 7 May 2026, while 29 have been postponed until at least 2027. One final application for postponement is still under consideration after it was submitted on Thursday morning.
All seats in both Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament, and the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, are also being contested.
The postponed elections are to allow for a major restructuring of local government, which will abolish some authorities. The two-tier system of district and county councils that exists in many parts of England will be replaced with new 'unitary' councils responsible for delivering all council services in the area.
The areas where elections have been postponed cover a population of around 4m people, and some opposition MPs, including Reform leader Nigel Farage, have condemned the decision to delay them.
Of the councils that are going ahead with elections this year in England, 36 per cent are currently held by the Labour Party, 17 per cent by the Conservative Party, and 14 per cent by the Liberal Democrats. 32 per cent of the councils up for election are currently under no overall control.
Former president of YouGov Peter Kellner told PoliticsHome that the postponement of some of the elections is unlikely to make any material difference to the national political narrative that comes out of this set of elections.
"What will drive any subsequent analysis in terms of overall performance will be the BBC and Sunday Times projections of the national vote, and these projections will take into account the political complexion of what's been fought and what hasn't been fought," he said.
He added that overall, the results in Wales, Scotland and London are likely to drive the political narrative more than anywhere else in the country, not least because of the potential for messy, multi-party power-sharing arrangements that might have to be formed after the elections.
"The importance of 7 May will be not simply how many votes and seats each party wins, but what they then do afterwards," he said.
If Plaid Cymru fail to win an outright majority of Senedd seats in Wales, there is a huge question over whether Welsh Labour might enter an agreement with them to share power as a minority partner. Similarly in Scotland, if the SNP are unable to form a majority in Holyrood, unionist parties including Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, Reform and the Green Party might come under pressure to make agreements between themselves.
"If the only way you get a unionist coalition is if you include Reform, then it's going to be incredibly messy," Kellner said.
"And as we look to the next general election, we should be looking at the dynamics of multi-party competition and the outcomes, not just at the numbers on the night."
Earlier this month, former shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick became the most high-profile politician to defect from the Conservatives to Reform, and Farage then said that the 7 May local elections would be the deadline for current Tories to switch to his party.
Conservative councillors nationwide have told PoliticsHome they are being offered senior roles and parliamentary selection to defect to Reform UK in the coming months.
Labour figures are also bracing for a tough night in London, with one Labour source telling PoliticsHome that the capital city was being “taken for granted” by the party high command.
Correction: This post has been amended to include all metropolitan boroughs.
