Six parties.
One ballot.
On October 17, 2026 Richmond votes for Mayor (1 seat), Councillor (8 seats) and School Trustee (7 seats). Six parties have candidates on the official list, along with 1 candidate with no party. Every party here is covered on the same four issues.
EVERY PARTY, LARGEST SLATE FIRST
The parties running in 2026
Order here follows how many candidates each party is running, taken from the official City of Richmond candidate list. It is not a ranking of anything else.
Advance Richmond
The organization formed in 2025 out of the campaign against a supervised drug use site, which elected three councillors and three school trustees in 2026
RITE Richmond
Carol Day's organization, with three councillors re-elected in 2026 and filings with Elections BC back to 2014
Common Sense
The organization launched in July 2026 with former MP Kenny Chiu, which elected him to Council and re-elected trustee Alice Wong
Richmond Education Party
The school board organization formed in 2018, whose two sitting trustees finished first and second in 2026
Richmond Forward
Mayor Rob Howard's organization, formed for the 2026 election, whose five council candidates were all defeated
Richmond United
Councillor Andy Hobbs's organization, formed for the 2022 election, with one of its two 2026 candidates re-elected
BY RACE
Who is contesting each race
Not every party runs for every office. Four parties are not running a mayoral candidate at all, and two are contesting a single race.
SIDE BY SIDE
Compare every party on one issue
These pages put all six parties next to each other on a single subject, with the source beside each position. They are the fastest way to see where the real disagreements are.
Housing
Section 479 of the Local Government Act lets a local government, by bylaw, divide the municipality into zones and regulate the use and density of land, buildings and other structures within each zone. In Richmond, Council adopts those bylaws.
Budget
Under the Community Charter a municipality adopts a five-year financial plan by bylaw each year (section 165), and Council then sets the year’s property tax rates by bylaw before May 15 (section 197).
Governance
Section 116 of the Community Charter makes the mayor the head and chief executive officer of the municipality. Section 115 sets the duties every council member shares.
Schools
The School Act gives the Board of Education of School District No. 38 (Richmond) the duty to run the district's public schools and set its policies. Richmond voters elect its seven trustees.
How these pages are built
Every party gets the same pages, so the shape of a page never suggests that one party matters more than another. What differs is how much each party has published. Where a party has published nothing on a subject, the page says so and gives the date we looked, rather than leaving a blank. Pages with nothing sourced on them are kept out of search results until they have something.
A party's own website proves what the party claims, not that the claim is true. Those sources are marked. Candidate affiliations come only from the official City of Richmond candidate list.