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Municipal Elections 2026: Parisians will (finally) vote for their mayor!

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The Editor

© Symeonidis Dimitrios / Shutterstock

After a journey full of bumps, the Parliament adopted the so-called "Paris-Lyon-Marseille" reform on Thursday, July 10, which redefines the voting method for municipal elections in these three cities. But what does this actually mean for the 2026 elections (barring any censorship from the Constitutional Council)?

In 2023, to tackle a number of issues posed by the current electoral system, some Renaissance deputies (that's the party of Emmanuel Macron) are suggesting a reform for the three cities in France divided into arrondissements: Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. After numerous back-and-forths (and some conflicts) between the National Assembly and the Senate, the Parliament has finally come to an agreement, just a few days before the summer suspension of parliamentary work.


More Power to the Citizens

Currently, to elect the mayor of Paris (or Lyon or Marseille, but anyway…), it works a bit like in the United States. Residents of an arrondissement vote for a local list of municipal councilors, with the elected officials at the top of the list sitting.

In the district council and the municipal council, thus electing the mayor of Paris. It's a pretty simple process, but it takes away direct decision-making power from the Parisians, and is especially quite unfair, as it doesn’t consider the number of residents per district, for example.

With this new reform, Parliament hopes to return to a fairer system in the form of “1 resident, 1 vote”. Indeed, starting in 2026 (again, if the law passes the scrutiny of the Constitutional Council), during the municipal elections, voters will no longer have one, but two envelopes to fill out. In the first one, they will cast their vote for the district council, and thus the local mayor. In the second, they will choose the municipal councilors, and therefore the mayor of Paris, through a single constituency.Immune to the entire capital!


A little revolution

This new voting system will restore direct power to Parisians and bring back meaning to the concept of direct universal suffrage. According to many elected officials in favor of the project, it will also help to lift some of the opacity that currently surrounds the municipal electoral system in these three major cities. Similarly, the new system will provide more opportunities for smaller parties, thanks to a reduction in the majority premium (25% of the seats instead of 50% before the reform). These parties will be able to choose to run in just one of the two separate elections, requiring fewer candidates on the lists. See you next year to test all this out?