ELECTION DAY IN SURREY: What you need to know about voting, 97 candidates, results, more
Published 7:00 am Saturday, October 17, 2026
A busy, chaotic, sometimes confusing civic election campaign ends with final voting today (Saturday, Oct. 17).
Polls are open 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. at 52 voting locations across the city.
Close to 100 candidates on the Surrey ballot have chased votes for mayor, city council and school board seats in the midst of a snap B.C. election involving 47 MLA candidates in 10 ridings here.
In Surrey there are seven candidates for mayor, 66 for city council and 24 for school trustee — a record total of 97, all fighting for attention in an election campaign held every four years in cities across B.C. Visit tinyurl.com/SurreyVotesOctober2026 for links to our candidate questionnaires, or scroll below.
Surrey voters will choose a mayor, eight city councillors and six school trustees.
Voters on Elections BC’s list should have received a voter card in the mail; bring it with you to the polls on election day, along with a piece of ID or two. Curbside and mail-in voting are options.
Check surrey.ca/election for sites, poll station wait times, voting requirements and election results, and visit surreynowleader.com for coverage and post-election reaction.
Election results should arrive quickly online after polls close Saturday.
“We use voting machines, and that speeds things up quite a bit,” said Gib van Ert, Surrey Chief Election Officer.
“We don’t actually end the voting until everyone who’s still queuing at 8 p.m. gets in and gets a chance to vote, so it can be a little later than 8 p.m. in practice, depending on how busy a particular voting place is. But once we’ve closed the poll and we can start tabulating, they can come in pretty quickly. Last time we started getting preliminary results by around 9:30 p.m., and not much longer than that for every voting location. The results are all posted on the city’s website.”
READ MORE:
‘High numbers’: Surrey civic election sees 52,605 votes cast in advance, up 47% over 2022.
SURREY VOTES: Meet your candidates for mayor, council, school board
Hear what Surrey council and mayor candidates had to say at 2 election forums
Q&A: Surrey Chief Election Officer on more advance voting sites, 100 names on ballot
CANDIDATES FOR MAYOR
Doug McCallum, Safe Surrey Coalition
Honveer Singh Randhawa, Conservative Party of Surrey
CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL
SURREY FIRST
SURREY CONNECT
SAFE SURREY COALITION
CONSERVATIVE ELECTORS ASSOCIATION, SURREY
IMAGINE SURREY
SURREY NOW
James Yu – no questionnaire received
NEW SURREY+
Editor’s note: We sent our council questionnaire to New Surrey+ slate candidates via mayor candidate Igal Ammons II, who replied, “Our council speaks with one voice. What one tells you is the same the other will say in his or her own words.” No biographies were sent.
Here is a link to the group answers that were returned.
Leanna Chatwin
Messia Ditshimba
Chris Hoffman
Emily Kennedy
Matthew Smed
Lily Tsi
Grace Ziegler
INDEPENDENT CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES
SCHOOL TRUSTEE CANDIDATES
SURREY FIRST EDUCATION
Garry Thind* (NOTE: Thind is now running as the B.C. Conservative candidate in Surrey-Guildford.)
Shawn Wilson – no questionnaire received
SURREY NOW
Dr. Vincent Tighe – no questionnaire received
OUR SURREY
INDEPENDENT
Harjit Bhullar – no questionnaire received
Gurleen K Chahal – no questionnaire received