Five mayoral candidates, including the incumbent and one city councillor, have entered the race for Mississauga’s top elected position as the first day of 2026 municipal election registration comes to a close.

Mayor Carolyn Parrish, who won the June 2024 byelection to succeed Bonnie Crombie after the former three-term mayor left to lead the Ontario Liberals, and councillor Alvin Tedjo, runner-up to Parrish in that mayoral race nearly two years ago, each made their candidacy in the upcoming municipal election official by registering on Friday.

Tedjo has given up the Ward 2 council seat to make his pitch for the mayor’s post. He was first elected to council in 2022.

Two of the other hopefuls, while not househould names, should be recognizeable to anyone who’s followed recent municipal elections in Mississauga.

George Tavares and David Shaw were among the field of 20 candidates in the 2024 mayoral byelection and both also ran for the office in the 2022 municipal election.

Shaw placed a distant fifth in the byelection (2,843 votes) while Tavares was eighth, with 962 votes.

Following Parrish (43,494 votes) and Tedjo (35,005 votes) in the June 2024 mayoral byelection were a pair of Mississauga city councillors — Ward 7’s Dipika Damerla (27,119 votes) and Stephen Dasko (22,408 votes), who represents Ward 1.

In the 2022 race for the Mississauga mayor’s seat, Shaw earned 7,202 votes (6.83 per cent) while Tavares garnered 5,613 votes (5.32 per cent) to finish a distant second and third, respectively, to Crombie (82,736 votes, 78.47 per cent).

Rahul Mehta, who ran for the Ward 8 seat on city council in 2022, registered late Friday afternoon as the fifth candidate to enter this year’s mayoral race.

The 2026 municipal election will be held on Oct. 26. Candidate nominations opened on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. and will continue untl Aug. 21 at 2 p.m.

For more information on who’s running, how to become a candidate and the election in general, visit the city’s election page online.

Other candidates who’ve registered to run for Mississauga city council, as of late Friday afternoon (May 1), are:

Stephen Dasko — Ward 1 (incumbent)
Chris Fonseca — Ward 3 (incumbent)
Kim Pines — Ward 3
Stjepan Vukovic — Ward 3
Ismail Bawa — Ward 5
Mandeep Singh Dhaliwal — Ward 5
Joe Horneck — Ward 6 (incumbent)
Maisa Salhia — Ward 7
Leslie Zurek-Silvestri — Ward 7
Matt Mahoney — Ward 8 (incumbent)
Martin Reid — Ward 9 (incumbent)

Following Crombie’s resignation in early 2024, four city councillors at the time — Parrish (Ward 5), Tedjo, Damerla and Dasko — entered the field of 20 candidates to succeed her.

At least two will compete in the 2026 mayor’s race, with Damerla an unknown as of late Friday as she had yet to register for the Ward 7 competition.

Dasko, meanwhile, is running to retain his Ward 1 seat.

Parrish has told INsauga.com on several occasions she’ll run for mayor one more term as she still has “a lot to accomplish,” she said earlier.


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