Things have been relatively quiet on the 2026 municipal election front in Mississauga, with the field of mayoral candidates holding steady at six for the past three weeks.

The half dozen hopefuls for the top elected post in the city include the incumbent, Mayor Carolyn Parrish, and one city councillor, Alvin Tedjo, who was runner-up to Parrish in the June 2024 Mississauga mayoral byelection.

Others vying to become mayor of Canada’s seventh-largest city are George Tavares, David Shaw, Mike Matulewicz and Rahul Mehta.

While not househould names, Tavares and Shaw should be recognizeable to anyone who’s followed recent municipal elections in Mississauga. They were among the field of 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.

In the 2022 bid for the 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 former three-term Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie (82,736 votes, 78.47 per cent).

Mehta, meanwhile, ran for the Ward 8 seat on city council in 2022 and Matulewicz was also among the 20 candidates to run in the city’s mayoral byelection nearly two years ago.

Matulewicz is the latest to throw his hat into the mayoral ring, officially registering for the 2026 race on May 5, the City of Mississauga’s municipal election website shows.

May 1 was the first day for 2026 municipal election registration.

Parrish won the June 2024 byelection to succeed Crombie after the former mayor left to lead the Ontario Liberals. The current mayor has told INsauga.com on several occasions she’ll run for the post one more term as she still has “a lot to accomplish.”

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.

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.

The 2026 municipal election will be held on Oct. 26. Candidate nominations opened May 1 and 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 Tuesday afternoon (May 26), are:

Stephen Dasko — Ward 1 (incumbent)
Leeann Cole — Ward 2
Chris Fonseca — Ward 3 (incumbent)
Kim Pines — Ward 3
Stjepan Vukovic — Ward 3
John Kovac — Ward 4 (incumbent)
Natalie Hart — Ward 5 (incumbent)
Ismail Bawa — Ward 5
Mandeep Singh Dhaliwal — Ward 5
Aruna Anand — Ward 5
Raghavan Babu Bhogaiah — Ward 5
Joe Horneck — Ward 6 (incumbent)
Maisa Salhia — Ward 7
Leslie Zurek-Silvestri — Ward 7
Asha Falinski — Ward 7
Matt Mahoney — Ward 8 (incumbent)
Martin Reid — Ward 9 (incumbent)
Ramsha Haq — Ward 9
Mohammad Shabbeer — Ward 9
Sue McFadden — Ward 10 (incumbent)
Brad Butt — Ward 11 (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 remaining an unknown as of late Tuesday as she had yet to register for the Ward 7 competition.

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


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