Westminster Council election put all 54 seats in play
Westminster council put all 54 seats in play in the 2026 local elections, with voters across the London borough choosing councillors in every ward. Before polling day, Labour ran the council with 28 seats.
Polls closed at 10pm on Thursday, May 7, and the count took place overnight. Results were due from 3.30am on Friday morning, giving residents a rapid first look at how control of one of London’s 32 borough councils might shift.
Westminster wards in play
Every ward in Westminster was included in the contest, with two or three councillors elected in each. The seats covered Abbey Road, Bayswater, Church Street, Harrow Road, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge & Belgravia, Lancaster Gate, Little Venice, Maida Vale, Marylebone, Pimlico North, Pimlico South, Queen's Park, Regent's Park, St James's, Vincent Square, West End, and Westbourne.
That range meant the ballot reached the borough’s full geography, from central wards such as St James's and West End to residential areas including Queen's Park and Little Venice. The result also formed part of a wider local-election round across England, where more than 5,000 council seats were contested across 136 local authorities.
London boroughs on the same night
The Westminster count sat inside a larger set of elections across all 32 London boroughs, where 1,817 seats were up for grabs. London borough elections take place every four years, so the 2026 vote reset every seat in Westminster at once rather than through staggered contests.
For Westminster voters, that left a simple immediate question: whether Labour could keep hold of the council after starting with 28 of 54 seats. The overnight count was the first test of that balance, and the ward-by-ward results were the only way to see where control was heading.
Labour’s Westminster lead
Labour entered the election running Westminster City Council, but the full-council contest meant every seat was open at the same time. In practice, that gave voters a chance to alter the council’s makeup across all 18 wards in a single night.
What mattered next for residents was not the size of the ballot, but which party emerged with the numbers to run services and decisions in the borough. With every seat counted together, the final makeup of Westminster City Council would decide that.
