Boulder City Council Candidates, 2026

That’s a Seattle City Council meeting shown in the public domain picture above, but Boulder’s City Council is a bit like a Board of Directors for the City of Boulder government.

The nine-member Council gets the final vote on a number of issues – the city budget, ordinances, hiring or firing key city positions (city manager, city attorney, municipal judge), annexations, and board or commission appointments among them. Council members also typically engage with the community in the exchange of ideas and opinions, since city residents can contact Council members to share their positions, while Council members can send their positions out through meeting discourse, newsletters, or responses to resident calls or emails.

In the 2026 election, there are five open seats on Council, so voters can vote for up to five candidates. The top four finishers in total votes received will win four-year terms, until 2030, and the fifth-place finisher earns a two-year term to finish the term of former Council member Mark Wallach, who resigned earlier this year. This will be the first year in recent history that regular Council elections will be held in an even-numbered year, thanks to a 2022 ballot measure that changed elections beginning in 2026 from odd-numbered to even-numbered years.

I tried to interview every candidate in this year’s race, and asked them for the most part similar but not necessarily identical questions. Those who read my profiles can learn more about the candidates’ life stories, their relevant experience, and their positions on top issues of the day.

There are 13 candidates for Council in this year’s race, and they will be listed below in the order in which I interviewed them. If you read them all, you will learn more about some interesting candidates with unique characteristics.