Everything You Need for May 2026

Local elections will take place in England on 7 May 2025.

A full list of places with local elections can be found here.

This is a major year in the cycle. Over 5000 seats will be up for election across 136 local authorities in England.

This page contains resources and guidance to help you with your local election campaign. We will keep it regularly updated with new resources.

Election Timetable 2026
Agent Advice
Election Expenses
Templates and Bulk Buys
Campaign Resources
Winning the Postal Vote
Webinars
Advice Articles

Election Timetable

The Electoral Commission has published the timetable for the 2026 Local Elections. This contains key deadlines around nominations, applications to vote and election expenses.

You can download the full timetable from the Electoral Commission website here.

A simple breakdown of the key dates can be found here.

Agent Advice

ALDC has a Local Election Agents Toolkit – full of resources and free to all ALDC members.

If you are an election agent this year – or if you are co-ordinating any part of the legal side of the campaign – you will be able to find vital information and resources here.

Local Election Agent Toolkit

Election Expenses

During the regulated period of the election you must record all expenditure that contributes towards the promotion of a candidate – and submit a set of expense returns once the election is over.

A toolkit to help you keep track of your election spending and fill out your expense returns can be found here.

Templates and Bulk Buys

ALDC keep a regularly updated library of Focus Leaflets, Direct Mail and Election Literature. You can find our standard literature programme for the 2026 local elections on the Countdown to May 2026 link below. Templates will be published on both ALDC Artworker and Affinity Publisher.

We are working with our printer partners Election Workshop to secure the cheapest deals for the main products – and we will be offering regular bulk buy deals on most items of literature between now and 7 May .

Our current bulk buy deals focus on and your first A3 Focus leaflets of 2026. Our great value ‘Three Leaflet Deal’ will be launched soon – giving you a great saving on core election literature.

ALDC and Election Workshop have a variety of different Direct Mail bulk buy deals to form a campaign plan up until polling day in May. All can be purchased as part of bulk buy deals along with envelopes.

We have templates available now for all your campaign literature right up until your final knock up on Polling Day.

Countdown to May 2026 Templates

A3 / A4 Bulk Buy

Direct Mail Bulk Buys

Campaign Resources

There are a number of resources you will need to organise your campaign.

ALDC has gathered together a number of different resources you can download – ranging from instructions for blue and cream letter writing, template tellers pad and rotas, committee room resources, count tally sheets and more.

Campaign Resources

Webinars

ALDC are hosting webinars before and after local election polling day on a range of campaigning topics – such as artworking, agenting, finding candidates and getting out the vote.

All our webinars are completely free to attend and are run twice – at lunchtime and early evening. You just need to sign up in advance and we will send you a zoom link.

You can find our full programme of webinars are sign up to as many as you on our training page here:

Webinars

Once the elections are over we will be hosting our popular New Councillor Programme of webinars in late May and early June. This series of seven webinars is an essential introduction to the role of a councillor and also useful for experienced councillors to pick up some new tricks too. You can sign up for these sessions in advance on the training page.

Advice Articles

The below advice articles are written by staff members at ALDC and draw upon best practice from Lib Dems across Britain. Keep your eye out for new advice articles in our regular Wednesday emails to ALDC members.

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