The winner was former presidential candidate Johnny Araya Monge with more than 40% of the votes, followed by Guido Granados of the National Liberation Party with 16% and the ex-deputy Jorge Eduardo Sánchez of the Social Christian Unity Party with 10%.

[1][2] Araya, who was mayor of San José since 2002 (and Municipal Executive, the figure that was his equivalent and was not popular election, since 1998) resigned his position to be a presidential candidate for the National Liberation Party in the national elections of 2014, being defeated.

The nomination was ratified in a second Cantonal Assembly for which the Citizen Action Party finally endorsed it.

[3][4] In the Social Christian Unity Party there were two precandidates: the ex-deputy Jorge Eduardo Sánchez Sibaja and Douglas Quesada Altamirano (who had previously been a candidate for mayor by the Libertarian Movement), however, Altamirano ran for the Social Christian Republican Party, a splinter of the PUSC founded by dissident Calderonismo and which has the backing of former President Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier.

The other aspirants the former vice minister Luis Álvarez and the vice-mayor Gonzalo Ramírez were out of the second round.