Of the four existing mayoralties, Labour held three but lost the position of mayor of Tower Hamlets to Lutfur Rahman of the Aspire Party, who had previously been removed from the same office after being found guilty of "corrupt or illegal practices" by an election court.

This represented the party's second-best result in a London local election, only surpassed slightly by its 1971 total.

Newham and Tower Hamlets held local referendums in May 2021 on whether to abolish their mayoral positions and return to a leader and cabinet system.

[8] In the same month, the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan was re-elected as the mayor of London, and the 2021 London Assembly election resulted in small gains for the Conservatives, Green Party and Liberal Democrats at the expense of Labour and the UK Independence Party.

[12] Polls of London in January and March 2022 showed Labour with a large lead over the Conservatives.

[18] The journalist Ben Walker, writing in the New Statesman, modelled what the election results would look like according to the voteshares in an April poll by Opinium.