Richard Parker of the Labour Party won the election, narrowly defeating incumbent Conservative mayor Andy Street, who was running for a third term.

[3] In the inaugural election in 2017, the Conservative candidate Andy Street defeated Labour's Siôn Simon in the final round with 50.4% of the vote.

All registered electors living in the metropolitan boroughs of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, and Wolverhampton aged 18 or over were entitled to vote.

After leaving PwC he started a business "working with SMEs and social enterprises on green investment, housing initiatives and the Birmingham Commonwealth Games".

[8] He said that if elected mayor, he would take public control of the bus network, only give combined authority contracts that pay their staff well, and move the net zero deadline from 2041 to 2035.

[26] Parker has in his campaign also pledged to "offer real help with the cost of living crisis" and deliver more affordable and reliable public transport for the region.

[28] The role of the Police and Crime Commissioner for the region was set to be abolished and its functions transferred to the Mayor in time for the next mayoral term following the election, however the incumbent Labour PCC Simon Foster took legal action against the process and the High Court ruled in his favour, preventing the scheduled merger of the roles prior to the election.

Street continued to support the merger of the functions to the mayoral powers, saying that the success of the model was "already evident" in the aforementioned city regions.

[31] The Labour candidate, Richard Parker, narrowly won the election by 1,508 votes, defeating the incumbent Conservative mayor, Andy Street, by just 0.3 percentage points.