Raggi won the closed primary (against Marcello De Vito — the party's 2013 nominee to the office of mayor — and other minor candidates) in preparation for the upcoming June 2016 Rome municipal early election.

She "promised to fight corruption and bring back Rome's splendor a year after a wide-reaching scandal exposed criminal infiltration in city bidding contracts".

Raggi won the second round with the 67.2 percent of or slightly over 770,000 votes;[10] she is the first woman and the first member of M5S to hold the office of Mayor of Rome.

[22] The event has become so common that the press reports that every time a bus explodes in Rome the first thing people think of is a lack of maintenance by Atac—Rome's public transport company—rather than a terrorist attack.

[30][31] The Casamonica crime clan, associated with racketeering, extortion and usury for decades, illegally built garishly decorated villas.

[32] In March 2019 Raggi faced calls for her resignation after three of Rome's metro stations were closed due to concerns about malfunctioning escalators.

[33] In 2018 news media reported that the average wait time for waste collection had increased to 2–3 weeks,[34] causing carrion crows, bugs, rats, seagulls and even wild boars to proliferate.

[35] From the 2018 Quality of Life in Italy survey jointly conducted by Italia Oggi, a financial newspaper, and Roma Tre University it emerged that since the previous survey in 2017 the perceived quality of life in Rome under the administration of Raggi had dropped 18 places, from 67th to 85th, making Rome the biggest faller in that ranking.

[38] On 14 May 2024, Raggi was sent to trial on charges of slander in reference to some statements she made against the former CEO of AMA, the municipal waste company in Rome, Lorenzo Bagnacani.