Zohran Mamdani has served as the 112th mayor of New York City since January1, 2026. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani was elected mayor in the 2025 election, succeeding Eric Adams. He is the city's first Muslim and Asian American mayor, as well as the first from the borough of Queens.
The general election campaign between Democrat Mamdani, Cuomo running as an independent following his defeat in the Democratic primary, and Republican Curtis Sliwa was widely considered bruising, as Cuomo received unusually high support for an independent candidate. On November 4, 2025, in what was the closest New York City mayoral election since 2009, Mamdani was declared the winner of the 2025 New York City mayoral election. In doing so, Mamdani became the first NYC mayoral candidate since 1969 to receive more than one million votes.
On November 5, 2025, the day after his general election victory, Mamdani named a transition team led by Elana Leopold and co-chaired by four women, including Maria Torres-Springer, who served as New York's first deputy mayor from 2024 to 2025; Lina Khan, who served as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025; Grace Bonilla, the president and chief executive of United Way of New York City; and Melanie Hartzog, who served as the deputy mayor for health and human services from 2020 to 2022. According to The New York Times, Mamdani considered naming Torres-Springer as his first deputy mayor.
On November 10, 2025, Mamdani announced that Elle Bisgaard-Church, his chief of staff in the state assembly, would retain her role in his administration, and named Dean Fuleihan, the first deputy mayor from 2018 to 2021, as his first deputy mayor.
Throughout December 2025 and early January 2026, Mamdani announced 20 other nominees.
Mamdani was inaugurated shortly after midnight EST on January 1, 2026, in a private ceremony on the steps of City Hall station, a decommissioned subway station beneath City Hall. Attorney General of New York Letitia James officiated the oath of office, with his spouse Rama Duwaji holding two copies of the Quran on which he swore his oath, one belonging to his grandfather and another pocket-sized version that dates back to the late 18th or early 19th century on loan from the collection at the New York Public LibraryâÂÂs Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture obtained by historian Arturo Schomburg. Mamdani's first act as mayor was appointing transportation consultant, educator, and former New York City Department of Transportation director of capital planning and project management Mike Flynn Department of Transportation commissioner immediately after taking the oath.
Mamdani was publicly inaugurated the same day at 1:00 p.m., with Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders officiating. Speakers and performers at the inauguration included Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Javier Muñoz, Lucy Dacus, and Mandy Patinkin. Other notable attendees include Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Mark Levine, who were also sworn in, Mira Nair, Mahmood Mamdani, Governor Kathy Hochul, and former mayors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio.
On January 1, 2026, Mamdani signed his first executive orders, which revoked all executive orders his predecessor Eric Adams had made after being indicted on bribery charges on September 25, 2024 and established his deputy mayors. This included two executive orders issued by Adams which had prohibited city agencies from boycotting Israel and defined some forms of criticism of Israel as antisemitic, per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism. Israel criticized the decision and labelled it "antisemitic", but Mamdani claimed his administration would "combat hate and division" and pointed out that numerous Jewish organizations in the city did not abide by the interpretation presented by the now-defunct executive orders. Mamdani also stated that the Office to Combat Anti-Semitism, which was established by order of Adams in December 2025, would not be dissolved and would continue to operate. He also announced three executive orders relating to housing and tenants' rights, including one to revive the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants.
On January 2, 2026, Mamdani signed an executive order that established the Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement (OME), which will strategize about increasing political engagement with a broad base of New Yorkers and implementing public feedback into policy-making. He also appointed Tascha Van Auken as the office's commissioner.
On February 25, 2026, Mamdani appointed Erin Dalton as Commissioner of the Department of Social Services, who had previously served as Director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. In Dalton's previous position, she had worked to create a winter shelter network for unhoused residents and redesigned crisis response and carceral policy to center harm reduction strategies. Dalton will control SNAP benefits, cash assistance, Medicaid, and homeless services. She has stated that she hopes to preserve citizensâ eligibility for food, rental, child care, and transportation assistance, and empower caseworkers to work with homeless New Yorkers.
During the mayoralty of Eric Adams in 2023, the New York City Council passed an expansion of the CityFHEPs initiative, aiming to expand program eligibility. Through the program, tenants contribute 30 percent of their income to rent, and the city covers the rest. Adams refused to enforce the program's growth, leading New York tenants represented by The Legal Aid Society to sue the administration in order to protect the programâÂÂs implementation. During Mamdani's mayoral campaign, the then-candidate promised that he would drop Adamsâ 2025 countersuit to Legal Aid, and ensure CityFHEPs' expansion.
On February 11, 2026, Mamdani announced that he no longer intended to back the growth of CityFHEPs, citing its high costs, and moved to settle Adams' lawsuit rather than dropping it. The CityFHEPs program had cost $25 million in 2019 and grown to more than $1.2 billion in 2025, with critics saying that its growth was unsustainable. As of February 2026, the program represented 65,000 households, or about 140,000 New Yorkers. CityFHEPs would cover 47,000 new households at a cost of $17 billion in added costs over the next five years if expanded, according to a government estimate, though supporters of CityFHEPs expansion called it an overestimation. The decision to prevent CityFHEPs' growth was met with criticism from WIN, the cityâÂÂs largest shelter provider.
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani strongly criticized sweeps of homeless encampments, and instituted a pause on the practice five days into his tenure on January 5, 2026.
The administration resumed encampment sweeps on February 18, after 20 died in a two-week February cold snap, although officials stated none of the deceased were living in encampments. Reinstated sweeps will be carried out by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the NYPD, which had previously headed them. The department will post a notice that the encampment will be cleared and send outreach workers to the site daily to convince residents to move into shelters and long term housing for a week before it is cleared. The decision to reinstate sweeps was criticized by social service groups and homelessness advocacy organizations like the Legal Aid Society, Coalition for the Homeless, VOCAL-NY, and WIN, as well as people living in encampments, but was met with praise by others.
On February 18, 2026, in his preliminary budget proposal, Mamdani presented two alternatives for addressing the city's $5.4 billion budget deficit: that Governor Kathy Hochul increase taxes on corporations and ultra-wealthy people or that, as a "last resort," he would seek to raise property taxes in New York City by 9.5%. His is due in April, taking into account stakeholder feedback, responses, and analysis on the , as well as financial updates. After further investigation and negotiation, his final is due no later than June 30.
On March 25, 2026, The New York Times reported that Mamdani had, in meetings with city and state politicians, privately retreated from his property tax increase alternative proposal due to backlash from fellow progressives as well as from centrists. New York State Assembly speaker Carl Heastie argued that "property, a lot of the time, is the biggest asset that people will have in their lives ... I just think you donâÂÂt want to mess with that." It was also reported that, in the absence of an increase in state taxes or some other mechanism for resolving the city's budget deficit, the administration was considering dipping into the city's financial reserves to do so, a move New York City Comptroller Mark Levine opposed.
On January 8, 2026, Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a child care plan to increase spending by $1.7 billion to provide universal pre-kindergarten statewide, provide universal care for three-year-olds in New York City, create a free childcare program for two-year-olds in New York City, and expand childcare subsidies.
Hours before Mamdani was set to become mayor, he reversed his stated position to end mayoral control of public schools in New York City.
On March 13, 2026, Mamdani signed an executive order to create the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs. He appointed Taylor Brown, a transgender woman and former assistant attorney general, as the inaugural director of the office.
Mamdani's first act as mayor was appointing transportation consultant, educator, and former New York City Department of Transportation director of capital planning and project management Mike Flynn Department of Transportation commissioner immediately after taking the oath of office.
On his sixth day in office, Mamdani joined construction workers at the end of the Williamsburg Bridge to apply asphalt over a sharp, narrow ramp that had long caused collisions and injuries among cyclists, who average more than 8,000 daily crossings of the bridge. The new ramp was jokingly named the "Zohramp" by the community soon after.