Belit Onay

He was re-elected in the runoff of 27 September 2026 with 61.5 percent of the vote, and his second term begins on 1 November 2026. He was a candidate in the Hanover mayoral election of 2026.

Career

Onay was born on 15 January 1981 in Goslar and studied at Leibniz University Hannover. He has been a member of Alliance 90/The Greens since 2008. He took office as Mayor of Hanover on 22 November 2019. In 2021 he took part in coalition talks as a member of the Greens' social policy working group, and in 2022 he was a delegate to the Federal Convention. In the 2026 election he won 45.6 percent in the first round and 61.5 percent in the runoff against Axel von der Ohe of the SPD, who received 38.5 percent.

Positions

Under his leadership Hanover launched the smart-city project RESTART: #HANnovativ and in 2024 he announced a 48 million euro fund for digitisation. In the 2025 Smart-City-Index the city ranked seventh, according to Wikipedia.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Landeshauptstadt Hannover

Photo: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)