A Guide to the Big Left and Labor Fights in 2026
An essential part of ringing in the New Year will be preparing for the major political struggles of 2026. Here’s a month-by-month roundup of the key union fights, elections, and other events of note for the Left.
Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, speaks at the Democratic National Convention in 2024. (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
This is a month-by-month guide to the big fights — electoral, labor, international — that we can anticipate ahead of time in 2026. I hope it will be useful for Democratic Socialists of America leaders, union organizers, and movement activists thinking about how to make the most of the next twelve months.
Of course, politics is much, much more than elections and union contract campaigns. We don’t know what might happen in Donald Trump’s threatened war with Venezuela or in the ongoing fight over tariffs. Israel has already violated the ceasefire in Gaza and has kept up a lower-profile terror campaign there, but that could escalate further. The battle to win the year ahead, and to put MAGA and Trump on the defensive, will be waged in countless struggles, both in those we can anticipate and those we can’t.
January
New York City’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will be inaugurated on January 1, with a major block party planned to celebrate the occasion.
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