Austin City Council Races Pass $2 Million in Spending as Candidates and PACs Enter the Final Week

Austin's city election has a price tag, and the last finance reports before Election Day put it above $2 million. Candidates for Austin City Council spent just over $965,000 combined in 2026, and political action committees backing candidates and ballot measures spent roughly $1.2 million on top of that, according to Community Impact's reading of the finance reports due Oct. 26 — the final public look at local campaign money before Nov. 3.

The spending is spread across a full local ballot. Five council seats are contested: District 1 in East Austin, District 3 covering parts of South and East Austin, Districts 5 and 8 in South Austin, and District 9 in Central Austin. Below the council races sit two bond items — Proposition A, at $260 million, and Proposition B, $35 million for parks and library projects — and eight city charter amendments.

Community Impact reports the PAC money has largely centered on the bond measures and on Proposition I, the charter amendment backed by the Save Austin Now PAC that would require recurring outside audits of the city. That is where the outside money concentrates: not on any single council candidate, but on the questions that decide how the city borrows and how it is watched.

The reports also show the race is not spent out. Council candidates still held over half a million dollars combined heading into the final week — money that typically lands in mail, digital ads and turnout work in the last days of early voting, which ends Friday, and on Election Day itself. What Austinites see in their mailboxes this week is, in large part, what these reports just counted.