One year after he lost his home in the Palisades Fire, former MTV reality star Spencer Pratt announced he’s running for mayor of Los Angeles.

Pratt announced his candidacy on Wednesday at “They Let Us Burn,” an event for people affected by last January’s fire in the Pacific Palisades who are unhappy with how Mayor Karen Bass and other L.A. politicians have handled the disaster.

Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost their home in the fires. Speaking at the event in the Pacific Palisades, Pratt told the crowd, “We're going to expose the system. We're going into every dark corner of L.A. politics and disinfecting the city with our light. And when we are done, L.A. is going to be camera-ready again.”

Pratt’s Instagram bio now reads: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Pratt for Mayor 2026.”

Who is Spencer Pratt?

Pratt rose to fame in the early aughts, first appearing in 2005 as a friend of Brody Jenner on the reality series The Princes of Malibu, a series which Pratt, then a University of Southern California student, also cocreated and executive produced. In 2007, he joined the cast of The Hills, where he dated and eventually married Montag, best friend of the show’s star Lauren Conrad.

Pratt earned the title of reality TV villain due to his sparring with Conrad — a reputation he has since said he happily leaned into in order to capitalize on his fame. It worked: he and Montag, who are still married and now share two kids, became tabloid staples of the era.

Although he and Montag’s fame faded over time as new reality TV stars stepped into the spotlight, the couple continued to appear on different programs, such as Celebrity Big Brother UK and Marriage Bootcamp. In 2018, Pratt found a thriving fan base on the social media app Snapchat, often posting videos of hummingbirds in his backyard.

Pratt and Montag later reunited with their former castmates for The Hills: New Beginnings, which ran from 2019 to 2021.

In April 2025, Pratt joined the cast of the Hulu competition series Got to Get Out, which included fellow reality TV icons like The Apprentice’s Omarosa Manigault Newman. Pratt is next releasing a memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate, to be released on Jan. 27, 2026. “Only need 3 million pre orders to get our house back,” he joked in a July 2025 Instagram post.

What Pratt has said about the Los Angeles fires

In January 2025, Pratt shared that he and Montag lost their home in the Pacific Palisades in the fire that consumed more than 16,000 structures. Pratt’s parents, who also lived in the neighborhood, also lost their home.

Weeks after the Palisades fire, which unfolded at the same time as several other wildfires in Southern California, Pratt and Montag, as well as other impacted plaintiffs, sued the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power over damage to their properties.

In the last year, Pratt has taken to social media to speak about the impact of the fires on his family’s life, telling the Cut in February 2025, “That house was our stock; it was our bitcoin. Every dollar we’ve hustled for in the last nine years. The Hills reboot, anything that makes money on any social media, we put into this house.” In April 2025, he told Yahoo that he wants his “old life” back, and that his goal with future projects now is to be able to buy his parents, and also his own immediate family, a home as soon as possible.

His social media posts also criticize politicians' responses to the fires in Los Angeles, including that of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His focus is on how he believes the lack of viable water resources led to unnecessary devastation in his neighborhood.

In a post ahead of the Wednesday “They Let Us Burn” event, Pratt wrote on Instagram, “History will show…Ineptitude, Gross Negligence, Dangerous Fire Management Policy, Lack of Prevention, Terrible Resource Management… these are the things that precipitated the Palisades Fire. But after the fire, no transparency, no accountability, victim blaming and no vision. This will truly define this tragic era.”