London has elected its first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party, city election officials confirm.

Sadiq Khan defeats Conservative Zac Goldsmith and will succeed Boris Johnson.

"Thank you London. London is the greatest city in the world," Khan says after the victory.

"I am so proud of our city. I'm deeply humbled by the hope and trust you've placed in me today. I want to say thank you to every single Londoner for making the impossible possible today."

He says he has a "burning ambition for London" to ensure that every Londoner has the opportunities to that the city gave him and his family, "opportunities not just to survive, but to thrive."

Sadiq Khan's political star soared, but his religion is not the only thing separating him from most of Britain's political elite.

He has represented his home area, Tooting, in south-west London, in parliament since 2005. He has lived in Tooting his whole life, unlike many in his Labour Party and the rival Conservatives who have moved to new constituencies to further their political careers.

Sadiq Khan's parents migrated to Britain from Pakistan in the late 1960s, and his father worked as a London bus driver for 25 years.

"My story is a story of London," said Khan.

"My father was a bus driver and my mother sewed clothes. London gave me the chance to go from a council estate to helping to run a successful business and serving in the cabinet," he told voters.

His manifesto promised to give "all Londoners the same opportunities that our city gave me," with a focus on increasing the city's stock of affordable housing and reining in soaring property prices.

Among his other campaign promises, the former human rights lawyer calls himself a "proud feminist who'll challenge gender inequality in our city."

Sadiq Khan, 45, likes to box, reflecting his passionate defence for himself and others in the motto for his London campaign: Standing up for you.

He says he is an active member of parliamentary football and cricket teams, and a mentor for Operation Black Vote, an organisation encouraging greater public participation by black and ethnic minority Britons.

Sadiq Khan was a minister

Sadiq Khan was a minister in the last Labour government and ran Ed Miliband's successful Labour leadership campaign after the party's defeat in a 2010 general election.

He is now arguably Britain's most prominent ethnic-minority politician since voters in three areas of London elected the country's first black members of parliament in 1987.

Endorsed by former London mayor Ken Livingstone and by trade unions in the contest to be Labour's official candidate, Khan does not fit neatly into Labour's "socialist" or "Blairite" camps, and appears to bridge the party's divisions.

His religion, and the Conservatives' claim that he had associated with extremists, overshadowed other campaign issues in recent weeks.

Vince Cable, a former Liberal Democrat member of parliament in London who served as business secretary in a 2010-15 coalition government, accused Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith of joining a "dog whistle anti-Islamic" campaign against Khan.

But Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, said that many Londoners would see Khan's election as "a sign of cosmopolitan modernity."

The Economist magazine said Sadiq Khan is "in many respects a more conventional politician" than his two predecessors as London mayor: Labour left-winger Livingstone, a highly popular figure during his early years as London's leader; and the colourful Boris Johnson, who is heading a cross-party campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

Sadiq Khan told the magazine that he had met "some of the best mayors around the world, whether it's (former and current New York mayors) Mike Bloomberg or Bill de Blasio, to see whether we can replicate ideas from other cities."

Londoners were "electing someone who's going to be London's champion, London's advocate," he said.

"What all the great cities around the world, from New York to Chicago, from Paris to Austin, from Berlin to Delhi, have always done is selected a champion for their city."

- dpa