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The paper analyses how the discourse on climate governance is re-worked in the urban context. It does so in order to better understand the meaning and possible impact of a growing rhetoric that proclaims the leadership in terms of climate governance of cities that are transitioning towards sustainable futures. By using an approach that employs critical discourse analysis, it examines the institutional climate governance discourse issued by public and private actors in the city of Barcelona, and compares it with the locally-contextualised discourses issued by these same actors during the Car-Free Day campaigns in 2005, 2012 and 2015. The objective is to analyse if private and public discourses internalise and take on the city’s leadership discourse and transfer it to urban climate governance. The comparative examination of texts released by public and private actors points to the discursive strategies of climate governance at the city level taking on meanings that are more descriptive than normative. The paper claims that this has implications for expectations regarding the city’s leadership in transitions towards sustainable futures.