Colombia’s presidential runoff came down to a question the country has been wrestling with.
More than 41 million Colombians were eligible to vote Today in a presidential runoff that put two deeply opposed visions for the country’s future side by side and asked voters to choose. On one side stood Abelardo de la Espriella, a political newcomer and former criminal defense lawyer who ran on an iron-fist platform and earned the public backing of President Donald Trump. On the other was Iván Cepeda, a leftist senator and human rights advocate backed by outgoing President Gustavo Petro, who sought to continue and refine the approach Petro had spent four years attempting.
Polls closed at 4 p.m. and vote counting began immediately.
The two candidates defeated nine others in the first round of voting on May 31, where de la Espriella finished first with 43.74% and Cepeda came second with just under 41%. Neither reached the majority required to win outright, setting up a runoff that analysts described as one of the most consequential elections Colombia had seen in decades.
Who the candidates are and what they stand for
De la Espriella, 47, arrived in the race as a genuine outsider. He qualified for the ballot through citizen signatures rather than party backing and has never held elected office. A dual Colombian-American citizen and a former high-profile criminal defense lawyer, he built his public profile partly through defending controversial clients before pivoting to politics with a campaign built around spectacle, AI-generated content, a self-branded rum, and the nickname the Tiger.
His platform centers on an aggressive approach to crime modeled partly on El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, including plans for ten mega-prisons and a proposed bombing campaign coordinated with the United States that he described as Plan Colombia 2.0. He has spoken approvingly of Trump’s policies and positioned himself as the candidate best placed to restore Colombia’s relationship with Washington. Shortly after the first-round result, Trump offered his complete and total backing to de la Espriella on social media, citing the candidate’s accomplishments and his personal political support.
Cepeda’s background could hardly be more different. The son of an assassinated senator from a left-wing party formed during a 1980s peace process involving the FARC, he spent years in exile in Europe where he built a career as a human rights advocate before entering the Colombian Senate. His campaign focused on fighting inequality, deepening agrarian reform, and tackling corruption. He has been a critic of American-backed counternarcotics policy and military intervention in Latin America, and described his approach to the conflict as one that acknowledges the limits of negotiation while insisting that force alone cannot resolve it.
He drew more first-round votes than Petro won in 2022 but fell short of the decisive result his coalition had hoped for, setting up a steeper path in the runoff.
The violence that defines the stakes
The election takes place against a backdrop of worsening security that has framed the entire campaign. Colombia signed a landmark peace pact with FARC guerrillas in 2016 that promised to break the country’s cycle of armed conflict. A decade later, violence has returned with force, driven largely by armed groups that abandoned ideologically motivated fighting in favor of the far more lucrative business of drug trafficking.
In 2025, Colombian authorities recorded 14,780 homicides, the highest figure since at least 2015. Extortion cases more than doubled over the same decade, reaching 13,417 in 2025. The International Committee of the Red Cross described 2025 as the worst year for civilians in a decade, with more than 900 people killed or wounded by explosive devices.
The assassination of center-right presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay during a campaign rally in Bogotá last August sent a particular shockwave through the country and became a defining symbol of the security situation Petro was leaving behind.
Petro’s signature Total Peace policy, launched in 2022, sought to negotiate pacts with guerrilla groups and criminal organizations. As of the days before the runoff, only one armed group, numbering approximately 100 members, had laid down its weapons and entered a resettlement process. Colombia’s illegal armed groups are estimated to have more than 27,000 members in total.
What voters said heading into the ballot box
The divisions visible in polling stations reflected a country weighing the same fears from opposite directions. Some voters described exhaustion with the cycle of violence and a desire for the kind of decisive action de la Espriella was promising. Others expressed skepticism that a harder military approach would produce anything different from what had already been tried and found wanting, noting that the country’s conflict has historically proven resistant to force-only solutions.
Economic anxieties ran alongside security concerns. Many voters described frustration with the cost of living under Petro, whose promised reforms were largely blocked by congressional opposition. The state of the health system, which Petro attempted to restructure without success, also weighed on voters according to analysts covering the campaign.
Venezuela loomed in the background as well, with concerns among some voters that a second consecutive leftist government could move Colombia closer to its neighbor’s trajectory, a fear sharpened by Petro’s outreach to Caracas.
The integrity questions and the broader picture
The lead-up to the runoff was marked by friction beyond the policy debate. Outgoing President Petro raised fraud allegations after the first-round result without providing supporting evidence, and repeated those claims on the morning of the runoff vote. Electoral authorities and international observers have consistently defended the integrity of the process.
Cepeda filed a complaint with the Colombian Attorney General’s Office and the International Criminal Court accusing de la Espriella of ties to paramilitary groups, a charge de la Espriella denied.
De la Espriella entered Today’s vote with both momentum and mathematical advantage. His first-round total already approached a majority, and the conservative bloc consolidated behind him quickly after the result, with former President Álvaro Uribe and third-place finisher Paloma Valencia both declaring their support within hours.
Regardless of who won, political scientists observing the race noted that the contest had already redrawn Colombia’s political map, opening new ground on both the left and the right and leaving the political center with less room than it once occupied.