On Sunday, millions of Colombian voters flocked to polling stations across the country to cast ballots in what is widely described as one of the most consequential presidential elections in the nation’s modern history. The contest boils down to a stark, defining choice: continue the outgoing government’s left-wing push for negotiated dialogue with armed drug-trafficking guerrilla groups, or swing sharply to the right to launch an all-out military crackdown on insurgent and criminal organizations.
Pre-election opinion surveys place left-wing senator Ivan Cepeda, the hand-picked successor of outgoing President Gustavo Petro — Colombia’s first progressive head of state — in the lead, buoyed by modest economic gains delivered during Petro’s term. But Cepeda faces stiff competition from two hard-right challengers: wealthy lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and conservative senator Paloma Valencia, who have centered their campaigns on widespread voter anger over rising insecurity.
As no candidate is projected to win an outright majority in Sunday’s first round, a run-off election between the two top-performing candidates is scheduled for June 21. The entire race has become a de facto referendum on Petro’s flagship “total peace” initiative, an effort to convince holdout guerrilla groups that rejected a landmark 2016 peace agreement to disarm that ultimately failed to curb violence.
“Even though Petro is not on the ballot this cycle, the entire campaign revolves around him,” explained Yann Basset, a political science professor at Bogota’s University of Rosario. “He remains at the center of every policy debate and every attack from rival candidates.”
Petro’s four-year term was marked by persistent unrest: car bombings, drone attacks on civilian and government targets, and the assassination of a sitting presidential candidate. Independent security analysts widely note that guerrilla groups used the window of peace talks to strengthen their territorial positions and expand their illegal operations, which include cocaine trafficking, unregulated mining, and widespread extortion of local businesses.
Whoever claims the presidency will inherit a fragmented security landscape dominated by a patchwork of competing criminal and insurgent groups, all fueled by Colombia’s position as the world’s top producer of cocaine. For Cepeda, the son of a communist leader assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries and one of the architects of the 2016 FARC peace deal, the path forward is to double down on dialogue. He has pledged to continue the “total peace” framework and expand social safety net programs to address the deep inequality that has long fueled insurgency in the country.
“Today, power is in our hands, the hands of the people,” said Jose Cruz, a 60-year-old former left-wing militant and Cepeda supporter. “We will not accept the return of oligarchic and bourgeois rule.”
Cepeda’s economic progressive platform has gotten a boost from recent gains under Petro: unemployment has fallen over the past four years, and the government has implemented significant increases to the national minimum wage, improvements that have resonated with low-income and working-class voters.
But for right-wing candidates, continued dialogue with armed groups is a non-starter. They have weaponized widespread voter anxiety over rising violence to oust the left from power. Polling indicates Cepeda is most likely to face de la Espriella — a self-described admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump who has nicknamed himself “The Tiger” — in the June run-off. De la Espriella has promised a full-spectrum military offensive against armed groups across air, land, and sea, echoing the tough-on-crime rhetoric that has fueled a recent wave of right-wing electoral victories across Latin America.
“What De la Espriella wants is to put this country back in order,” said Wilmer Bolivar, a 47-year-old former soldier and de la Espriella supporter.
Valencia, a conservative senator and close ally of influential former president Alvaro Uribe, endorses the same militarized approach to security. “We are going to put an end to ‘total peace’ in order to impose total security,” she declared during a recent campaign stop.
While widespread bloodshed on election day is not expected, with even criminal groups traditionally declaring unilateral ceasefires to allow voting to proceed peacefully, the wave of attacks in recent months has left many voters deeply anxious. The National Electoral Council has deployed 408,000 law enforcement officers across the country to secure polling places. Voting will run for eight hours, concluding at 4:00 pm local time (2100 GMT), with preliminary results expected by 6:00 pm (2300 GMT).
Colombia currently records its highest levels of violence in a decade, a crisis almost entirely driven by revenue from the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade. The 2023 assassination of right-wing candidate Miguel Uribe, which was blamed on a leftist guerrilla group, stoked widespread fears of a return to the full-scale civil conflict that devastated the country for decades. In April 2025, a bombing on a highway in southwestern Cauca region killed 21 civilians, making it the deadliest attack on non-combatants in decades; the responsible group later called the attack a tactical error.
For many ordinary Colombians, the top priority for the next president is simple: end the cycle of violence that has upended daily life across much of the country. “The next president needs to give us some peace of mind, some actual peace, because the way things are right now, we’re all very anxious,” said Maria Eugenia Motato, a 57-year-old housewife in Suarez, Cauca. “There’s just far too much conflict.”
