Colombian leftist presidential candidate Iván Cepeda giving statements to the press on Sunday, May 31, 2026. Photo: Bloomberg.
Abelardo de la Espriella and Iván Cepeda will advance to the second round of Colombia’s presidential elections after neither candidate won over half of the votes in the first round held this Sunday, May 31.
Far-right lawyer De la Espriella came in first place, obtaining 10,338,440 votes, equivalent to 43.73%. Meanwhile, left-wing candidate Cepeda received 9,673,390 votes, representing 40.91% of the popular support.
Colombia’s National Registry reported a 57.77% voter turnout, equivalent to 23,933,224 voters. This figure surpasses the 54.9% recorded in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections.
Thus, on June 21, the governing Historical Pact, whose ticket comprises Iván Cepeda and Aida Quilcué, will face off against the Defenders of the Homeland party’s ticket of Abelardo De la Espriella and José Manuel Restrepo. The winner of the election will succeed President Gustavo Petro and assume the Colombian presidency for the 2026-2030 term.
The far-right Uribista movement came in third place in the first round, with a ticket of Paloma Valencia and Juan Oviedo. The movement won only 1,633,217 votes, or 6.92%, representing a historic defeat for Colombia’s traditional right wing. The Democratic Center candidates obtained a result far lower than predicted by opinion polls, and even lower than the 3,200,000 votes they received on March 8 in the right-wing primary, in which Valencia was chosen as the official Uribista candidate.
The centrist duo Sergio Fajardo and Edna Bonilla came in fourth place, with 4.26% of the vote in the first round of the elections. The remaining nine candidates—including former Bogotá mayor Claudia López—did not surpass 1% of the vote.
Irregularities
On Sunday, Iván Cepeda denounced a series of alleged irregularities that he claimed had affected his candidacy. He cited 850,000 additional voters on the electoral roll and an undetermined number of polling stations with “atypical” results. For this reason, both Cepeda and his running mate, Aida Quilcué, announced that they will wait for the final results issued by the electoral commissions before taking a position on the election outcome.
Hours earlier, Colombian President Gustavo Petro expressed his disagreement with the preliminary election results on social media. He questioned why a private company, rather than the state, owned the software used in the voting and counting process. The president had already voiced this concern earlier that morning after casting his vote.
Election day without major incidents
According to a report from authorities on Sunday afternoon, the voting process proceeded peacefully and without incidents. For the election, 408,000 members of the security forces were deployed at key locations throughout Colombia to protect the right to vote of over 41 million eligible voters.
In these crucial elections, 118,346 polling stations were set up in 13,489 locations (6,010 in urban areas and 7,479 in rural areas) across the country.
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Minor incidents were reported in the northeastern Catatumbo region and in the southern department of Caquetá, according to the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE). However, the organization stated that “none of these affected the normal development of the day.”
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio reported an undeniable increase in the participation of citizens residing abroad during the presidential elections, for which 3,700 polling stations were set up in 116 consulates in over 60 countries.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SF
