Bogotá, Colombia – Hard right provocateur Abelardo de la Espriella won a shock victory in the first round of Colombia’s presidential elections Sunday, and will head to a run-off with leftist Iván Cepeda in June.
The most recent voter intention polls had predicted Cepeda beating de la Espriella in the first round by an average of eight points.
With over 99% of votes counted, de la Espriella leads Cepeda, by nearly three percentage points (43.7% to 40.9%).
A run-off election will take place on June 21 since no candidate achieved over 50% vote share.
Read more: Candidate guides for the 2026 Colombian elections: Abelardo de la Espriella
Voting closely followed political divisions seen in previous elections — including in 2022 when Gustavo Petro won the presidency, as well as the 2016 plebiscite for a peace agreement with FARC rebels — with voters rural areas impacted by Colombia’s armed conflict voting for Cepeda while voters in the heart of the country (save the capital Bogotá) voting for de la Espriella’s Defensores de la Patria ticket.
Paloma Valencia, a right-wing senator backed by former President Alvaro Uribe, was considered a favorite to make it to the second round alongside Cepeda as recently as early May, but her campaign ran out of steam in the final weeks and she ended with less than 7% of the vote.
Yann Basset, a political scientist from the University of Rosario in Bogotá told Latin America Reports that he expects Valencia’s supporters will rally around de la Espriella, handing him a victory in the run-off in three weeks’ time.
De la Espriella, who has run a slick, AI-augmented social media campaign, promised to “defeat the tyranny of the left.”
His proposals include the construction of 10 mega-prisons, a la El Salvador strongman Nayib Bukele, and militarization of the whole territory in order to combat illegal armed groups.
Read more: Candidate guides for the 2026 Colombian elections: Iván Cepeda
For his part, Cepeda ran on a continuation of Petro’s Historic Pact for Colombia party, including continuing efforts to achieve “Total Peace” with its many armed groups and narrowing the inequality gap in society.
“Colombia can and should be a just country. A country in which each citizen and every community has effective access to indispensable rights, property and services for a fulfilling life,” Cepeda said on the eve of elections.
Sunday night, Petro said he would not accept the preliminary count results, and defiant Cepeda supporters at the campaign event in the Tequendama Hotel in Bogotá were heard chanting “No pasarán!” (“They will not pass!”), referring to their right-wing rivals.
Featured image: Abelardo de la Espriella at a campaign rally in Nariño, Colombia in April 2026.
Image credit: Abelardo de la Espriella on X.
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