Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right criminal lawyer and political outsider, won Colombia’s presidential runoff on June 21, 2026, defeating leftist senator Iván Cepeda with 49.65% of votes to Cepeda’s 48.7%, according to preliminary tallies with 99.65% of ballots counted. De la Espriella secured 12.91 million votes, a margin of just 248,310 over Cepeda’s 12.67 million, making it one of the closest presidential races in Colombian history.
The victory marks a sharp rightward shift for Colombia after four years under Gustavo Petro, the country’s first and only leftist president, who was constitutionally barred from seeking re-election. De la Espriella, who calls himself “the Tiger” and has never held public office, campaigned on an iron-fist approach to Colombia’s resurging violence, promising to build 10 maximum-security “mega-prisons” and return to full-scale military confrontation against armed groups.
De la Espriella rose to prominence as a high-profile criminal defense lawyer representing leaders of paramilitary groups involved in Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict. He later expanded into liquor, real estate, and menswear businesses, building a public profile through social media displays of his lavish lifestyle. He announced his presidential bid in July 2025, a month after rightwing senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event and subsequently died from his injuries.
The runoff campaign was deeply polarized, with the two candidates failing to hold a single debate and instead trading insults. Cepeda, backed by outgoing President Petro, campaigned to continue Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the dismantling of criminal groups. De la Espriella rejected this approach entirely, vowing to dismantle what he called the left and pledging to seek U.S. support for airstrikes against coca plantations. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and drug trafficking drives much of the country’s violence.
De la Espriella received endorsement from U.S. President Donald Trump after winning the first round on May 31, when he garnered 44% of votes to Cepeda’s 41%. The narrower margin in the runoff—just 0.95 percentage points—suggests the race tightened significantly in the final three weeks, though de la Espriella maintained his lead throughout.
The result is part of a broader wave of far-right victories sweeping Latin America. Nasry Asfura won Honduras’s presidency, José Antonio Kast won Chile’s election, and Keiko Fujimori was leading Peru’s vote count at the time of Colombia’s runoff. When Petro leaves office in August, only Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, and Guatemala will remain under leftist governments in the region, a dramatic reversal from the “Pink Tide” of left-wing dominance in the 2000s and 2010s.
De la Espriella will take office on August 7 with a minority in congress and a deeply divided country. His vice president will be economist José Manuel Restrepo, who served as finance minister under Petro’s conservative predecessor, Iván Duque. De la Espriella has pledged to shrink the state by 40% and implement sweeping security reforms, though analysts remain skeptical that military confrontation will succeed where it failed in previous decades of conflict.
Outgoing President Petro alleged irregularities in the preliminary vote count without presenting evidence, claiming the National Civil Registry was “uploading forms without the signatures of election jurors.” Petro said he would only recognize the official scrutiny process, expected to take about two more days. Historically, differences between preliminary counts and official scrutiny in Colombian elections have been less than 1%.
Sources
- The Guardian — De la Espriella’s victory margin, final vote percentages, and background on his criminal law career and business ventures
- Reuters — Preliminary election results, vote counts, and de la Espriella’s campaign platform on security and mega-prisons
- PBS NewsHour — Candidates’ backgrounds and de la Espriella described as business owner and lawyer
- AP News — Election context and candidate descriptions
- France 24 — De la Espriella’s background as defense attorney and businessman, campaign focus on security
- Washington Post — Trump endorsement and regional context of pro-Trump wave in Latin America
- CNN — De la Espriella’s nickname “the Tiger” and campaign positioning
