Colombia's 2026 Race Opens With Uribe, Petro's Shadow, And A U.S. Wild Card

(MENAFN- The Rio Times) Key Points

• March's congressional vote and same-day primaries will set the runoff map before the presidential race even begins.
  
• Álvaro Uribe is betting his comeback on an unusually high seat threshold, while the governing camp faces legal doubts over its frontrunner's eligibility.
  
• Washington, Venezuela, inflation, and a worsening security climate could swing late voters more than slogans.
  

With seven months left in Gustavo Petro's term, Colombia's 2026 campaign is now fully underway.

The first hard test comes on March 8, when voters choose the next Congress and, in parallel, parties plan to hold consultations to pick presidential nominees.

The presidential first round is scheduled for May 31, with a likely runoff on June 21. Petro cannot run again, but he is acting as if his project is still on the ballot. The conservative camp's biggest headline is Álvaro Uribe's return to the Senate race.

He appears as candidate number 25 on the Democratic Center's closed list, a defiant move after years of legal and political warfare that included his 2020 exit from the Senate and subsequent court battles.

The math is unforgiving. His party would need to win at least 25 seats for him to re-enter Congress, implying a vote total well above what most parties can reliably mobilize.


Colombia's 2026 Race Opens With Uribe, Petro's Shadow, And A U.S. Wild Card
On the governing side, the left has early polling momentum, strengthened by Petro's signature reforms and by the organizational show of force in its late-2025 internal consultation, which drew close to three million voters and delivered a clear win to Iván Cepeda.

Yet the left's main uncertainty is procedural: the National Electoral Council must decide whether Cepeda can compete again in March's broader“Pacto Amplio” consultation after already participating in the November contest. Roy Barreras and Camilo Romero are also in the mix.

The right's problem is fragmentation. Abelardo de la Espriella has polled strongly, but seven other figures have tried to fuse the anti-government vote through a joint consultation, including

• Paloma Valencia,
  
• Vicky Dávila,
  
• Aníbal Gaviria,
  
• Mauricio Cárdenas,
  
• David Luna,
  
• Juan Daniel Oviedo, and
  
• Juan Manuel Galán.
  

Two potential entrants, Juan Carlos Pinzón and Enrique Peñalosa, remain question marks. Centrists Sergio Fajardo and Claudia López plan to skip March and wait for May.

Petro, meanwhile, is pushing a constituent-assembly drive, backed publicly by Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino and a citizens' committee seeking signatures from January to March.

It is a campaign-season lever that turns the congressional race into a vote on rewriting rules, not just choosing lawmakers.

External pressure may decide the margins. U.S. aid cuts, tariff threats, and sharp rhetoric from Secretary of State Marco Rubio have injected Washington into Colombia's debate.

Venezuela is another fuse: this morning's U.S. strike could accelerate migration into a country already hosting about 2.82 million Venezuelans.

Add inflation worries, a large 2026 minimum-wage increase, and rising insecurity, and Colombia's election may hinge less on promises than on who looks able to restore order.

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