President Gustavo Petro's leftist Pacto Histórico emerged as the largest force in Colombia's fragmented 108-seat Congress after winning 25 Senate seats with 4.35mn votes (22.8%) in the March 8 legislative elections, in which voters also selected three presidential candidates ahead of the May 31 vote where the incumbent cannot seek re-election.

Conservative senator Paloma Valencia secured 3.23mn votes — more than double Iván Cepeda’s October 2025 total — positioning her to challenge the leftist candidate and independent Abelardo de la Espriella in the high-stakes upcoming presidential election.

The right-wing opposition Centro Democrático captured 17 Senate seats with 2.98mn votes (15.6%), followed by the Liberal Party with 13 seats (11.7%), according to preliminary results with 99.78% counted. Former president Álvaro Uribe lost his Senate seat for the first time in his political career after his party failed to reach the threshold, according to El Tiempo.

"We are the country's main political force," Cepeda told supporters at the Hotel Tequendama in Bogotá. "Today begins our second half with a strong and committed caucus."

Valencia's landslide primary victory delivered a seismic jolt to Colombia's presidential landscape. Juan Daniel Oviedo, former statistics agency DANE director and 2023 Bogotá mayoral runner-up, stunned observers by placing second in the Gran Consulta with 1.07mn votes (21.3%), nearly matching the combined totals of the centre-left and leftist primaries and positioning himself as a potential vice-presidential running mate for Valencia.

"More than prejudices, we are the result of a politics that wants to speak clearly, that wants to listen, that is capable of recognising the good that may be happening in the country," Oviedo told Noticias Caracol, calling himself the "toad" of the right-wing primary for praising select Petro administration policies while campaigning on fiscal responsibility.

Oviedo's million-vote showing complicates Valencia's strategy as she seeks to consolidate the anti-Petro vote while attracting moderates in a three-way race. Pre-election polling by Guarumo-Ecoanalítica showed Cepeda leading with 31.7%, de la Espriella at 22.6%, and Valencia at 10%, though her 3.23mn verified primary votes — representing 58.9% of the 5.48mn-vote Gran Consulta turnout — now provide hard evidence of electoral strength that poll-leader de la Espriella cannot match, having declined to participate in primaries.

Analyst León Valencia of Fundación Paz y Reconciliación told CNN the race's outcome depends on "how many votes they get and what impact they have" competing against de la Espriella, who leads some surveys despite questions over 3mn allegedly fraudulent petition signatures used to register his candidacy.

"I am Uribista, and I will die Uribista," Valencia declared, vowing to follow her mentor's hardline security policies while telling supporters: "This government is a time bomb ticking down the seconds until it explodes."

In other primary contests, Roy Barreras won the Frente por la Vida consultation with 257,037 votes (43.24%), narrowly defeating former Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero with 227,379 votes. Barreras ruled out selecting Quintero as his running mate despite the close result.

Former Bogotá mayor Claudia López dominated the centrist Consulta de las Soluciones with 574,670 votes (92.87%), though turnout of about 619,000 voters was far lower than the conservative Gran Consulta and other presidential primaries held the same day, which together attracted more than 7mn voters.

In the crowded conservative field, journalist Vicky Dávila finished fifth with 238,045 votes (3.36%), trailing former defence minister Juan Carlos Pinzón with 297,646 votes (4.20%) and former senator Juan Manuel Galán with 327,765 votes (4.63%). Economist Mauricio Cárdenas, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa and former Antioquia governor Aníbal Gaviria each secured fewer than 200,000 votes.

The elections, which saw an abstention rate of over 50%, were marred by widespread political violence, with at least 61 political leaders killed during the campaign, among them conservative front-runner Miguel Uribe Turbay, assassinated in Bogotá in June 2025. The violence reflects the broader failure of Petro's flagship "Total Peace" strategy: cocaine production has reached record levels — exceeding 1,700 tonnes annually, according to UN figures — as negotiations with armed groups have stalled, leaving large swaths of territory outside state control.

The newly divided Congress portends governance challenges for the next president, likely requiring coalition-building to advance legislation. Petro's coalition retains the largest bloc but lacks an outright majority to push through remaining reform proposals, including a controversial constituent assembly to rewrite the 1991 constitution.

"The left showed that it is here to stay, the ​right that it is divided, but it is not weak. We are going to have a fragmented Congress for the next legislature," said ​Sergio Guzman, director of political risk consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis, as quoted by Reuters