Turnout: 50.62%
About this election
Colombia held congressional elections on 8 March 2026, electing both the Chamber of Representatives (183 seats) and the Senate of the Republic (around 100 seats). The Historic Pact (Pacto Historico), the left-wing coalition of President Gustavo Petro, remained the single largest force in both chambers but fell well short of a governing majority. In the Chamber it won 36 seats, ahead of the Liberal Party (25), the right-wing Democratic Centre (24) and the Conservative Party (18); in the Senate it took 25 of the 100 nationally elected seats, with the Democratic Centre (17), the Liberals (13), the Green Alliance (10) and the Conservatives (10) following. Turnout was 50.62%. The vote set the composition of the Congress that serves alongside the next president.
These were the first congressional elections since Gustavo Petro took office in August 2022 as Colombia's first left-wing president. His government had pursued an ambitious agenda of health, pension, labour and land reforms, but struggled against a fragmented Congress, declining approval ratings, and persistent security problems. The 2026 legislative vote, held a few months before the presidential election to choose Petro's successor, was widely read as a barometer of whether his political project could outlast his single, non-renewable term.
Colombia elects its Congress by proportional representation. The Senate is chosen mostly from a single nationwide constituency of 100 seats, with additional seats reserved for Indigenous communities and one for the runner-up in the presidential election (an opposition seat). The Chamber of Representatives is elected from departmental constituencies, supplemented by special seats — for Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities, for Colombians abroad, and the 16 transitory "peace" (PDET) seats created under the 2016 accord with the FARC for conflict-affected regions. Seats are allocated by the d'Hondt method subject to a threshold.
The Historic Pact is the broad left coalition built around Petro. Its main opponents on the right are the Democratic Centre, the party of former president Alvaro Uribe, and the Conservative Party; the centre and centre-right include the long-established Liberal Party, Cambio Radical and the Party of the U, while the Green Alliance occupies the centre. Colombian congresses are typically highly fragmented, with no single party close to a majority and governing dependent on shifting, often transactional coalitions.
The Historic Pact's first-place finish in both chambers confirmed that the Colombian left has become a permanent major force rather than a one-election phenomenon, but its totals — 36 of 183 in the Chamber and 25 of 100 elected Senate seats — left it far from able to govern alone. The traditional parties of the right and centre, taken together, retained the numbers to block or reshape legislation, pointing to continued gridlock.
With seats spread across the Historic Pact, the Uribista right, the old Liberal and Conservative machines, the Greens and several smaller lists, the new Congress is as fragmented as its predecessors. For whoever wins the presidency, assembling a working majority will again require coalition-building across ideological lines — the recurring constraint of Colombian governance and a central reason Petro's reforms advanced only partially.
The elections were held amid serious security concerns. More than sixty political and social leaders were reported killed during the campaign period, and the authorities deployed a very large security operation to protect the vote. The violence underscored the fragility of the 2016 peace process and the continuing presence of armed groups in parts of the country, a backdrop that shadows Colombian elections.
The congressional vote was the opening act of a 2026 electoral cycle completed by the presidential election, whose first round followed in May with a run-off scheduled for June. Because the president must govern with this Congress, the legislative result framed the presidential contest: any incoming government, of left or right, will face a divided legislature and the need to negotiate for every major reform.
In the 2022 congressional elections the Historic Pact had broken through to become a leading bloc for the first time, paving the way for Petro's presidential win later that year. Holding first place in 2026, even with a reduced ability to dominate, showed the durability of that realignment while confirming that Colombia's fragmented, multi-party Congress remains structurally resistant to single-party control.
The Congress elected in March takes office in mid-2026 for a four-year term and will sit alongside the president chosen later in the year. Its fragmented makeup means the incoming government will have to negotiate continuously for majorities, and the fate of the social reforms begun under Petro — and of the wider 2016 peace process — will depend heavily on how the blocs in this legislature align. The opposition Senate seat reserved for the presidential runner-up adds a further institutionalised check.
Registraduria Nacional del Estado Civil — registraduria.gov.co.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.