About this election
Peru held its presidential election in two rounds: a first round on 12 April 2026 (held alongside the congressional elections) and a run-off on 7 June 2026. With 100% of tally sheets (actas) processed — all 92,766 of them — Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza Popular defeated Roberto Sánchez of Juntos por el Perú by 50.135% to 49.865%, a margin of 49,641 votes out of 18,397,151 valid ballots. Sánchez had led throughout most of the count before Fujimori edged ahead in the final stretch, as tally sheets from Lima, the north coast and the diaspora were processed. The result is official and final: on 3 July 2026 the National Elections Jury (JNE) formally proclaimed Keiko Fujimori president-elect for the 2026–2031 term, together with her elected vice-presidents Luis Galarreta and Miguel Ángel Torres. She becomes the first woman elected president of Peru, and takes office on 28 July 2026. The department-by-department map below shows the official ONPE count: Fujimori carried Lima, Callao and the northern coastal departments, while Sánchez swept the southern Andes.
The run-off has been one of the closest in Peruvian history. For most of the tabulation Roberto Sánchez held a narrow lead, but as the final rural and overseas tally sheets were processed Keiko Fujimori overtook him, and the two candidates ended up separated by barely a quarter of a percentage point. With the margin so small, the official outcome rested on the last actas and on the resolution of those referred to the Special Electoral Juries (JEE); the ONPE completed the count on 29 June, and the JNE proclaimed the result on 3 July 2026.
With the margin at roughly 49,600 votes, the run-off was bitterly contested. Roberto Sánchez refused to concede, insisting that he was the rightful winner and pledging to "defend his popular victory" — a stance commentators compared to Keiko Fujimori's own refusal to accept her narrow defeat in 2021. The electoral authorities nonetheless completed the process on schedule: the ONPE finished the official count on 29 June with every acta resolved, and on 3 July 2026 the full bench of the JNE, presided over by Roberto Burneo, proclaimed the Fuerza Popular ticket the winner. Sánchez's camp has continued to allege irregularities, but domestic and international observers reported no evidence of fraud that could have altered the outcome, and the proclamation exhausts the formal electoral process.
Both rounds drew fraud claims, none of which observers found to have altered the national result. After the first round, the defeated candidate Rafael López Aliaga led a campaign questioning the count and demanding the election be annulled; the JNE rejected the annulment bid in a 3–2 decision on 24 April 2026, and European Union and domestic election observers reported no evidence of systematic fraud. In the run-off, authorities reported isolated incidents — including around 90 pre-marked ballots, two arrests and some fifty ballots replaced — but nothing found to have affected the outcome. López Aliaga subsequently faced criminal proceedings over public calls for an "insurgency" should the vote not be voided.
Keiko Fujimori, leader of the right-wing Fuerza Popular and daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, reached the run-off for the third time, having narrowly lost the previous two (2011 and 2016, and again in 2021). Roberto Sánchez, of the left-wing Juntos por el Perú, advanced from a fragmented first-round field to carry the standard of the left. The contest reprised the deep left-right divide that has defined recent Peruvian presidential elections.
Peru elects its president by two-round majority vote: if no candidate exceeds 50% of valid votes in the first round, the top two advance to a run-off. The president serves a five-year term and may not be re-elected to consecutive terms. Elections are administered by the ONPE, while the JNE resolves disputes and proclaims the official final result. Voting is compulsory.
Peru has experienced chronic instability, cycling through six presidents in the decade before 2026 amid repeated impeachments, resignations and confrontation between the executive and Congress. The election was held under the caretaker presidency that followed the removal of Pedro Castillo in December 2022 and the troubled, deeply unpopular tenure of his successor Dina Boluarte, whose government faced mass protests and a sharp loss of public confidence.
The presidential first round was held on the same day as elections to a newly restored bicameral Congress, in which Keiko Fujimori's Fuerza Popular emerged as the largest party in both chambers without a majority. Whoever wins the presidency will therefore face a fragmented legislature — and, given Peru's recent history of executive-legislative warfare, the composition of Congress is at least as important as the presidency for the country's stability.
Beyond the personalities, the run-off is a choice between continuity of the right's dominance of national institutions and a return of the left to the presidency, with implications for economic policy, the handling of insecurity and organised crime, and the relationship between the next president and a hostile Congress. The razor-thin result guarantees that the legitimacy of the outcome, whoever prevails, will be fiercely contested.
In the 2021 run-off, Pedro Castillo (Peru Libre) narrowly beat Keiko Fujimori, 50.13% to 49.87% — a margin comparably razor-thin to the gap separating the candidates in 2026. Castillo was impeached and removed in December 2022 after attempting to dissolve Congress, and was succeeded by his vice-president, Dina Boluarte. Keiko Fujimori's repeated narrow defeats have made her one of the most persistent figures in modern Peruvian politics.
With the JNE proclamation of 3 July 2026, the result is final. Fujimori and her vice-presidents receive their credentials on 15 July, and the inauguration takes place on 28 July 2026 — Peru's independence day — for the 2026–2031 term, succeeding interim president José María Balcázar. Fujimori will govern alongside the new bicameral Congress elected in April, in which her Fuerza Popular is the largest party in both chambers but holds no majority, so her administration will still depend on coalition-building. After three failed run-offs, the first woman to win Peru's presidency inherits a polarised country: nearly half the electorate voted against her, her opponent disputes her legitimacy, and the southern Andes — where Sánchez won by margins above 70% — remain the heartland of the opposition.
The contest is inseparable from the Fujimori name. Keiko's father, Alberto Fujimori, who governed Peru in the 1990s, remains one of the most polarising figures in the country's history — credited by supporters with defeating the Shining Path insurgency and taming hyperinflation, but later convicted of human-rights abuses and corruption. Keiko has built Fuerza Popular into Peru's most disciplined political organisation while herself facing protracted corruption proceedings. For many Peruvians a Fujimori run-off is, once again, as much a referendum for or against fujimorismo as a straightforward choice between left and right.
ONPE (National Office of Electoral Processes) / JNE (National Elections Jury) — onpe.gob.pe.
En español: Elección presidencial del Perú 2026 (segunda vuelta: Keiko Fujimori vs. Roberto Sánchez) — resultados oficiales de la ONPE, escrutinio al 100 % y mapa de resultados por departamento en ElectioMap.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.