Colombia's 2026 race heats up as Valencia, De la Espriella accept Cepeda debate challenge

Colombia's presidential race entered a new phase this week when Iván Cepeda, the leftist frontrunner who has led every poll for months, issued a direct challenge to his rivals on the right: debate me on policy, on vision, on how to build a more equitable country. Within hours, both Paloma Valencia of the Democratic Center and Abelardo de la Espriella, the ultraconservative outsider, accepted. The moment marked a shift in a campaign that has been defined less by substantive argument than by threats, accusations, and the slow realignment of Colombia's traditional political machinery.

Valencia, the uribista candidate backed by former president Álvaro Uribe, said she was ready whenever Cepeda wanted to proceed—even if he tried to rig the terms in his favor. She demanded he explain his positions on the country's pressing social questions and warned voters that Cepeda represented not the left but "neocommunism" that could dismantle Colombian democracy. De la Espriella, the abogado penalista who has positioned himself as an anti-establishment figure despite his controversial past, called Cepeda a coward for avoiding public confrontation and said he stood ready with an independent moderator and a channel all Colombians could watch. Cepeda, speaking from Sumapaz alongside newly recruited allies from the Liberal party and the Green party, set conditions: the debates would not be spectacle, he said. The format, the agenda, the moderators, the venue—all would be negotiated in advance.

But the debate challenge was only one thread in a week of escalating tension. On Sunday, the Defense Minister, retired general Pedro Sánchez, announced that the government was offering a reward of up to 1 billion pesos—roughly $270,000—for information that could prevent any attack on the presidential candidates. He emphasized that all candidates faced threats and that the state would spare no effort to protect them. Then President Gustavo Petro claimed, without public evidence, that the CIA possessed concrete intelligence about an assassination plot against Cepeda. He linked the alleged threat to what he called the "extreme right" and drew a line between the violence that killed the influencer Charlie Kirk and the attack on Donald Trump in 2024. Cepeda himself said he would demand detailed information from authorities but vowed he would not abandon his campaign. He also revealed that he had received threats before but had kept them quiet to avoid spreading panic.

Meanwhile, the right-wing candidates reported their own security concerns. Valencia and De la Espriella both received death threats on social media the previous Sunday. Former president Uribe claimed, without corroboration, that the ELN guerrilla had threatened Valencia and was ordering its members to vote for Cepeda to ensure his victory in the first round. The allegations hung in the air unverified, part of a larger pattern in which security fears and political accusations had become difficult to separate.

The week also saw the architecture of the election shift beneath the surface. The Conservative Party, one of Colombia's two historic parties, announced unanimously that it would back Valencia. The Party of the U, another traditional force, did the same. Cambio Radical, a smaller conservative formation, freed its members to support either Valencia or De la Espriella but imposed a veto on backing Cepeda. The Green Party, by contrast, fractured. Its National Directorate voted to form a commission to negotiate a programmatic agreement with Cepeda's campaign, a move that prompted fury from senators like Katherine Miranda and Angélica Lozano, who saw it as undemocratic and a betrayal of the party's own founding leaders—Sergio Fajardo and Claudia López, both running as centrist candidates. "This is the sad closing chapter of the party," Lozano said.

Cepeda, despite leading every poll with roughly 39 percent support in the first round, faced persistent criticism for his silence on controversial moments. When videos emerged of a party in the Itagüí prison where criminal leaders aligned with the government's "Total Peace" dialogue had celebrated, Cepeda offered only a brief comment: authorities should handle it, and he would not make declarations against peace. Valencia and Sergio Fajardo, the centrist candidate, both attacked his reticence. Fajardo called the silence "complicit and incoherent." Valencia demanded to know what peace Cepeda was defending when criminals were benefiting while violence remained high. A court in Medellín, however, ruled in Cepeda's favor on a separate matter, concluding that his historical account of paramilitarism in Antioquia was grounded in fact and did not defame anyone.

As the campaign entered its final stretch toward the June 29 first round, the shape of the contest had become clearer: a leftist frontrunner with the backing of the sitting president and a fractured center-left, opposed by a unified right that had consolidated behind Valencia, and a charismatic outsider in De la Espriella who polled second but whose past remained contested. The debate, if it happened, would be the first real test of whether Cepeda could defend his lead against direct challenge, or whether the right could finally land a blow that would reshape the race.