Three days after Colombia's tightest presidential runoff since the two-round system was established in 1994, the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) brought the legal contest to an end. At 3:09 p.m. on June 24, CNE President Cristian Quiroz issued a formal resolution declaring Abelardo de la Espriella president-elect for the 2026-2030 constitutional period — closing a process that saw more than 57,000 formal legal challenges filed and then entirely withdrawn. The result: a certified margin slightly wider than the preliminary count, a formal concession from the left, and a sitting president who acknowledged the transition while hinting at a "peaceful resistance" no outgoing Colombian leader has ever announced before.
The certification came not as a surprise but as a confirmation — the institution that Colombian law assigns to declare winners had now done so, formally and on the record, providing the document that will underpin the Aug. 7 inauguration. But the political contest the certification officially ended has produced a polarization that no single resolution can dissolve.
What did the official count confirm?
The final certified figures told a story subtly different from what Pacto Histórico lawyers had hoped. De la Espriella received 12,960,166 votes to Cepeda's 12,708,312 — a gap of 251,854 votes{source="https://www.semana.com/politica/articulo/tras-escrutinio-cne-declaro-oficialmente-a-abelardo-de-la-espriella-como-nuevo-presidente-de-colombia/202656/