Key Points
— President Petro’s Total Peace policy has stalled heading into 2026: talks with the ELN collapsed in January 2025 after the Catatumbo massacre, and the EMC’s dominant faction under Iván Mordisco broke off negotiations entirely.
— Armed groups have grown stronger under ceasefire conditions — total combatant numbers rose roughly 85% since 2017, now exceeding 25,000 fighters across all factions.
— The May 31, 2026 presidential election will decide whether Colombia continues, overhauls, or abandons the Total Peace approach — with leftist candidate Iván Cepeda, now backed by Clara López, leading polls on the pro-continuity side.
Colombia’s most ambitious peace initiative in a generation is running out of time. As President Gustavo Petro enters the final stretch of his term, his signature Total Peace policy faces collapsed talks, stronger armed groups, and an election season that will define the country’s security trajectory for years to come.
When Petro took office in August 2022 as Colombia’s first-ever leftist president, he promised something no previous administration had attempted: simultaneous peace negotiations with every major armed actor in the country. The strategy — branded “Paz Total” (Total Peace) — would reach guerrillas, drug-trafficking paramilitary successors, and urban gangs alike. Three and a half years later, the balance sheet is complicated, and the clock is running down.
What Is Total Peace — And Why Has It Struggled?
Total Peace rests on a legal framework Petro signed in November 2022 that allows the government to negotiate simultaneously with rebel groups and reach justice arrangements with organized crime structures. The policy envisions land redistribution, a shift away from forced coca eradication, tax and welfare reform, and ultimately national pacification. In principle, it was designed to address the root causes of violence — inequality, lack of state presence, and the illicit economy — rather than simply defeat armed groups militarily.
The early results were encouraging. Violence between security forces and armed groups dropped by roughly 28% in Petro’s first two years compared to the prior period, driven largely by ceasefire agreements with the ELN, the FARC’s Estado Mayor Central (EMC), and the Gulf Clan (Clan del Golfo). Critics, however, warned that these ceasefires were being exploited. Analysis from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) confirmed the paradox: while state-versus-armed-group clashes fell, the groups themselves expanded geographically, recruited heavily, and fought each other more intensely for control of cocaine corridors, illegal mining, and cross-border smuggling. By 2025, Colombia’s total combatant count across all factions had risen to more than 25,000 — up roughly 85% from 6,500 in 2017.
ELN Negotiations: Ceasefire, Collapse, and Cautious Reopening
The National Liberation Army (ELN), founded in 1964 as a Marxist insurgency, is Colombia’s oldest active guerrilla force and one of the most significant tests of Total Peace. The Petro government achieved a historic milestone in June 2023: a yearlong bilateral ceasefire — the longest the ELN had ever agreed to — which ran until August 2024. During that period, clashes between the ELN and security forces fell to historic lows.
The process broke down catastrophically in January 2025. ELN fighters clashed violently with a dissident FARC faction in the Catatumbo region near the Venezuelan border, leaving more than 100 civilians dead and displacing some 55,000 people. Petro declared a state of emergency, said the ELN had “chosen the path of war,” and formally suspended peace talks. The government pivoted to active combat operations against the group.
By late 2025, signals of a possible thaw emerged. In October, Petro announced it was “time to reinitiate contact” with the ELN. In December, ELN commander Antonio García told Reuters the group was willing to resume talks — but not on a “clean slate.” The outstanding issues include suspension of hostilities, an end to ELN kidnappings, and financing the peace process through a multi-donor fund. Cuba and Norway, which have served as guarantor nations in previous rounds, remain available as mediators. As of early 2026, formal talks have not yet resumed, though both sides have left the door open. Peace Commissioner Otty Patiño noted the government’s position clearly: “The ELN must alter its approach, rethink its strategies, and fundamentally transform its criminal operations.”
FARC Dissidents: Why the EMC Rejected Peace
The Estado Mayor Central (EMC) — the most powerful faction of FARC fighters who refused to sign the landmark 2016 Havana Accords — presents a different and arguably more intractable challenge. Under the command of alias “Iván Mordisco,” the EMC has expanded significantly since the original peace deal, now numbering an estimated 3,200 to 4,000 fighters controlling large stretches of territory in southern and eastern Colombia, including drug-trafficking routes into Brazil and Venezuela.
Initial ceasefires and talks with the EMC in 2023–2024 showed promise, but internal divisions proved fatal. A more dialogue-prone faction led by “Calarcá” was willing to advance negotiations, while Iván Mordisco’s faction prioritized military operations and rejected the political terms being discussed. When the split became untenable, Mordisco’s faction walked away from the peace table entirely and intensified attacks on security forces using tactics including makeshift attack drones. By early 2026, Colombian military operations in Vaupés department had killed at least six EMC fighters in joint army-air force-navy operations targeting Mordisco’s structure. A reward of up to 5 billion pesos has been placed on his capture.
The Comuneros del Sur: A Rare Bright Spot
Not all news is negative. In April 2025, the Comuneros del Sur — a 200-to-300-member ELN splinter group in Nariño Department — agreed to progressively disarm and replace 5,000 hectares of coca with legal crops. It marks the first time in the Total Peace process that an armed group has actually agreed to lay down weapons and assist in crop substitution. The territorial, community-driven model used in Nariño — where agreements are implemented immediately rather than deferred — has been cited as a potential template for future regional processes.
Coca, Cocaine, and the Economics of Conflict
No peace analysis in Colombia is complete without understanding the cocaine economy. Petro halted forced coca eradication early in his term and introduced a new voluntary substitution scheme. The result: coca cultivation surpassed 240,000 hectares — a record high. Armed groups profit enormously from this reality. The ELN taxes coca farmers and traffickers. The EMC controls processing routes. The Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal organization with roughly 9,000 members, dominates wholesale trafficking along the Caribbean coast.
The connection between drugs and conflict is structural, not incidental. Armed groups use ceasefires to consolidate territorial control over coca-producing areas, making any lasting peace agreement contingent on a credible alternative to the illicit economy. The Gulf Clan, for its part, temporarily suspended peace talks with the government in early 2026 after Petro agreed — under US pressure from the Trump administration — to designate three cartel leaders, including Gulf Clan leader “Chiquito Malo,” as high-priority targets. The talks were subsequently resumed, but the episode illustrated how US counter-narcotics pressure complicates Colombia’s domestic peace agenda.
Security Map 2026: Where Violence Persists
Even after years of ceasefire diplomacy, several Colombian regions remain highly insecure. The Catatumbo area (Norte de Santander) along the Venezuelan border remains a flashpoint — it was the site of the January 2025 massacre that broke the ELN talks and continues to see multi-actor conflict. The Pacific coast departments of Chocó and Nariño are contested by the ELN, Gulf Clan, and EMC splinter groups. The Amazon basin departments of Vaupés, Guaviare, and Amazonas remain active theaters of EMC operations. Caquetá and Putumayo, traditional coca heartlands, see constant pressure from armed factions competing for trafficking routes. Urban violence in Buenaventura, Medellín’s Valle de Aburrá, and Quibdó persists despite separate gang-focused dialogue processes.
The 2026 Election and the Peace Policy’s Future
The first round of Colombia’s presidential election is set for May 31, 2026, with a potential runoff on June 21. The outcome will shape whether Total Peace continues, gets overhauled, or is scrapped entirely. Senator Iván Cepeda, a veteran human rights lawyer and member of Petro’s Historic Pact coalition, is the left’s candidate and favored to advance in polls as the pro-continuity option. His position strengthened significantly on April 6, 2026, when veteran Senator Clara López — 76, who had registered her own candidacy in January — formally withdrew and endorsed Cepeda, consolidating the progressive vote.
Centrist Claudia López, former mayor of Bogotá, won her independent primary in March 2026 and is competing as a market-oriented moderate. Conservative Senator Paloma Valencia of the Democratic Center — the party of former President Álvaro Uribe — represents the anti-Petro, security-first approach. Fourteen candidates in total have registered. Petro himself, barred by the constitution from consecutive re-election, will leave office in August 2026 regardless of who wins.
International Support: Cuba, Norway, and Multilateral Backing
Cuba and Norway have served as the primary guarantor nations for Colombia’s peace processes since the Havana Accords. Both remain willing to facilitate renewed ELN talks. For the Gulf Clan negotiations, the mediating framework expanded to include Qatar, Spain, Norway, and Switzerland, with the Catholic Church playing an informal role. The UN Verification Mission, originally established to monitor the 2016 FARC agreement, has expanded its mandate to observe the ELN process. Venezuela, which borders Colombia and hosts ELN rear bases, is a key — and politically complicated — factor in any northern corridor peace arrangement, with the political turmoil following the disputed 2024 Venezuelan presidential election hampering progress.
What Peace — or Its Failure — Means for Investors
The economic stakes are significant. Colombia’s conflict costs the country an estimated 3% of GDP annually in lost productivity, security spending, and foregone investment. The oil sector is particularly exposed: key pipelines in Norte de Santander and Arauca pass through active conflict zones and have been targeted by ELN bombing campaigns for decades. A durable peace with the ELN alone would meaningfully reduce the risk premium on energy infrastructure investment and could unlock hydrocarbons extraction in currently inaccessible areas.
Tourism, one of Colombia’s fastest-growing sectors in the post-2016 period, is highly sensitive to security perceptions. The original FARC peace deal catalyzed a tourism boom in previously off-limits regions — the collapse of Total Peace risks reversing those gains. For portfolio investors, COLCAP (the Bogotá stock exchange index) and Colombian sovereign bonds are both sensitive to peace-process developments, with escalation events historically triggering sell-offs in energy and banking equities. A successful transition to a stable post-Petro government — whether it continues or restructures the peace framework — would likely reduce country risk and support currency stability.
The fundamental tension in Colombia’s 2026 peace calculus is unchanged: the country has the institutions, the civil society, and the international support to achieve lasting peace. What remains elusive is the combination of political will, coherent strategy, and armed group willingness to genuinely demobilize rather than use negotiations as a tactical pause. Whether that combination emerges under the next administration will be the defining question of the decade for Latin America’s third-largest economy.
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