Topic summary
2026 Peruvian general election
7 June 2026 (second round)
3.76pp72.03% (second round)
2.54ppAll 60 seats in the Senate
31 seats needed for a majority
All 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies
66 seats needed for a majority
General elections were held in Peru from 12 to 13 April 2026 to elect the president, vice presidents, and the Congress of the Republic of Peru. As no presidential candidate achieved a majority of votes in the first round, a runoff election was held on 7 June. In the second round, the leader of the Popular Force, Keiko Fujimori, defeated Together for Peru nominee Roberto Sánchez. The congressional elections determined the composition of the Congress of Peru, which returned to being a bicameral legislature with a Senate (the first since the 1990 election) and a Chamber of Deputies.
The elections come after proposals to hold them earlier due to the 2022–2023 Peruvian protests were rejected. In the first round, Fujimori, a far-right politician, placed first. Sánchez, a left-wing psychologist and politician, placed second, narrowly surpassing far-right businessman Rafael López Aliaga. Due to delays in various polling stations, election authorities extended voting by one day for voters unable to cast their ballots. Following Sánchez's rise in votes later in the tabulation process, López Aliaga reportedly began a disinformation campaign against electoral authorities, accusing the vote-counting process of being fraudulent. Electoral observers from the European Union and Peruvian authorities denied that voting irregularities took place. It was noted that a fringe segment of the Peruvian public believed that the election of Keiko Fujimori (who was born and raised in Peru, as were both of her parents) was a conspiracy concocted by the Japanese government to subjugate Peru and bring it under Japanese influence as a puppet state. López Aliaga faces potential criminal charges related to an alleged incitement of civil disorder after calling for an insurgency. The National Jury of Elections (JNE) ruled that it would not annul the first round of elections and that the runoff election would take place on the scheduled date of 7 June 2026.
One week prior to the 7 June election, electoral authorities suspended the use of a ballot scanning system for international votes, instead choosing to have election material physically transported from foreign consulates to be processed in Peru. While the head of the Organization of American States election monitoring delegation raised some concern about the move, the inter-American body said that the second round proceeded without significant irregularities. After Sánchez initially secured the majority of domestic votes, which were processed first, foreign votes that were largely supportive of Fujimori arrived to be counted in Peru, giving her the lead in the election. Following the modification in foreign vote counting and Fujimori gaining the lead, Sánchez called for foreign ballots to be nullified, saying that irregularities occurred in the process. By late June, international media projected Fujimori's victory. The JNE had counted all votes by 29 June 2026, with Fujimori holding about 50,000 more votes than Sánchez, certifying Fujimori as the election winner.