Colombia's first avowedly left-wing president, a former member of M-19, a guerrilla outfit. Elected in 2022 on a promise to overhaul pensions, the health-care system and labour laws, and to dramatically reduce inequality. He also vowed to establish "Total Peace" by negotiating with all armed groups. Mr Petro wants to "decolonise" his own country—an ambition that sits awkwardly with the grievances of the Raizal islanders of San Andrés, who consider Colombia itself a coloniser. In 2023 he appointed five Raizal islanders as Colombia's ambassadors to Caribbean nations.
Mr Petro's pugilistic approach has made it hard to win support in Congress, while the courts have held up some of his reforms. His chaotic governing style undermines the civil service: he appoints a new minister every 20 days on average. He often rants on X and has compared his critics to slave owners and Nazis. In 2025 his former foreign minister accused him of taking drugs; Mr Petro denies the allegations.
He rails against Colombia's independent central bank, accusing it of slowing growth "for purely political reasons". When the senate blocked his employment-rights bill, he threatened to bypass it by calling a referendum of questionable legality; cowed, the senate then passed it. He regularly accuses the courts of a "soft coup" when they rule against him; in 2024 protesters he summoned trapped supreme court judges for hours during a row over a new attorney-general.
In 2025, days before a senator was shot while campaigning, Mr Petro had labelled the senator "the grandson of a president who ordered the torture of 10,000 Colombians". He subsequently agreed to temper his tongue.
His approach to negotiations with armed groups has strained relations with Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa.
In mid-2025 lawmakers approved a modified version of his labour reform after two earlier rejections. It increases the overtime premium on Sundays and holidays to 100% of a worker's salary and forces firms to contribute more to gig workers' pensions, health care and insurance; the think-tank Fedesarrollo reckons it will raise hiring costs by up to 15%.
A pension-reform bill is in limbo after the constitutional court sent it back to Congress. A health-care reform bill that would nationalise the 27 private insurers administering Colombia's system passed the lower house in watered-down form but is expected to fail in the Senate.
Mr Petro's approval ratings stand at around a third. He is ineligible for re-election and has no clear heir. He has announced plans to include a vote on whether to call a constituent assembly to rewrite the 1991 constitution at the next general elections, following the model of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Critics fear he is trying to enshrine in the charter what he has been unable to pass in Congress.
In October 2025 Donald Trump called Mr Petro an "illegal drug leader" after the American navy struck a boat near Colombia and deported two survivors to Colombia and Ecuador. His administration had previously accused Colombia of coddling "narco-terrorist groups".
His adviser Iván Cepeda has been a key figure in the "total peace" plan of talking to all illegal armed groups, including drug-traffickers. The policy has failed: guerrilla groups are growing again, drug gangs are more powerful, and kidnappings have increased. Militias used ceasefires to regroup, rearm and train with drones; their ranks have swelled and they have seized territory. The government has shifted towards a harder-line security policy, with military operations to kill prominent commanders.
In late 2025 primaries for Mr Petro's Historic Pact coalition, Mr Cepeda won 65% of the vote, beating Diana Carolina Corcho, a former health minister, ahead of a further multi-party primary in March 2026.
After American forces captured Nicolás Maduro in early 2026, Mr Petro compared the raid to the Nazi bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war, warned that the United States had "pissed blood on the sacred sovereignty" of Latin America, and called on the Venezuelan people to "take to the streets". Mr Trump shot back that Mr Petro better "watch his ass" and called him "a sick man who likes making cocaine". Mr Petro then phoned Mr Trump "to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements"; Trump "appreciated his call and tone." American air strikes on gang-run drug laboratories inside Colombia risked boosting a leftist in the May 2026 presidential election.
Cocaine production in Colombia hit a record 3,001 tonnes in 2024, according to the UNODC, more than double the figure for 2021. The government claims to have intercepted 2,840 tonnes during Mr Petro's term, 61% more than its predecessor. Mr Petro disputes the UNODC's methodology and has blocked publication of its latest report, threatening to have Colombia's police take over monitoring instead—a move that risks damaging international anti-narcotics co-operation.
It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming. No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand.