[6] Petro, a former AD/M-19 member who was defeated by Duque by over ten percentage points in 2018,[7] was chosen as a candidate of the Historic Pact for Colombia alliance.

Petro's left-wing platform encompassed support for land reform, universal health care, continuing the Colombian peace process, and expanding social services.

[8][9] Hernández experienced a surge in support in the final weeks of the campaign, which allowed him to overtake conservative candidate Federico Gutiérrez for a spot in the runoff.

The top two candidates were senator Iván Duque of the Democratic Center party and Humane Colombia nominee Gustavo Petro, a former mayor of Bogotá and a former AD/M-19 member.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Colombia, which had dealt a blow to the economy and at a time when unemployment rates were high, Duque proposed a tax increase.

[25] According to human-rights groups, police reacted violently to protesters in various instances, leading to deaths and alleged cases of sexual assault.

[26][27] The protests led to a withdrawal of the healthcare and tax reform bills and the resignation of finance minister Alberto Carrasquilla Barrera.

Presidents are limited to a single four-year term and Article 191 of the constitution requires candidates to be Colombian by birth and at least thirty years old.

He's not really radical, but he would be Colombia's first-ever president from the left, so for some Colombians his policies would seem extreme: things like expanding social programs, ending oil and gas exploration, and investing in agriculture.

[65] The ideological diversity of the coalition was seen as a source of internal tension, and Petro tried to win over more of the middle class during his campaign, which led him to moderate his economic program and his criticism of the private sector,[6] while trying to distance himself from Venezuela, which he previously supported; he maintained his position of re-establishing bilateral relations with the government of Nicolás Maduro.

[67][68] During the campaign, he was critical of the neoliberal system of the Colombian economy and its reliance on oil and gas, advocated progressive proposals on women's rights and LGBTQ issues, and supported a peace agreement between the state and the guerrillas.

[65][69] Proposals from Petro to change the nation's economic model by piling taxes on unproductive landowners, as well as abandoning oil and coal for clean energy, upset investors.

In an interview with Le Monde, Petro argued that "Maduro's Venezuela and Duque's Colombia are more similar than they seem", pointing to both governments' commitment to non-renewable energy and the "authoritarian drift" of the two.

Petro cancelled rallies in the Colombian coffee region in early May 2022 after his security team uncovered an alleged plot by the La Cordillera gang.

[72][73] In response to this and other similar situations, 90 elected officials and prominent individuals from 20 countries signed an open letter expressing concern and condemnation of attempts of political violence against Márquez and Petro.

Signatories of the letter included former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, and French member of the National Assembly Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

[74] The conservative liberal coalition, Team for Colombia, made up of significant figures ranging from the centre, centre-right, and right-wing, was placed as second most voted in some opinion polls.

[65][77] In November 2021, Gutiérrez joined other former public servers in his coalition, along with Enrique Peñalosa, Juan Carlos Echeverry, Dilian Francisca Toro, David Barguil, and Alejandro Char.

[81] In May 2022, El Espectador published an article exposing the connections of Gutiérrez's campaign chief, Cesar Giraldo, to the mafia and drug traffickers.

[82][83] The businessman and former mayor of Bucaramanga, Rodolfo Hernández Suárez, backed by the far-right party League of Anti-Corruption Governors, declared his candidacy in 2022 as an independent, with Marelen Castillo as his running-mate.

[93][94] His policies also included: lowering the value-added tax from 19% to 10%; a basic income for all senior citizens regardless of past contributions or lack thereof, and potentially those near or below the poverty line; progressively writing off debt for students in estrato 1 and 2 (both active students and those with the best grades); increased access to higher education in the regions; universal health care; switching from a punitive to a rehabilitative attitude towards drug addiction; granting Olympians and world record holders from the country state pensions; increasing social payments for successful sportspeople to up to COP100,000 per day; a 50% quota for women in public service and the presidential cabinet; welfare payments for those that maintain (rather than cut down) forested areas; and limiting fracking unless it meets environmental conditions.

The process found an increase of 0.1% votes, reportedly the lowest in Colombian history and slightly altered the final results for the initial round.

[111] As none of the presidential nominees obtained at least 50% of the votes, a runoff was held on 19 June 2022, between the top two candidates, Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández Suárez.

[115] Peruvian writer, politician, and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa declared "[Colombians] voted wrong, let's see how Petro acts.

[137] In the United Kingdom, former Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, praised Petro's victory as proof of the "power of community organising to build a popular policy platform to heal the divisions of the past and bring about social justice".