Peru's 2026 Presidential Candidates: Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sánchez

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Background

Keiko Fujimori, 50, is the eldest daughter of the late authoritarian ex-President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). At 19, she paused her university education to enter her father’s government as first lady (1994–2000), and has maintained her prominence in the national political landscape ever since.

Fujimori served one term in Congress (2006–2011), during which time she founded the conservative Popular Force party. Though she has not held an elected role since, Fujimori is a key political operator behind the scenes of the country’s legislature, which has impeached five presidents over the last decade.

Between 2018 and 2020, Fujimori served three stints in preventative prison while facing money laundering charges related to campaign financing and the region-wide Odebrecht scandal. Peru’s Constitutional Court dismissed the case in October 2025 on “a lack of legal grounds.”

This is Fujimori’s fourth attempt to take the presidential reins. She lost the previous three runoffs by close margins. If victorious this time around, she would be the first woman elected president in Peru.

Policy positions

Security: Fujimori has staked out a tough-on-crime agenda to combat a stark rise in murders and extortions over recent years. Reports of extortion nationwide quintupled between 2019 and 2025 and have been linked to the rise in murders. More than 40 percent of extortions registered in 2025 happened in Lima, where the crime has even forced school closures and prompted bus driver strikes. 

One of Fujimori’s proposals is to bring back concealed judges in court rooms, a measure used during her father’s administration in the 1990s to try terrorism cases, but which would require Peru to withdraw from the Inter-American Human Rights Court. She also has pitched placing prisons under military control.  

Economy and social inclusion: Peru is the second-biggest recipient of Chinese investment in Latin America, but Fujimori is focused on attracting U.S. investment in alignment with the Trump administration.  As part of that, her economic agenda promises “to apply a deregulatory shock” and “guarantee fiscal discipline.” 

In the first round, Fujimori finished just behind López Aliaga in Metropolitan Lima but led voting along much of the rest of the Pacific coast, as well as in rural and indigenous areas in Peru’s North and Amazonian departments. On the campaign trail to the runoff, she visited the rainforest region in early May with promises to provide basic utilities, healthcare, and education to these historically marginalized communities.  

Mining: The mining sector accounts for around two-thirds of Peru’s exports. Fujimori’s agenda outlines plans to support artisanal and small-scale mining and levy a “people’s tax” to be redistributed to communities in mining regions, among the poorest in the country.  

What to watch

Fujimori’s Popular Force has consolidated its legislative power and looks set to occupy about a third of seats across both houses of Congress. An alliance with López Aliaga’s Popular Renewal party to solidify a right-wing bloc would seem the most natural, but the defeated candidate, who continues to allege electoral fraud, has so far refused to endorse his former rival.

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Background

Roberto Sánchez, 57, was born in Huaral, a coastal, agricultural city in the outer provinces of the department of Lima, to parents from the Andean regions of southern Peru. A psychotherapist, his entry into politics was with the Peruvian Humanist Party (PHP), under which he unsuccessfully ran for both a congressional seat and the mayorship of his hometown in 2006. In 2017, the PHP merged with other leftist parties to form Together for Peru under Sánchez’s eventual leadership. 

In the 2021 general elections, Sánchez won a congressional seat representing Metropolitan Lima. Then-President Pedro Castillo (2021–2022) appointed him as foreign trade and tourism minister. Sánchez resigned from his cabinet position in 2022 following Castillo’s impeachment for an attempted “self-coup,” a move that Sánchez spoke out against at the time, although he abstained from the impeachment vote in Congress.

“¡Castillo vuelve!” read a printed slogan behind Sánchez at an April 21 press conference. Castillo returns. Borrowing a distinctive accessory of Castillo, Sánchez has taken to wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat on the campaign trail while pitching himself as the successor to the now-imprisoned ex-president, who endorsed him in the first-round vote. Multiple investigations into the Castillo administration sketch a network of bribes and influence peddling, allowing the ex-leader's friends and family to win high-level government positions and state contracts. Sánchez has pledged to pardon Castillo if elected.   

Policy positions

Security: Sánchez has pitched joint military and police operations to address rising insecurity. His platform also proposes creating a new police unit focused on financial and cybercrimes to trace extortions and money laundering. 

Economy and social inclusion: Despite his urban upbringing, Sánchez inherited his former boss’ voter base in rural, indigenous, and highland regions of Central and South Peru. Much of his campaign messaging focuses on increasing these populations’ participation in the country’s economic growth. To that end, his governance plan promotes cooperatives as a means to bring small-scale farmers and miners into the formal economy.  

He has also proposed progressive taxation to fund increase salaries, pensions, and social programs as part of his wealth redistribution goals. His keystone proposal is a rewrite of the current Constitution, enacted in 1993 under the late Fujimori’s government.  

Sánchez caused a stir with stated intentions to remove Julio Velarde as the Central Bank president. Velarde, the head of the institution for 20 years, is widely credited with keeping the economy stable and growing amid a turbulent political backdrop. Following the first-round vote, Sánchez said he was willing to have a conversation with Velarde. The presidential term runs concurrently with that of the head central banker. However, it is the Senate that ratifies the executive’s pick to lead the financial institution and which has sole authority to remove them.    

Mining: His nationalist economic program includes plans to renegotiate contracts pertaining to gas, minerals, and hydrocarbons. For the mining sector, this includes a reduction of tax benefits and the introduction of windfall taxes to boost state revenue when metal prices rise in the global market.

What to watch

Sánchez will find out on May 27 if charges that he diverted around $80,000 of party finances to his and his brother’s personal bank accounts—alongside other accusations of falsified documents—will go to trial. If elected, his presidential immunity will suspend the case.