Peru's election court officially declared Keiko Fujimori the winner on July 3, 2026. She won the June 7 presidential runoff with 50.135% of the vote against Roberto Sánchez's 49.865%. That means fewer than 50,000 voters out of millions separated them, according to BBC News.

This is Fujimori's fourth time running for president. She lost in 2011, 2016, and 2021. Her 2021 loss to Pedro Castillo was also very close, and that election was disputed for months before being settled. In Peru, close elections followed by legal challenges have become common.

The country's highest election authority, the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE), made the official proclamation needed by law to declare Fujimori the winner. She will be inaugurated on July 28, Peru's independence day. She will be the ninth president Peru has had in roughly ten years, a sign of how unstable Peru's government has been — with impeachments, resignations, and dramatic political crises happening repeatedly since 2016.

Soon after the declaration, Sánchez's political party filed an appeal demanding that the entire election be canceled. They claim the vote was "seriously compromised," but they have not yet explained publicly whether they mean there were rule-breaking violations, fraud, or both. Under Peru's election rules, it is very hard to overturn a result that has already been certified. The appeal will likely not stop Fujimori's July 28 inauguration, but it will hang over her first weeks as a question about whether she truly won — something her opponents will keep pushing.

Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000. He was later convicted of serious human rights crimes for killings and forced sterilizations that happened during his time in power. He died in September 2024. Keiko has tried throughout her career to distance herself from those crimes — saying there were "excesses" but arguing that her father also did good things economically and in fighting terrorism. For many Peruvian voters, her family name remains a problem. Her very narrow victory shows how divided the country is over her candidacy.

Her party, Fuerza Popular, is on the right side of Peru's politics. It wants stronger security, more private business investment, and fewer government regulations. The Trump administration announced it was happy about her victory, Fox News reported, because she represents the kind of conservative leader the United States prefers in the region.

What is happening in Peru is part of a bigger trend in South America. Colombia also elected a conservative president around the same time, BBC News notes. For several years, left-leaning governments dominated South America, but now the region is moving to the right — at least for now.

Fujimori's immediate problem is a practical one: Peru's Congress is divided among many parties, and no single party has a majority. This has been the same problem that brought down or weakened every Peruvian president since 2016. Simply passing a government budget, or making big changes, has proven almost impossible. Fujimori will need to build alliances across these many parties to get anything done. Whether her narrow victory, combined with a legal challenge against it, will give her the political strength to succeed — or whether these obstacles will weaken her from the moment she takes office — will become clear in her first hundred days.