Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has emerged as the likely winner of Peru's presidential runoff, holding a lead that election authorities say can no longer be overturned, while her left-wing rival Roberto Sánchez has escalated fraud allegations and declared he will not recognise a Fujimori government.

With nearly all ballots counted — around 99.86% of tally sheets processed — Fujimori holds 50.12% of valid votes against Sánchez's 49.88%, a margin of roughly 43,000 votes out of more than 19 million cast. The remaining uncounted ballots are insufficient to reverse the result. Fujimori's party, Fuerza Popular, has said it will wait for 100% of the count to be finalised before formally claiming victory. Peru's National Jury of Elections (JNE) is expected to officially proclaim a winner in mid-July, in time for the new president to take office on July 28 for a 2026–2031 term.

Sánchez, the candidate of the left-wing coalition Juntos por el Perú and a political heir of former president Pedro Castillo — who was imprisoned after a failed self-coup attempt in 2022 — sharpened his rhetoric sharply on Tuesday, using the word "fraud" publicly for the first time. He focused his accusations on the overseas vote, which accounts for approximately 300,000 ballots and went heavily in Fujimori's favour. His core objection is that tally sheets from polling stations abroad were not digitised immediately after voting closed, as they had been in the first round, which he argues weakened the integrity of the process. He contends that, excluding the overseas vote entirely, he would lead Fujimori by around 25,000 votes domestically. His campaign has filed a formal complaint against Foreign Minister Carlos Pareja and has asked the JNE to suspend the count while appeals are resolved and to annul the overseas ballots altogether.

Peruvian authorities rejected the allegations. The Foreign Ministry said it "categorically" denied any manipulation, explaining that the decision to suspend the tally-sheet scanning application was taken in coordination with the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) due to technical problems identified in the first round, and that all tally sheets arrived intact at central headquarters within 72 hours. The JNE has already dismissed earlier appeals by Sánchez's coalition, which had sought to annul nearly 2,400 polling tables in Lima and the United States. A European Union observer mission assessed that the June 7 runoff was conducted in a "calm and orderly" manner, despite a highly polarised campaign.

This is Keiko Fujimori's fourth presidential bid. She is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990 to 2000 and whose decade in power remains deeply contested in the country. The vote itself was one of the closest in recent Latin American history, with the two candidates trading the lead repeatedly before Fujimori gradually pulled ahead. Peru has seen eight presidents since 2016 amid repeated institutional crises, making the stakes of this election — and the credibility of its outcome — particularly significant for a country long marked by political turbulence.