Colombia has been through one of the most remarkable transformations in Latin America over the past twenty years, and Medellín has become the symbol of it. Even so, many people planning a move wonder whether the country is really safe enough. The official figures for 2026 give a sober answer: from January to September 2026, 10,432 people were killed in Colombia, only 37 fewer than in the same period of 2025, and 2025 was the year with the most homicide victims since 2013. For choosing where to live, though, something else matters more: the trends in the cities are moving in very different directions.
The figures come from Colombia's Ministry of Defence. It publishes the HOMICIDIO dataset on the government's open data portal: a list of every recorded homicide since 2003, with the date, department, municipality, urban or rural location, the victim's sex, the weapon and the presumed type of killing. It counts victims, and it counts intentional killings. The dataset is updated monthly, and the version of 21 October 2026 runs to 30 September. All the values for 2026 and earlier years were counted from that version, and comparisons with 2025 always cover the same months.
The key figures up to September 2026
From January to September 2026, Colombia counted 10,432 homicide victims. In the same period of 2025 there were 10,469. That is a fall of 0.4%, which statistically means practically no change.
For context, the first nine months of previous years:
Over the full year, the dataset records 14,038 victims for 2025, after 13,497 in 2024. That was the highest figure since 2013, when there were 14,820. By comparison, 2003, the first year in the series, saw 22,619. The low point came in 2017, with 11,957 victims. So the big decline is a long way back, and since 2021 the country has been on a plateau of between 13,497 and 14,038 victims a year.
Month by month
Month by month, 2026 looks like this, with 2025 in brackets:
Up to August, 2026 was actually just over 2% above the previous year, with 9,466 victims against 9,256. Only September, with 966 victims, pushes the total into negative territory. Such a sharp drop in the most recent month should be read with caution: the data is updated monthly, and cases recorded late can still raise the latest month in a later version. If you want a reliable trend, look at the months up to August. They show not a fall but a slight rise.
Where the violence happens
The department with the most victims was Valle del Cauca, with 1,803 (2025: 1,744), followed by Antioquia with 1,308 (1,346), Atlántico with 982 (659) and Bogotá with 819 (883). Next come Cauca (562), Norte de Santander (496), Bolívar (436) and Santander (361).
The most striking figure is Atlántico on the Caribbean coast, up 49%. Tolima rose just as sharply, from 216 to 322. Cauca, Norte de Santander, Bolívar, Magdalena (from 455 to 349) and Risaralda, on the other hand, reported clearly fewer victims. In the departments where armed groups are active, the figures are mixed: Guaviare rose from 63 to 96, Putumayo from 66 to 114 and Nariño from 220 to 232, while Arauca fell from 90 to 79.
The balance between town and countryside is shifting too. In areas recorded as urban, the number of victims fell from 6,859 to 6,691, a drop of just over 2%. In rural areas it rose from 3,610 to 3,741, an increase of almost 4%. The violence is moving slightly towards the countryside, where armed groups fight over territory and sources of income.
The cities where newcomers often live
For your decision, the cities are what count. January to September 2026, with 2025 in brackets:
The big cities: Cali 847 (753), Bogotá 819 (883), Barranquilla 472 (331), Cartagena 217 (269), Medellín 183 (247), Bucaramanga 116 (97).
Caribbean coast: Santa Marta 88 (126), Soledad next to Barranquilla 262 (165), San Andrés 27 (25).
Coffee region: Pereira 124 (177), Armenia 86 (77), Manizales 30 (26), Salento 1 (0).
Around Medellín: Envigado 4 (7), Sabaneta 2 (2), Rionegro 17 (26), La Ceja 6 (3), Santa Fe de Antioquia 6 (9).
Highlands near Bogotá: Villa de Leyva 0 (3), Soacha on the southern edge of the capital 102 (139).
Other inland cities: Popayán 53 (56), Ibagué 62 (63), Cúcuta on the Venezuelan border 212 (246).
The trends could hardly be more different. Medellín counted 26% fewer victims, Pereira 30% fewer, Santa Marta also 30% fewer and Cartagena 19% fewer. In Barranquilla and neighbouring Soledad, by contrast, the figures rose by 43% and 59%, and in Cali by 12%. That means Cali recorded more victims than the much larger capital.
At department level, the coffee region confirms the mixed picture: Risaralda, home to Pereira, fell from 326 to 230 victims, while Quindío, home to Armenia, rose from 151 to 167 and Caldas, home to Manizales, from 106 to 131. In absolute terms these are small movements compared with the coastal and border regions.
City size matters here, because Bogotá is by far the largest city in the country. An absolute number therefore says nothing yet about the risk per head. That is exactly why comparing a city with its own previous year tells you more than comparing one city with another. And as always with small places: a single case changes the picture at once.
Who the victims are and how they die
78.7% of the victims were killed with firearms, and 16.3% with stabbing or cutting weapons. 83 people died from explosive devices and 27 from drone attacks with explosives, up from 19 in the same period a year earlier. 92.6% of the victims were men; 772 were women, almost exactly as many as the 770 of 2025. A little over a third of the killings, 3,741 of 10,432, happened in rural areas, outside the cities where newcomers typically live.
The type of killing shows a major shift in 2026. Contract killing (sicariato) remains the largest category with 5,385 victims, down from 6,949 a year earlier. The category "attacks by armed groups" (GAO and GAO-R, the organised armed groups and their splinter groups as classified by the state) rose from 487 to 1,816 victims. Fights (riñas) stayed almost level at 1,747, and robberies ending in death (atraco) fell slightly from 414 to 389. That means just under 4% of all killings happened during a robbery. The dataset records 118 victims of domestic violence for 2026, after 122 a year earlier.
Whether the shift between contract killings and attacks by armed groups reflects a real change in the violence or a different classification by the authorities cannot be read from the dataset alone. What is clear: most of the violence is targeted and linked to organised crime and armed groups. For you as a newcomer, a different category matters more in daily life, namely robbery. It rarely ends in death, but it is the risk that foreign ministries' advice mainly addresses.
What foreign ministries advise
The UK Foreign Office (FCDO), in its travel advice for Colombia last updated on 30 October 2026, advises against all but essential travel to all of Norte de Santander, including Cúcuta, and all of Arauca, to within 5 km of the rest of the border with Venezuela, and to a long list of further areas. These include most of Chocó, the western part of Valle del Cauca including Buenaventura, the municipality of Jamundí, parts of Nariño, southern Córdoba and Bolívar, the Urabá and Bajo Cauca regions of Antioquia, most of Guaviare and several municipalities in Caquetá and Putumayo. On 29 October, it notes, the president ordered the temporary deployment of security forces in Cúcuta.
On crime, the FCDO says that pickpocketing, mugging and armed robbery are a problem, especially in major cities, including Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and the Caribbean coast, and that British nationals have been robbed at gunpoint in the Candelaria area of Bogotá. It describes express kidnappings as common, often by criminals posing as taxi drivers, and warns of drug-assisted robberies with scopolamine, with criminals using dating apps and websites to lure foreigners travelling alone; in large quantities the drugs can be fatal. It also notes that police and military installations are frequently targeted, including in large cities, with past methods including car bombs, grenade and drone attacks.
Your own government publishes its own advice, for example Canada's travel advice for Colombia, and likewise the US State Department and Australia's Smartraveller. Read yours before you move, because each ministry words things differently and updates at a different time.
What stands out when you set the advice against the figures: the FCDO names Medellín alongside Bogotá and Cali for street crime, yet in 2026 Medellín shows the steepest fall among the big cities. The advice targets mainly robbery and drugging, which barely show up in homicide statistics. The other way round, the attacks the advice warns about do appear in the dataset: in the 27 deaths from drones and the 83 from explosive devices.
What the figures mean for your daily life
Colombia remains a country with a high homicide rate, and 2026 brings no easing nationwide. What decides your planning is the city, and within the city, the neighbourhood.
If you want to live in Medellín: the city and its neighbouring towns to the south, such as Envigado and Sabaneta, show falling or very low figures in 2026. The robbery risk that foreign ministries warn about is unaffected by that. What everyday crime, scopolamine and overland travel mean in practice is set out in our overview of safety in Colombia.
If you want to live on the Caribbean coast: Santa Marta and Cartagena are moving in the right direction in 2026, while violence in the Barranquilla metropolitan area is rising sharply. If you are looking there, check the neighbourhood carefully. How life on the coast compares with the mountains is described in our article on moving to Colombia.
If you want to retire to the coffee region: Pereira, down 30%, and small Manizales with its low figures are worth a look, while Armenia rose slightly. Which visas suit retirees is explained in retiring in Colombia, and the key facts on tax and residence are on the Colombia country page.
If you are comparing countries: the 10,432 victims cover nine months. How Colombia measures up against its southern neighbour is shown in Ecuador vs Colombia, and an official annual count from the north of the continent in our analysis of the homicide figures in Mexico.
When the next figures are due
The Ministry of Defence updates the dataset every month, and the version up to September appeared on 21 October. Each new version can also slightly change months already published, so it pays to make comparisons within the same version. If you want to run the numbers yourself, you can filter and download the case-level data on the dataset page, right down to the individual municipality. Because the series goes back to 2003, you can also check for the town you have in mind whether a good or bad year was an outlier or part of a longer trend.