🏛️ Governance

Presupuesto Participativo & Digital Voting (medellindecide.co)

Since 2004, Medellín residents have voted annually on how to spend 5% of the municipality's discretionary budget through Presupuesto Participativo. Paper ballots gave way to the medellindecide.co platform, fully virtual since the 2020 pandemic cycle and biometrically verified with the national civil registry. The 2025 vote drew a record 168,156 participants.

Live 📅 since 2004 ✔ Editor-reviewed

✔ Reviewed by the 1001 Smart Cities editorial desk · 🔎 Last verified 2026-07-30

🏛️ Governance Citizen participation Digital government

📊 Impact

2025 cycle: 168,156 participants — the highest in the program's 21-year history — with 153,008 votes cast virtually via medellindecide.co (biometrically verified against the national civil registry) and 15,150 in person, allocating over 490,000 million COP (~5% of the city's discretionary budget) across 16 comunas and 5 corregimientos.

🎓 Lesson

A two-decade-old participation mechanism can be digitized and see turnout keep climbing, but the legal instruments that govern it stay contestable in court even as the program runs — legality and legitimacy aren't settled once and for all.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏙️ City-wide

📖 Terms in this entry: Civic participation platform · Digital identity · Participatory budgeting

Sources

↗ Alcaldía de Medellín — Planeación Local y Presupuesto ParticipativoOfficial program page: 5% of free-investment budget, legal basis (Acuerdo 028/2017, Decreto 0473/2024).

↗ Alcaldía de Medellín — Comunicado Presupuesto ParticipativoOct 2024 Tribunal Administrativo de Antioquia ruling partially annulling Acuerdo 028/2017 provisions; Decreto 0473/2024 confirmed still in force.

↗ Alcaldía de Medellín — press release naming medellindecide.coConfirms platform name and 100%-virtual voting model.

↗ Concejo de Medellín — 2025 participatory budget results168,156 participants 2025, biometric+virtual voting, OIDP international recognition.

↗ 360 Radio — record 2025 turnoutConfirms 153,008 virtual / 15,150 in-person split, 490,000 million COP figure, '21 years of operation' framing (dates program to 2004), biometric link to Registraduría Nacional.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇨🇴 Medellín Digital: Free Public WiFi & Digital Inclusion · Medellín Medellín's 2007 public Wi-Fi network later carried this participatory-budget platform online, letting it go fully virtual from 2020. 🇩🇪 GE grünt: Environmental Sensors & Green Citizen Budget · Gelsenkirchen Both let residents vote real money into real projects — Gelsenkirchen's green budget for street trees, Medellín's for 5% of the city budget. 🇨🇴 SIES-M Integrated Emergency & Security Camera Network · Medellín Another verified project from Medellín.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains 🗳️ Citizen participation guide 🏙️ Medellín city profile 🏛️ Governance projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Presupuesto Participativo & Digital Voting (medellindecide.co)” — Medellín, Colombia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/medellin-participatory-budget/ (last verified 2026-07-30). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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