International arbitration in Colombia has moved well past its early, occasional use and is now a consolidated, growing method for resolving both commercial and investment disputes. That shift dates back to Law 1563 of 2012, which adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law and gave Colombia a modern, predictable arbitration framework that domestic and foreign parties alike have come to trust.

Why Domestic Parties are Choosing Arbitration

Domestic parties themselves are increasingly choosing arbitration over litigation for reasons that go beyond simply avoiding Colombia’s overloaded court system, such as the following:

• Institutional administration: Arbitration provides parties with a structured, professionally administered process from the outset, rather than one built case by case.
• Speed: Arbitration moves faster than litigation in local courts, with defined procedural timelines that ordinary litigation – unlike a process spread across multiple levels of appeal – rarely offers.
• Expertise: Arbitration allows parties to select decision-makers with real subject-matter expertise – placing a specialist in energy, construction or corporate law on the tribunal, rather than leaving a technically complex dispute to a generalist judge.

Defining “International” Under Law 1563: a Three-Part Test

Colombian parties overwhelmingly encounter international arbitration through the underlying contract itself, not as a route to later enforce awards issued elsewhere. Unlike the approach some UNCITRAL Model Law jurisdictions take, Law 1563 does not let parties simply agree that a dispute will be treated as international. Instead, internationality is judged against three objective criteria set out in Article 62:

• The parties are domiciled in different states – the most frequently invoked criterion.
• A substantial part of the obligations is to be performed outside the state of the parties’ domicile, or the dispute’s subject matter is more closely connected to another state.
• The dispute affects the interests of international trade.

Law 1563 largely adopts the first two criteria from the Model Law’s own definition of internationality, while the third criterion localises, within Colombian arbitration law, a standard historically associated with the French system’s protection of international commerce. This third criterion thus operates as a safeguard for international trade itself: even where both parties are domiciled in Colombia, a dispute may still qualify as international if its underlying transaction affects the flow of international commerce. In practice, this means purely domestic contracts are arbitrated under the national regime, while contracts with a genuine international element – most often a foreign-domiciled counterparty – fall under the international one instead.

Colombia as a Seat, Not Only an Enforcement Forum

Colombia also increasingly functions as a seat in its own right: the Centre for Arbitration and Conciliation of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce (CAC-CCB) can administer proceedings seated in Bogotá under the international regime, giving parties with a real cross-border connection a local seat without sacrificing international procedural standards. Recognition and enforcement of foreign-seated awards remain an active function of Colombian courts, but it is a secondary use of the system, not the primary one.

Infrastructure and public-private partnership contracts are the clearest example of sustained international arbitration activity in Colombia. Colombia’s National Infrastructure Agency (ANI) routinely writes international arbitration into concession agreements with foreign partners. That practice has produced the country’s deepest body of arbitration experience. Investment arbitration has developed real sophistication alongside it: Colombia has defended, and even counterclaimed in, high-value disputes.

Three sectors, in particular, account for most of this activity:

• Infrastructure and road concessions, structured as public-private partnerships, remain the best-documented example – concession contracts routinely include international arbitration clauses under Article 62 of Law 1563, with active cases administered by institutions such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR).
• Energy and natural resources, where gas and hydrocarbons disputes involving foreign-owned corporate groups have become increasingly common.
• Construction and engineering, where international contracts for civil work with foreign contractors regularly end up before centres such as the ICC and ICDR.

The common thread across all three is the presence of a public entity – a road agency, a mining regulator, a hydrocarbons authority – contracting or licensing alongside a foreign partner on a large-scale project. That combination is what most reliably triggers the international arbitration regime, more than any single industry’s characteristics on its own.

No new arbitral institution has been established in Colombia in the past 12 months. The institutional landscape instead rests on a small group of centres, each associated with a different type of dispute.

Domestic Institution: CAC-CCB

Domestically, the CAC-CCB is Colombia’s leading arbitral institution by a clear margin. It can administer international arbitrations seated in Colombia under Law 1563, and its rules, case management and roster of arbitrators have made it the default choice for parties with a genuine Colombian connection.

International Institutions

Beyond Colombia’s borders, four institutions account for most of the country’s international arbitration activity, each tied to a particular type of dispute:

• The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) (Washington) administers investor-state disputes brought under the ICSID Convention or a bilateral investment treaty.
• The ICDR, the international branch of the American Arbitration Association, is the institution most frequently written into infrastructure and public-private partnership contracts.
• The ICC (Paris) rules are widely agreed in international commercial contracts involving Colombian parties, particularly where at least one party is based outside the region.
• UNCITRAL ad hoc arbitration appears as an available option in several of Colombia’s investment treaties, offering a forum without a fixed administering institution.

Which Institution Applies, and Why

Which institution a given contract uses tends to follow the nature of the relationship rather than personal preference:

• State contracts favour the ICDR or CAC-CCB.
• Investment treaties point to ICSID or UNCITRAL.
• Purely commercial cross-border deals gravitate towards the ICC.

Colombia does not have a dedicated international commercial court or a specialised arbitration bench. Instead, jurisdiction over arbitration-related matters is split between ordinary courts, according to two variables: the type of dispute to resolve, and whether a public entity is one of the parties.

Judicial Support During Arbitration

Courts may appoint arbitrators, order interim measures or enforce them. Jurisdiction depends on the parties involved:

• Civil circuit courts, when all parties are private.
• Administrative courts, when a public entity is a party.

Annulment of an Award

This is where domestic and international arbitration diverge.

• Domestic arbitration: Annulment is heard by the relevant appellate court (Tribunal Superior de Distrito Judicial) for private parties, or by the corresponding administrative tribunal when a public entity is involved.
• International arbitration: Annulment is elevated to the highest courts: the Supreme Court’s Civil Cassation Chamber, when all parties are private; or the Third Section of the Council of State, when a public entity is involved.

This reflects a deliberate design choice: international awards receive greater judicial protection than their domestic counterparts.

Recognition or Enforcement of a Foreign Award

The same split applies – the Civil Cassation Chamber for private parties, the Council of State’s Third Section when a public entity is involved.

Constitutional Action (Tutela)

Colombia’s tutela action exceptionally allows courts to override an arbitral decision for a serious violation of due process – which has reportedly occurred only once in international arbitration.

International arbitration in Colombia is governed by Law 1563. The International Arbitration Statute is composed of its Third Section (Articles 62 to 116). That section is directly based on the 1985 UNCITRAL Model Law, as revised in 2006 – a lineage both the Council of State and the Supreme Court have expressly acknowledged in their case law.

The following are where the framework diverges from the Model Law:

• Split judicial competence: When a Colombian public entity is a party, annulment and recognition or enforcement of the award fall before the Third Section of the Council of State, not the Supreme Court’s Civil Cassation Chamber, which handles those same functions for purely private disputes. The Model Law does not draw this distinction; Colombia’s dual court system does.
• No automatic stay pending annulment: Filing an annulment action never suspends enforcement of an international award. On this point, Colombia’s international regime follows the Model Law approach. It is the domestic regime – derived not from the Model Law but from Decree 1818 of 1998 – that diverges: it lets a public entity request a stay, an option the international regime does not extend, and the Council of State has confirmed courts cannot create one by judicial interpretation.
• A simplified path to recognition: Law 1563 dropped the requirement to attach a certified copy of the arbitration agreement to a recognition request – a more permissive standard than the New York Convention itself sets. The Supreme Court has applied a pro-recognition principle to resolve any resulting ambiguity in the applicant’s favours.
• A narrower test for internationality: Under the New York Convention, parties can agree that a dispute will be treated as international. Law 1563 does not allow that: internationality turns entirely on objective criteria set out in Article 62 – principally, whether the parties were domiciled in different states when they signed the arbitration agreement – regardless of what the parties themselves might prefer to call their dispute.

A Structural Risk Worth Watching

Colombia’s domestic and international regimes thus rest on different rules, courts and thresholds for a stay. As a result, parties to a dispute with a contested international element could, in principle, see related proceedings advance under both regimes at once. In our view, this dualism is a structural risk that merits closer attention as arbitration activity in Colombia continues to grow.

Domestic Reform: Law 2540 of 2025

The most significant legislative change of the past year is Law 2540 of 2025, which introduced arbitration for enforcement proceedings in Colombia. The reform creates a new arbitral track, governed by the domestic section of Law 1563, for enforcing instruments such as mortgage-backed credit and securities. It relies on specialised “enforcement arbitrators”, and interim relief is administered through arbitration rather than the ordinary courts.

An enforcement arbitration clause can arise in two ways: through a standalone arbitration agreement attached to the underlying instrument, or automatically, where the instrument itself already contains a general arbitration clause. In the latter case, the enforcement track applies without any separate document.

That reform does not touch the international arbitration regime in Law 1563’s Third Section directly – Law 2540 operates entirely within the domestic section. But confining the new mechanism to the domestic sphere leaves a gap: a single underlying transaction with an international element could, in principle, face enforcement arbitration, domestic arbitration and international arbitration proceeding at once, with no statutory mechanism to co-ordinate between them. It does, however, strengthen Colombia’s broader arbitral ecosystem and institutional infrastructure.

The International Regime: Developing Through Case Law, not Legislation

As for the international regime itself, no recent legislative reform or pending bill would amend Law 1563’s Third Section. Development here has instead come through case law. Over the past year, the Supreme Court and the Council of State have sharpened several procedural questions that Law 1563 leaves open, including:

• Whether annulment actions can suspend enforcement of international awards.
• The admissibility of partial awards.
• The standards governing recognition of foreign awards.

Formal Requirements: a “Written Agreement”

Under Colombian law, an arbitration agreement is the parties’ mutually binding decision to submit present or future disputes to arbitration – whether through a clause in a larger contract or a standalone submission agreement. The only formal requirement is that it be recorded in writing, and Colombian courts interpret “writing” broadly. Electronic communications, an exchange of pleadings in which one party asserts the agreement’s existence without denial from the other, or even a contract that simply references a separate document containing the clause, are all sufficient in principle. Arbitral tribunals, however, tend to apply this standard more conservatively, generally recognising only a clearly written arbitration agreement. Parties relying on anything short of an explicit written clause should be aware of that gap between the formal standard and how tribunals apply it.

Referral to Arbitration and Parallel Proceedings

If either party requests it, no later than when it responds to the claim, Colombian courts will refer the dispute to arbitration rather than hear it themselves. A parallel court proceeding does not, in principle, prevent an arbitration from starting or continuing in the meantime. That rule, however, is not applied with full consistency. Some judges – including, on occasion, courts in Bogotá – have disregarded a valid arbitration agreement, particularly in the context of third-party joinder claims (akin to an impleader). For that reason, a party relying on an arbitration agreement should always raise it as a preliminary objection (excepción previa) for lack of judicial jurisdiction, rather than assume the judge will apply the referral automatically.

Objective International Criteria

For international arbitration specifically, enforceability carries one further condition: the dispute must also meet the objective internationality criteria under Article 62, discussed in 1.1 Prevalence of Arbitration. An otherwise valid arbitration agreement covering a purely domestic relationship will still be arbitrated – just under the domestic, rather than the international, regime. In our view, the underlying logic of Colombian arbitration law should treat every arbitration as presumptively international, unless it can be shown that none of Article 62’s three criteria are met. In practice, however, the system does not appear to function that way: arbitrations default to the domestic regime, and internationality has to be affirmatively established – the reverse of what the statute’s own logic would suggest.

Law 1563 does not list which subjects are arbitrable; it works by exclusion instead. A dispute is non-arbitrable only if Colombian law expressly says its subject matter cannot be submitted to arbitration. That is a narrow test, but a consequential one: it can be raised as a ground for annulment even if neither party objected during the arbitration itself.

Colombian courts interpret those exclusions narrowly and leanly, as a general matter of practice, towards allowing arbitration rather than restricting it. The Constitutional Court has confirmed that arbitration is available for disputes over disposable, patrimonial rights: the kind of rights a party could freely give up in a settlement. Matters falling outside that space include:

• Public order matters.
• Non-waivable rights, such as family, labour or consumer protection.
• Functions that belong exclusively to the state.

As a rule, Colombian courts apply whatever law the parties chose to govern the arbitration agreement itself. Where the parties made no such choice, courts fall back on Colombian law as the law of the seat, under Article 108(1)(a) of Law 1563.

On enforcement, the track record is consistently favourable regarding recognition. Both the Supreme Court and the Council of State have consistently given full effect to arbitration clauses, declining their own jurisdiction whenever a valid arbitration agreement exists. The Supreme Court has built a settled pro-arbitration doctrine that favours the validity of the agreement and confines annulment strictly to procedural defects – not an opportunity to revisit the merits of the underlying dispute.

Moreover, Colombian courts have shown consistent respect for the parties’ choice to arbitrate. A handful of decisions have tried to disregard an arbitration clause or the arbitration itself, but these remain the exception rather than the rule.

Colombia expressly recognises the principle of separability: an arbitration clause is treated as independent from the rest of the contract that contains it, so a defect that voids or invalidates the main contract does not automatically take the arbitration clause down with it.

That separation matters in practice. It means a tribunal can rule on whether the underlying contract even exists, or is valid, without that question first having to be resolved by a court – a position the Council of State has confirmed as well as the Supreme Court.

Party autonomy in selecting arbitrators is broad, but it runs up against two firm limits. First, the tribunal must always have an odd number of arbitrators, whatever number the parties agree on. Second, every arbitrator appointed – regardless of nationality – must meet the standards of independence and impartiality the law requires. Nationality itself is not a bar, and in international arbitration, arbitrators are not even required to be qualified lawyers.

Nevertheless, a comparison here between domestic and international arbitration remains worth noting. Within the structure of international arbitration, the “party arbitrator” – an arbitrator directly appointed by one of the parties, though held to the same standards of independence and impartiality as any other – is a recognised figure, and parties are free to appoint someone outside the administering centre’s own roster. Domestic arbitration does not offer that same freedom: arbitrators generally must be chosen from the administering centre’s official list.

If the parties cannot agree on how to select arbitrators, Article 73 of Law 1563 supplies a fallback procedure. For a sole arbitrator, if the parties reach no agreement within 30 days, the competent judicial authority – in practice, a civil circuit judge – makes the appointment. For a three-member tribunal, each side appoints one arbitrator, and those two arbitrators appoint the third – again with judicial intervention available if they cannot agree within 30 days.

That judicial safety net is worth a note of caution. The judges empowered to make these appointments are ordinary civil circuit judges, not a specialised arbitration bench. They handle a broad docket of unrelated civil matters and are not necessarily versed in arbitration practice – let alone the particular demands of international arbitration. Parties who end up relying on this fallback should not assume the appointing judge brings any specialised expertise to the task.

Multiparty cases follow the same logic, scaled up. Where there are multiple claimants or multiple respondents, each side must act jointly to appoint its arbitrator. If a group cannot agree internally, any party may ask the judicial authority to make the appointment instead.

Courts can step into the selection process, but only in three defined situations:

• A party fails to follow the agreed procedure.
• The parties or the arbitrators cannot reach agreement.
• A third party or institution tasked with appointing an arbitrator fails to do so.

When a court does make an appointment, it must ensure the appointee’s independence and impartiality, and – for a sole arbitrator or a third, tie-breaking arbitrator – must consider the value of appointing someone of a different nationality than the parties. Judicial decisions on appointment are final and cannot be appealed.

In particular, independence and impartiality raise a further complication internationally: Colombia has no equivalent statutory standard for international arbitration. A judge would likely fall back on the criteria used for domestic litigation – an awkward fit for international arbitration – and, in our view, is unlikely to look to soft-law instruments such as the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration to fill the gap.

An arbitrator can be challenged if circumstances raise justified doubts about their impartiality or independence, or if they lack qualifications the parties specifically agreed on. In domestic arbitration, the grounds for challenge track those applicable to a Colombian judge under the Civil Procedure Code or the General Code of Procedure. In international arbitration, however, the only available ground is justified doubt as to the arbitrator’s impartiality or independence.

Since each party may appoint its own arbitrator in international arbitration, it falls on that party’s own due diligence to evaluate the appointee’s impartiality and independence before making the appointment. A party may later challenge an arbitrator it appointed itself only if the grounds for the challenge came to light after the appointment was made.

Filing a challenge suspends the arbitration while it is being decided. If the challenge fails, the party that raised it cannot try again through a separate route. Its only remaining option is to raise the same point again later, as a ground for annulling the final award. This is the same gap that was noted in 4.3 Court Intervention resurfacing, since an annulment judge will likely apply domestic criteria rather than benchmarks like the IBA Guidelines.

Law 1563 imposes a proactive, continuing duty of disclosure both on the parties (if they come to know new information) and on the arbitrators, who must reveal any relevant information. From the moment a person is first approached about possible appointment as an arbitrator, and throughout the proceedings that follow, they must disclose any circumstance that could raise doubts about their impartiality or independence. The Constitutional Court has confirmed that this duty has constitutional standing in Colombia and aligns with the international UNCITRAL standard. The same gap noted in 4.3 Court Intervention persists here: the standard remains generic, without express reference to soft-law instruments such as the IBA Guidelines.

The competence-competence principle is expressly enshrined in Article 79 of Law 1563: an arbitral tribunal is the only body competent to rule on its own jurisdiction, including any objection based on the arbitration agreement’s non-existence, invalidity or ineffectiveness.

Colombian tribunals have applied this principle even to bifurcated proceedings that decide only the nature of the arbitration – domestic or international – before turning to the merits. A recent case involving parallel gas-supply arbitrations illustrates the point well: an international tribunal ruled, in a standalone partial award, that certain contracts qualified as international, entirely independently of a separate domestic tribunal that had, in the meantime, asserted its own competence over the same agreements. Colombian courts left both tribunals to resolve the question on their own terms – a healthy use of competence-competence, though also a live example of the still-unaddressed parallelism between domestic and international tribunals.

Judicial intervention regarding arbitral jurisdiction is residual – a direct consequence of the competence-competence principle: courts step in only after the tribunal has already had the chance to rule on its own jurisdiction. Courts can address a tribunal’s jurisdiction at two points: when ruling on a preliminary objection raised because a party sued in a court despite an arbitration clause, or through an annulment action brought against the award itself.

If a tribunal dismisses a jurisdiction objection as a preliminary matter and continues the arbitration, that ruling can only be challenged later, through annulment of the final award. If a tribunal instead declares itself incompetent, or accepts that it exceeded its mandate, either party may challenge that decision by annulment within the following month.

Colombian courts show a clear, consistent deference towards arbitral jurisdiction. Both the Supreme Court and the Council of State have built a non-intervention doctrine. That deference is a strength of the system, though it does not extend to co-ordinating between competing tribunals.

Colombian courts have embraced competence-competence fully, and neither they nor anyone else may intervene in a tribunal’s jurisdiction before then – with one exception already noted: the parallelism between domestic and international arbitration, where two tribunals can genuinely reach competing decisions over the same facts. In short: wait until annulment.

Colombian law follows a “use it or lose it” rule for jurisdictional objections. If a party believes the tribunal lacks jurisdiction – because the arbitration agreement is invalid, does not exist, or does not cover the dispute – it must say so no later than its first response to the arbitration claim. Staying silent at that stage is treated as giving up the objection; a party cannot save it as a strategic card to play later, once it has seen how the case is going.

A related but separate objection – that the tribunal has exceeded its mandate by deciding something outside the arbitration agreement – follows a different clock. That objection must be raised as soon as the issue said to fall outside the agreement actually comes up during the proceedings, not necessarily at the very start.

The same timing logic applies before courts. A party wanting to invoke an arbitration clause to stop a lawsuit must do so no later than its response to that claim – otherwise, it is treated as having given up the arbitration agreement for that specific dispute.

Timing carries consequences beyond the arbitration itself: silence on a potential annulment ground can both bar that ground later and weaken any attempt to resist recognition under the New York Convention.

The standard of judicial review is markedly deferential, not de novo. A court reviewing an award annulment does not rule on the merits of the underlying dispute, and cannot revisit the tribunal’s evaluation of evidence, its reasoning or its legal interpretations.

Judicial review is confined to verifying whether one of the specific, exhaustive grounds set out in Article 108 of Law 1563 is actually made out – grounds that are, by design, procedural in nature. Two substantive grounds – non-arbitrability and violation of international public policy – can be raised by the court on its own initiative, but even they do not open the door to a review of the award’s merits.

Colombian courts consistently uphold arbitration agreements. If a party sues in the ordinary courts despite a valid arbitration clause, the judge must refer the parties to arbitration and decline jurisdiction, once the other party raises the clause in good time. That protection, however, has to be invoked – a court cannot decline jurisdiction on its own initiative simply because an arbitration agreement exists somewhere in the relationship. Arbitration rests on a private agreement between the parties, and if neither side raises it, a Colombian court cannot refuse to hear the case; it has no authority to shut the door to ordinary justice unprompted. This deference towards court-versus-arbitration questions is not in doubt. The recurring gap, as noted repeatedly above, sits elsewhere: between domestic and international arbitration running in parallel over the same dispute.

Law 1563 does not include a general mechanism for extending an arbitration agreement to non-signatories. Voluntariness is the constitutional foundation of arbitration in Colombia, so the default rule is that an arbitration agreement only binds those who signed it.

The clearest exception comes from the Constitutional Court: a third party joined under a guarantee is bound by the arbitration clause in the guaranteed contract, because signing the guaranteed agreement is treated as implied acceptance of that arbitration jurisdiction. Outside that specific scenario, Colombian courts have generally been restrictive about extending arbitral jurisdiction to third parties. In domestic arbitration, the Supreme Court has upheld awards that declined to extend an arbitration clause to autonomous trust funds and related development trusts managed by the same signatory trustee, finding no express or implied consent to arbitrate on their part. That restrictive line, however, belongs to the domestic regime specifically – it has no equivalent precedent in international arbitration.

Where the Doctrine is Moving Arbitral Practice Ahead of the Courts

The above said, the frontier of this doctrine sits in arbitral practice, not yet in judicial precedent. In a recent international arbitration over a Colombian gas supply contract, a sole arbitrator held a foreign, non-signatory parent company to the arbitration agreement its Colombian branch had signed, applying the “group of companyies” doctrine and implied consent – evidence that shared management, active involvement in negotiating the arbitration clause, and control over the underlying relationship, can suffice even without a signature. Other arbitration-friendly jurisdictions have applied this reasoning for some time; what is notable is that Colombia had not, until now. If this arbitral trend continues, it would bring Colombian international arbitration further in line with established international practice – a welcome development for parties structuring cross-border transactions through the country.

Articles 80 and 81 of Law 1563 provide that an international arbitral tribunal seated in Colombia has express authority to order interim relief, at either party’s request, at any point before the final award – unless the parties have agreed otherwise. The types of relief available cover the ground most parties actually need mid-dispute, namely:

• Maintaining or restoring the status quo while the dispute is resolved.
• Preventing present or imminent harm, or interference with the arbitration itself.
• Preserving assets whose survival is necessary to eventually enforce the award.
• Preserving evidence relevant to the case.

These measures are binding and directly enforceable without any prior recognition proceeding, regardless of where they were issued – the Supreme Court has confirmed this applies equally to domestic and international arbitration. A tribunal can also issue preliminary, ex parte orders where advance notice to the other side would defeat the purpose of the measure. In either case, the tribunal may require the requesting party to post security and can order costs or damages against it if the measure is later proven unfounded.

Court-Ordered Interim Relief: Nominated Measures are Narrower Than They Look

Courts play a supporting, not competing, role alongside the tribunal’s own powers. Any party can go to the civil circuit courts – or the administrative courts, if a public entity is involved – to request interim relief, either before or during arbitration, without that request being treated as a waiver of the arbitration agreement. Courts apply their own procedural rules when granting this relief – the General Code of Procedure or the administrative procedure code, depending on the nature of the case – while adapting them to the specific features of international arbitration.

Emergency Arbitrators

Emergency arbitrators are not an expressly named figure under Law 1563 – and none of Colombia’s own institutional arbitration rules provide for them. In domestic arbitration, an emergency arbitrator is permitted only within the enforcement arbitration track created by Law 2540 of 2025. In international arbitration, the figure becomes available only where the parties adopt institutional rules that provide for it – those of the ICC or ICDR, most commonly. Colombia’s own institutional rules, including the CAC-CCB’s, do not include it. Colombian case law has not yet directly addressed whether an emergency arbitrator’s decision is enforceable in Colombia. The prevailing scholarly view treats it not as an award – emergency measures generally do not meet the New York Convention’s definition of one – but as an interim measure under Article 88 of Law 1563, which is directly enforceable without any recognition proceeding, provided the emergency arbitrator acted under an agreed institutional rule and the measure otherwise meets Law 1563’s general requirements for tribunal-ordered interim relief.

Law 1563 does not create security for costs as a standalone remedy, but a tribunal has two separate routes to order it in practice. It can treat the request as a form of interim relief under Article 80 – which, given the Third Section’s broad allowance for unnamed measures, gives the tribunal a flexible basis to order it as necessary to preserve the effectiveness of the proceedings or the eventual award. Alternatively, it can impose security as a condition on a party requesting interim relief or a preliminary order – something the tribunal can do either on its own initiative or at the other party’s request.

International arbitration proceedings seated in Colombia are governed exclusively by the Third Section of Law 1563 – Colombia’s own procedural rules for domestic litigation play no role.

Within that framework, party autonomy is the primary rule: parties can agree on their own procedure directly or simply adopt an institutional set of rules – eg, those of the ICC, the ICDR, the LCIA, UNCITRAL or the CAC-CCB, among others.

Where Law 1563 and the parties’ own agreement both leave a gap, that gap is filled by the general principles underlying international arbitration itself – its international character, the need for uniform application, and good faith – rather than by Colombia’s ordinary civil procedure rules.

Regarding steps required before arbitration can be commenced – multi-tier dispute resolution clauses requiring negotiation or mediation first – the answer differs by regime.

In domestic arbitration, these clauses are largely unenforceable. Colombia’s procedural code expressly prohibits parties from contracting around it to create extra-legal admissibility requirements, and the Constitutional Court has confirmed that multi-tier clauses cannot be treated as a barrier to accessing justice. A domestic tribunal will not decline jurisdiction simply because a party skipped a contractual negotiation period; at most, non-compliance may be weighed as a substantive matter, not a jurisdictional gateway.

International arbitration stands on different a footing. Since it is governed exclusively by the Third Section of Law 1563 – not by Colombia’s ordinary procedural code – the code’s prohibition on extra-legal admissibility requirements does not, by the code’s own terms, extend to it. That leaves more room for an international tribunal to hold parties to the specific pre-arbitration steps they agreed to, evaluated on the wording of the clause itself, rather than dismissing them outright as domestic tribunals do.

Law 1563 imposes a small set of mandatory procedural steps on any arbitration seated in Colombia:

• Parties must be treated equally, and each must have a full opportunity to present its case.
• The arbitration formally begins once the respondent receives the claimant’s request.
• The claimant must file a statement of claim setting out the facts, the points in dispute and the relief sought, and the respondent must file a response.
• Every document one party submits must be shared with the other.
• The award itself must be in writing, signed and reasoned – the only exception being where no party is domiciled in Colombia and the parties have agreed to dispense with reasons.

Colombian law grants arbitrators a defined set of powers over the proceedings. They may rule on their own jurisdiction (competence-competence), decide the admissibility, relevance and weight of evidence, order interim measures and preliminary orders, appoint experts and order document production, and apply whatever law the parties have chosen – or, in the absence of a choice, whatever law the tribunal considers appropriate.

Those powers come with corresponding duties. Arbitrators must proactively and continuously disclose any circumstance that could raise doubts about their impartiality or independence, and they must guarantee equal treatment and due process to both sides throughout the proceedings.

Under Article 73 of Law 1563, international arbitration in Colombia does not require legal representatives to be licensed Colombian lawyers, or even Colombian nationals. This is a deliberate departure from domestic arbitration, where representation before a tribunal requires a Colombian-licensed lawyer.

As a result, foreign lawyers can represent parties in international arbitrations seated in Colombia without any restriction arising from Colombian law – a foreign investor can retain the same counsel it would use anywhere else in the world, without needing to retain separate local counsel for the arbitration itself.

Law 1563 does not impose a rigid evidentiary regime on international arbitration. Parties are free to agree on their own evidentiary rules or leave that determination to the tribunal entirely.

In practice, international arbitrations seated in Colombia frequently adopt the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence as a reference point, particularly for document production, witness statements and expert reports. The tribunal decides whether the proceedings will include oral hearings or proceed on the basis of documents alone. A respondent’s failure to answer the claim does not amount to an admission of the facts alleged, either: the arbitration simply continues, and that silence carries no evidentiary weight against the respondent.

International arbitration is not subject to Colombia’s ordinary civil procedure rules on evidence. The tribunal has full authority to determine the admissibility, relevance and weight of evidence itself – a genuine departure from domestic civil litigation, where those questions follow the General Code of Procedure.

Legal privilege is not expressly regulated under Law 1563. Where the parties have not agreed on its scope, the tribunal determines it by reference to the general principles of international arbitration – not by applying any single national privilege rule.

Against the parties themselves, a tribunal has direct authority to order document production, access to assets and information, and expert participation in hearings – and it may also request expert reports on its own initiative. The principle of co-operation governs domestic and international arbitration alike. Even so, a party may resist a production request by invoking the confidentiality or the non-existence of the documents or information sought.

Against non-parties, and for evidence-taking more generally, the tribunal has no direct coercive power; it must instead request the co-operation of the competent judicial authority, whether Colombian or foreign. And in annulment proceedings specifically, the Supreme Court has declined to order evidence on its own initiative, underscoring the summary, exceptional nature of that particular procedure.

Law 1563 does not establish any confidentiality regime for international arbitration. There is no legal presumption of privacy over the proceedings, the pleadings or the award itself – unless the parties have agreed on some level of confidentiality themselves. Any protection, in other words, has to come from somewhere else.

Between Private Parties: Contractual Protection, With Limits

Parties can agree to confidentiality directly in the arbitration clause, or by adopting institutional rules that provide for it, such as those of the ICC, LCIA or ICDR. That protection binds the parties to each other, but it is not a legal privilege enforceable against third parties, and it does not shield the proceedings from the publicity that comes with any later judicial intervention – once a case reaches annulment or recognition proceedings, the underlying record becomes subject to judicial scrutiny regardless of what the parties agreed.

Where the State is a Party: Confidentiality Becomes Structurally Difficult

Where a public entity is involved, confidentiality becomes structurally difficult to sustain. Colombian law starts from the premise that state documents are public, and only an express legal reservation can justify restricting access to them. Because an arbitrator exercises a judicial function under Article 116 of the Constitution, awards involving the state are treated much like ordinary court decisions – and inherit their public character as a result. Not even an institutional rule chosen by the parties can create a confidentiality protection Colombian law itself does not provide: if the arbitration clause is silent and no statutory reservation applies, the institution’s own rules cannot fill that gap.

In short: confidentiality here is never automatic. It exists only to the extent the parties built it themselves – and even then, it cannot survive the state’s own participation.

Law 1563 imposes a defined set of formal requirements on an international award:

• In writing and signed: For a multi-member tribunal, the signature of a majority, or of the presiding arbitrator, is enough – provided the reason for any missing signature is recorded. A missing signature does not invalidate the award on its own.
• Reasoned by default: Parties may only dispense with this requirement if none of them are domiciled or resident in Colombia.
• Dated and seated: The seat determines whether the award counts as domestic or foreign for recognition purposes.

Once issued, the tribunal notifies the parties by delivering signed copies.

Timing: No Statutory Deadline, but Strict Post-Award Windows

On timing, Law 1563 sets no maximum deadline for issuing an award in international arbitration – unlike the domestic regime, which does impose one. Parties are free to set their own deadline, either directly or by adopting an institutional rule that does. Within the month following notification of the award, parties may request a correction, a clarification, or an additional award covering a claim the tribunal overlooked. The tribunal then has one month to resolve a correction or clarification request, and 60 days to issue an additional award.

Law 1563 does not set out a catalogue of available remedies, nor does it restrict the types of relief a tribunal may order. As a general principle, the tribunal applies whatever substantive law the parties chose, so the scope of available remedies ultimately tracks that governing law, not Colombian arbitration law itself.

The one meaningful limit of Colombian origin could, in principle, arise later, at the recognition stage – through the public policy ground under Article 112 of Law 1563. That ground, however, is a narrow one: Colombian courts have consistently held that it refers only to international public policy, not the broader body of domestic mandatory rules, and have declined to block recognition merely because an award conflicts with an internal Colombian rule. Whether a remedy like punitive damages – a figure Colombian law does not itself recognise – would actually be blocked on that basis remains, in our view, an open question rather than a settled one.

Injunctive relief is available both as an interim measure and as part of the final award – the law expressly allows a tribunal to order the maintenance or restoration of the status quo, or to prevent imminent harm or interference with the proceedings.

Law 1563 does not directly regulate an award of interest on the merits – that question follows whatever substantive law governs the dispute – but it does allow a tribunal to order a party that requested an interim measure to pay costs and damages if that measure later proves unjustified.

As for the costs of the arbitration itself, parties can agree on how to allocate them directly, or by adopting an institutional rule that does. In the absence of such an agreement, allocation in international arbitration is decided case by case by the tribunal itself, typically at the end of the proceedings – the tribunal can recognise the full range of costs the losing party incurred, without defaulting to Colombia’s ordinary civil procedure rules. Those domestic rules do, however, apply once a case reaches a Colombian court: in annulment proceedings specifically, Colombian practice follows a “costs follow the event” approach, and the party that loses the annulment action is ordered to pay costs.

Colombia does not allow an appeal against an international arbitral award. Annulment is one of the very few remedies available, and by far the most used. Annulment is the only mechanism available to challenge an international award before the Supreme Court. The grounds are exhaustive and fall into two categories under Articles 107 and 108 of Law 1563, following very similar elements to the recognition of an international award as established in the New York Convention.

The four grounds a party may invoke are:

• Incapacity of a party or invalidity of the arbitration agreement.
• Lack of proper notice or a genuine denial of the right of the party to present its case.
• An award that rules beyond what the parties submitted to arbitration.
• An irregularity in how the tribunal was composed or the proceedings were conducted.

Two further grounds can be raised by the court on its own initiative, regardless of whether either party argued them:

• That the subject matter was not arbitrable.
• That the award violates Colombia’s international public policy.

A Summary Procedure, With No Further Appeal

The procedure is summary by design. A party must file for annulment within one month of being notified of the award; the other side then has one month to respond, and the court must decide within two further months. Filing an annulment action never suspends enforcement of the award, and the court’s decision on annulment cannot itself be appealed further.

The Threshold Question: Is This Actually an Award?

Before any of the grounds listed above can even be reached, however, a threshold question must be answered: is the challenged decision actually an award? The Supreme Court addressed this directly in 2025, in a case involving a tribunal that had issued a standalone partial ruling on whether an arbitration was domestic or international, without yet touching the underlying contractual dispute. One party sought annulment, arguing that the tribunal itself had labelled the ruling an “award”. The Court disagreed, holding that “the character of an arbitral award does not depend on the label assigned to it, but on the true nature of the decision it contains” – and that only a decision resolving, even partially, the actual claims and defences in dispute qualifies as an award subject to annulment. A ruling that merely organises the arbitration’s procedural framework, however it is titled, falls outside Article 107 altogether.

According to the disposition outlined in Article 107 of Law 1563, parties have meaningful room to shape the scope of annulment themselves, but only in one specific circumstance. Where none of the parties are domiciled or resident in Colombia, they may, through an express statement in the arbitration agreement or a later written agreement, exclude the annulment action entirely, or limit it to one or more of the available grounds. Once at least one party is domiciled in Colombia, that option is off the table – annulment then applies on its ordinary, full terms, regardless of what the parties might otherwise prefer. Waiving annulment carries a consequence of its own. An award seated in Colombia is ordinarily treated as a domestic award for enforcement purposes – directly enforceable, with no recognition proceeding required. Once the parties waive annulment, that changes: even though the award remains seated in Colombia, it must then go through recognition, in the same way a foreign-seated award would.

The standard of judicial review is strictly deferential and procedural, not a review of the merits. A court hearing an annulment action cannot revisit the substance of the dispute, reopen the evidentiary record, or question the tribunal’s legal interpretations. The Supreme Court has made this a settled principle, holding that the grounds for annulment “look only at the procedural aspect of the arbitration” and that annulment “is not a means to review the substantive issues contained in the award, much less the critical, logical or evidentiary assessments on which it is based”.

Colombia ratified the 1958 New York Convention through Law 39 of 1990, without reservations for reciprocity or commerciality – meaning Colombia will recognise awards regardless of whether the seat state is itself a party to the Convention, and regardless of whether the underlying dispute is strictly commercial in nature. Colombia is also a party to the 1975 Panama Convention on international commercial arbitration.

Law 1563 adds a third layer: its own recognition regime, with its own procedure and grounds. A party seeking recognition of a foreign award files before the Supreme Court, which reviews the request against an exhaustive list of grounds – modelled on the New York Convention’s own Article V, and similar to, though not identical to, the grounds available for annulling an international award seated in Colombia.

Both instruments coexist alongside Law 1563’s own regime, and Colombian courts apply whichever framework is more favourable to recognition, under the pro-enforcement principle that runs through the whole system.

Colombia draws a sharp line between two categories of award. Awards seated in Colombia, including international ones, are treated as domestic awards and are directly enforceable, with no prior recognition proceeding required – unless, as noted in 11.2 Excluding/Expanding the Scope of Appeal, the parties waived annulment, in which case recognition becomes necessary despite the Colombian seat. Foreign-seated awards, by contrast, require recognition – an exequatur – before they can be enforced, before the Supreme Court’s Civil Cassation Chamber if the parties are private, or the Third Section of the Council of State if a public entity is involved.

The Recognition Procedure

Once a request is admitted with complete documentation – the original award or a copy, together with the arbitration agreement – the other side has ten days to respond, and the court must decide within the following 20 days. The decision is final, issued in a single instance, with no further appeal available.

Awards Annulled at the Seat

Awards set aside at the seat raise a separate question. If recognition has already been requested, a Colombian court can postpone its decision and require security from the party asking for that postponement. Annulment at the seat is a ground for refusing recognition, but it does not operate automatically. Colombian courts retain discretion over whether to actually refuse recognition on that basis.

Sovereign Immunity

On sovereign immunity, Law 1563 itself closes off this defence at the arbitration stage: no state or state-owned company can invoke its own domestic law to challenge its capacity to be a party to an arbitration. At the enforcement stage specifically, immunity from execution over assets used for public purposes may still survive under general international law, though Colombian case law has not yet developed a settled position on this narrower question.

Colombian courts take a markedly pro-recognition approach. Where a rule or its interpretation could go either way, the Supreme Court applies a pro-enforcement principle to resolve the ambiguity in favour of recognising the award.

International public policy, the ground most often invoked to resist enforcement, is interpreted narrowly. It does not cover any conflict with a mandatory rule of Colombian law – only a genuine violation of the legal system’s fundamental values and principles. The Supreme Court has been explicit that the applicable standard is international public policy, not domestic public policy, and that the pro-enforcement principle should be used to keep that standard confined to true essentials.

The statute itself reflects this narrow, unified standard across both annulment and recognition. Article 108 of Law 1563, on annulment, allows the court to act on its own initiative where “the award is contrary to Colombia’s international public policy”. Article 112, on recognition, uses the same formula: recognition may be denied only where “recognition or enforcement of the award would be contrary to Colombia’s international public policy”. The wording is deliberately identical – the same narrow standard governs both stages, and the Supreme Court’s pro-enforcement approach applies equally to each.

A recognition judge, for their part, cannot review the substance of the award to check whether it matches Colombian law – recognition is not an occasion to re-examine the merits. Once an award is recognised, it is treated as a judicial decision enforceable in Colombia like any other. Enforcement then follows Colombia’s ordinary rules for enforcing a court ruling, where the debtor’s only available defence is payment of the debt.

Law 1563 does not provide for class or collective arbitration. Colombia has no enabling framework for this kind of procedure in the arbitral setting, which in practice represents a real limitation on group claims being resolved through arbitration rather than the ordinary courts.

Arbitrators are bound by a continuing legal duty to disclose any circumstance that could compromise their impartiality or independence, running from their appointment through to the award itself. In practice, institutional arbitrations also follow the administering institution’s own ethical code – the IBA Guidelines on Conflicts of Interest, for example, are widely used as a reference. Colombian lawyers are additionally bound by the Lawyer’s Disciplinary Code (Law 1123 of 2007), though foreign counsel appearing in an international arbitration seated in Colombia are not subject to that Colombian-specific regime.

Law 1563 does not regulate third-party funding. Colombia has no specific legislation on the subject, and no significant case law has yet addressed its implications for international arbitration. In the absence of a rule, there is no express legal restriction for funders – though funding arrangements can still raise questions of conflicts of interest and disclosure that a tribunal may need to address on a case-by-case basis.

Law 1563 contains no provisions on consolidating separate arbitral proceedings. Consolidation is only possible if the parties have agreed to it themselves, or if the institutional rules governing arbitration allow for it – Article 10 of the ICC Arbitration Rules, for example.

The circumstances under which a non-signatory can be bound to an arbitration agreement are addressed in 5.6 Jurisdiction Over Third Parties. Those same limits – no general statutory mechanism, a narrow guarantee-based exception, and an emerging but still arbitral (not yet judicial) “group of companies” doctrine – apply equally here.

What is worth adding is a distinct, narrower point: Colombian courts have no authority to bind a foreign non-signatory to an award after the fact. International arbitral awards only produce effects between the parties to the arbitration itself; there is no legal basis for a Colombian judge to extend those effects to a foreign third party that was never brought into the arbitration and never had the opportunity to be heard.