After three consecutive years hovering near or above 870 homicides, Costa Rica appears poised to break the cycle. The Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) projects the country will close 2026 with fewer than 800 homicides — a shift that, if sustained, would mark the first meaningful reversal since the record-setting violence of 2023.
The judicial police agency’s interim director, Michael Soto, presented three projection scenarios based on the daily homicide average recorded through the first quarter. If the current pace of 1.9 killings per day holds, the country would end the year with roughly 693 cases. A modest uptick to 2.0 daily would push the figure to 730, and 2.1 daily would bring it to about 766. All three scenarios fall below the 800 threshold — a number Costa Rica has not seen since 2022.
The contrast with recent years is stark. In 2023, our country recorded 905 homicides, a historic high driven by territorial disputes between criminal organizations and the rapid expansion of the local drug trade. The daily average that year reached 2.5, the worst in recent memory. The numbers eased only slightly in the two years that followed — 876 homicides in 2024 and 873 in 2025 — leaving Costa Rica stuck at what authorities described as a violent plateau.
Through the first quarter of 2026, that plateau began to break. January, February and March together have 177 homicides, 56 fewer than the same window in 2025. The drop was particularly pronounced in March, when cases fell from 85 to 49 year-on-year. Six of the country’s seven provinces registered decreases, with Cartago the lone outlier — its homicide count more than doubled, prompting the OIJ to flag the province, alongside the southern reaches of San José, as a priority for upcoming operations.
Soto credited the turnaround to the Plan Estratégico de Contención y Control de la Violencia (PECOV), a four-pillar strategy launched after the 2023 spike. The plan reorients investigative resources around narcomenudeo — the local retail drug trade — based on the OIJ’s finding that roughly eight in ten homicides in Costa Rica are connected to drug trafficking, score-settling between gangs, or disputes over distribution routes. Specialized organized crime units, prioritized homicide review, and per-office case metrics round out the approach.
Authorities point to a string of high-profile takedowns as evidence the strategy is working. Operations against criminal structures known as Los Leones, Curry, Triada, Traición, Champion, Condominio 8, Luceros and Guarumal — among 74 targeted strikes carried out since late 2023 — have dismantled groups linked directly to homicide spikes in their respective territories. Soto also pointed to the national extradition law, in force since May 2025, as a deterrent that has “generated an important impact on the psyche of criminality.” Eighteen Costa Ricans are currently in extradition proceedings to France, Italy, Panama and the United States.
Officials are quick to caution against premature optimism. Coastal provinces — particularly Limón and Puntarenas — remain pressure points, with narcotrafficking routes continuing to drive violence in port communities. And the Ministry of National Planning (Mideplan) classified the 873 homicides recorded in 2025 as only “medium compliance” against the targets set in the National Development Plan, a reminder of how far the country still has to travel to return to its pre-2020 baseline of 570 annual homicides.
The projection lands at a politically charged moment. Public security was the central pledge of President Laura Fernández’s inaugural address, in which she vowed to “personally lead” the fight against organized crime and previewed planned investments in prison capacity and police surveillance infrastructure.
Whether the OIJ’s downward trajectory holds through the second half of the year — and whether her administration’s announced measures translate into operational results — will determine if 2026 becomes the inflection point authorities are now cautiously projecting.
