Spain: Florentino Pérez re-elected Real Madrid president until 2030

Florentino Pérez was re-elected president of Real Madrid on Sunday 7 June 2026 for a four-year term running until 2030, following the club’s first contested presidential election in twenty years. The 79-year-old businessman, president since 2000 with an interruption between 2006 and 2009, garnered around 65% of the vote according to exit polls published by specialist site Managing Madrid. His opponent, entrepreneur Enrique Riquelme, founder of renewable energy group COX Energy, had announced his candidacy on 21 May.

The vote, held at the basketball pavilion of Real Madrid’s sports complex from 9am to 8pm, was the first to pit two candidates against each other since the 2006 election won by Ramón Calderón against Pérez himself. Since the latter’s return to the presidency in 2009, the 2013, 2017, 2021 and January 2025 elections had all concluded without a declared opponent. The club’s statutes require candidates to have twenty years’ standing as a club member and a bank guarantee equivalent to 15% of the annual budget, or around 187 million euros for the current cycle.

The campaign unfolded amid difficult sporting circumstances for the club, which finished the 2025-2026 season without a trophy, a first in several years. Pérez had promised the return of José Mourinho as coach in the event of victory, an announcement confirmed by Benfica, which released a statement specifying that the release clause in the Portuguese coach’s contract stood at 15 million euros. Riquelme, for his part, proposed a project centred on strengthening the club’s Spanish identity and had mentioned Jürgen Klopp as his target coach.

The official result was to be announced in the evening by the club’s electoral board. Confirmation of Mourinho’s return, conditional on Pérez’s victory, was expected within hours or days.