Minimum wage Colombia 2026: the SMMLV and the transport allowance

Colombia’s statutory monthly minimum wage, the salario mínimo mensual legal vigente or SMMLV, is COP 1,750,905 for 2026, payable from 1 January 2026. It replaced the 2025 figure of COP 1,423,500, an increase of COP 327,405, or 23%.

The SMMLV is a monthly amount for a full-time job, and no full-time employee may be paid less. It is also the floor for the social security contribution base: health, pension and occupational risk contributions are never calculated on less than one SMMLV, whatever the salary.

The monthly figure also drives the hourly cost of extra time. Overtime, night work and work on rest days are paid as percentages on top of the ordinary hourly rate, so a minimum-wage employee who works a Sunday or an evening shift is paid more than the SMMLV that month. Those extra payments are salary, and they count for contributions and prestaciones.

For foreign employers the minimum itself is rarely the salary they pay. Its weight comes from elsewhere: dozens of legal thresholds are written as multiples of the SMMLV, so the 23% increase moved the lines for the transport allowance, the solidarity fund, the employer’s tax exemption, the all-inclusive salary and visa income tests at the same time. A salary that sat comfortably above a threshold in 2025 may sit below it in 2026.

Alongside the minimum wage, employees earning up to two minimum wages are owed a COP 249,095 monthly auxilio de transporte in 2026, fixed by Decreto 1470 de 2025. The allowance stops at 2 SMMLV (COP 3,501,810 monthly) and is due wherever public transport exists.

For a worker on the minimum, the two together make a round COP 2,000,000 a month. That figure is useful for budgeting entry-level roles, but the two parts are treated differently: the minimum wage is salary, while the allowance exists to cover the journey to work.

The allowance has a cost beyond the monthly payment. Because it is tied to pay up to 2 SMMLV, the same group of employees is also entitled to dotación, and the connectivity allowance that replaces it for some teleworkers counts towards prestaciones. Budget the allowance as a fixed monthly line for every role at or below the cut-off, rather than as an occasional expense.

Three groups need care:

• teleworkers who spend nothing on commuting are not owed it
• home-based teleworkers under 2 SMMLV get the auxilio de conectividad in its place, for an identical sum, which is not salary yet still feeds into prestaciones
• employees whose salary is raised above 2 SMMLV stop receiving the allowance from that point, so a modest raise across the line can leave them with less cash than expected

For hybrid and home-based roles, teletrabajo and the other remote regimes are covered separately, including the three legal regimes and what each requires of the employer.

A worker paid at or close to the minimum receives more than the headline salary, and the extras are set by law. On top of COP 1,750,905 and the transport allowance, a full-time employee earning up to 2 SMMLV has these entitlements in 2026:

• a prima de servicios worth a month’s salary per year, split into a June and a December payment
• severance savings (cesantías) of one month’s salary a year, deposited in the worker’s fund before 15 February
• interest on cesantías at 12% a year, paid in January
• annual leave of 15 working days for each year worked
• dotación, meaning free work clothes and shoes, handed over each 30 April, 31 August and 20 December once past three months of service

Domestic workers, who are often paid close to the minimum, must since Ley 2466 de 2025 be hired with a written contract and registered in the PILA like any other employee. Micro-enterprises and households may also pay social security for part-time workers in weekly units, a change aimed at bringing low-hour jobs into the formal system.

Apprentices are a separate case. Since Ley 2466 de 2025 the apprenticeship is a special fixed-term employment contract, and the monthly support payment is at least 75% of the SMMLV during the classroom phase and 100% during the practical phase, or 100% throughout for university students. Private employers with 15 or more workers, outside construction, must take on SENA apprentices or pay SENA 1.5 SMMLV a month for each one not hired.

Family leave pay is protected by the same unit: maternity pay from the health insurer is never calculated on less than one SMMLV, and paternity pay follows the same floor.

The most practical reason to track the SMMLV is that so many other rules are written as multiples of it. These are the lines that matter most for an employer in 2026:

• 2 SMMLV, COP 3,501,810: transport allowance, connectivity allowance and dotación
• 4 SMMLV, COP 7,003,620: the employee starts paying 1% to the pension solidarity fund
• 10 SMMLV, COP 17,509,050: the employer’s exemption from health, SENA and ICBF ends, and a lower dismissal indemnity table applies
• 13 SMMLV, COP 22,761,765: the minimum for an all-inclusive salary (salario integral)
• 25 SMMLV, COP 43,772,625: the ceiling on the pension contribution base

The 10 SMMLV line is the one with the largest cost effect. Below it, a company that files income tax does not pay the employer’s 8.5% health contribution, the 2% SENA levy or the 3% ICBF levy. At or above it, all three apply to the whole salary, an extra 13.5% at a stroke. The family compensation fund’s 4% applies at every level. Our analysis of employer cost in Colombia shows the difference on a full-year example.

Two lines sit lower down and are easy to forget. The contribution base for health, pension and the ARL is never below one SMMLV, and the cesantías fund deadlines carry a penalty of a day’s pay for every day a deposit is late, so a higher minimum also raises the cost of a missed deposit. For people paid an all-inclusive salary, contributions and the payroll levies are worked out on 70% of the amount.

Visa and enforcement amounts follow the same unit. A digital nomad visa needs income of at least 3 SMMLV a month (COP 5,252,715), a worker visa sponsor must show average monthly income of 100 SMMLV, and Ministry of Labour fines run from 1 to 5,000 SMMLV per infraction.

For an employer with staff paid at the minimum, the 23% rise lifted the cost of each such role by roughly the same proportion, because contributions and prestaciones are calculated as percentages of salary. The transport allowance rose as well, to COP 249,095.

Put in percentages, each extra peso of minimum salary carries the employer’s pension contribution of 12%, the caja’s 4% and the ARL premium, which starts at 0.522% in risk class I, plus prima, cesantías and interest worth about 17.67% between them. A company that files income tax pays no employer health, SENA or ICBF on these salaries, since they sit far below 10 SMMLV. The transport allowance is a flat amount on top.

For professional salaries the effect is indirect but real. A salary that did not change between 2025 and 2026 now sits at a lower multiple of the minimum. A role paid COP 15,000,000 a month, for example, was above 10 SMMLV in 2025 (the line was then COP 14,235,000) and is below it in 2026, so the employer’s health, SENA and ICBF exemption now applies to it. In the other direction, salaries just above 2 SMMLV in 2025 may have dropped back under the line and become entitled to the transport allowance and dotación again.

Working-time changes also shape the hourly cost of the minimum. Under Ley 2101 de 2021 the ordinary week shrank to 42 hours on 15 July 2026 while pay stayed the same, and each rest-day or holiday hour now costs almost double, after the uplift reached 90% on 1 July 2026. Anyone checking that an hourly rate meets the minimum should use the current week, not the 2025 one.

If you plan to hire in Colombia, it is worth running every planned salary against the 2026 thresholds before making an offer. The other decisions that sit alongside pay are set out in our first-employee checklist for Colombia.

The 2027 minimum wage had not been published when this guide was written in October 2026. It is normally fixed in December, after negotiation in the tripartite commission of government, employers and unions, and set by decree if they do not agree. The transport allowance and the UVT tax unit for 2027 are usually announced around the same time.

A few 2027 changes are already fixed by law. On 1 July 2027 the rest-day and holiday premium goes up again, reaching 100%. Everything tied to the SMMLV, from the transport allowance cut-off to the 10 SMMLV exemption line, will move on 1 January 2027 when the new figure applies.

Raises given in January also have a knock-on effect on the following year’s cesantías. Cesantías are worked out on the latest monthly salary where it has been stable for three months, and on the year’s average otherwise, so the timing of a raise decides which figure applies when the year is closed on 31 December.

For budgeting, the safest approach is to treat 2026 figures as the floor and keep a margin for January. Employees paid at the minimum must receive the new figure from the first day it applies, and the prestaciones accrue on it from that date.

If you would like a salary checked against the thresholds, Employer of Record Colombia can run the numbers for any role, and our overview of what an EOR in Colombia covers explains which payments and filings we handle once the person is employed. For that service we charge from USD 560 for each employee monthly, billed in US dollars.