Natalia Díaz Quintana

Natalia Díaz Quintana was one of five women among the twenty candidates who contested Costa Rica’s presidential election on February 1, 2026. She ran as the candidate of the Unidos Podemos Party and entered the race as a non-incumbent with experience in both the executive and legislative branches of government.

Born in San José in 1984, Díaz grew up in the San José metropolitan area, where she attended primary school and Saint Francis College. She later studied advertising, marketing communications, business administration, finance, economics, and sustainable development. She began her political career with the Libertarian Movement and was elected to Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly in 2014, representing San José. During her term, she also served as Vice President of the Assembly. She later founded Unidos Podemos, becoming the first woman in Costa Rica to establish a national political party, and went on to lead it in both the 2022 and 2026 presidential elections.

Díaz also held senior executive office as Minister of the Presidency from 2022 to 2024 under President Rodrigo Chaves, where she worked on government coordination and public policy before leaving the administration to prepare for her presidential campaign. Outside government, her professional experience has included work in corporate communications, export-sector organizations, consulting, business development, and financial analysis.

Diaz earned a bachelor’s degree in Advertising and a licentiate degree in Marketing Communication from Universidad Latina de Costa Rica. She later completed an MBA at INCAE Business School, with an emphasis on finance, economics, and sustainable development.

Diaz’s presidential campaign placed strong emphasis on public security and criminal justice. Díaz argued for greater use of intelligence, technology, and coordination among police and judicial institutions, as well as reforms to the prison system focused on accountability, rehabilitation, and work requirements. A second major focus was education and economic modernization. She proposed expanding technical education, English-language training, digital skills, programming, artificial intelligence, and financial literacy to better connect students with the labor market. Her broader economic platform emphasized fiscal discipline, entrepreneurship, formal employment, reduced bureaucracy, and a more efficient state designed to support private-sector growth.