Florentino Perez Re-elected Real Madrid President: In Office Until 2030

The Real Madrid community left behind a competitive presidential election process after a long break. The current president Florentino Perez had called for early elections after the board of directors meeting on May 12, 2026. The results such as the trophy-less 2025-26 season, the league adventure completed behind Barcelona in La Liga, and the elimination in the UEFA Champions League quarter-final were the main factors that directed Perez to take this step. Perez had claimed at the press conference that some Spanish media organisations were running an organised campaign to destabilise the club and stated that he would emerge confidently from the election. In response, Cox Energy founder and Cox Group CEO Enrique Riquelme announced his candidacy on May 21; Riquelme's candidacy was also deemed valid by the electoral board on May 24. Thus, for the first time since 2006, two candidates competed in the Real Madrid ballot boxes.

The voting process, which started at 09:00 in the morning on Sunday at Valdebebas, ended at 20:00 in the evening. In the election in which approximately 98,000 to 100,000 members had the right to vote, Florentino Perez's victory was officially announced after the counting process. Perez, who started his first presidential term by replacing Lorenzo Sanz in 2000, has been sitting on the Real Madrid presidential seat continuously since 2009 after a short break (Ramon Calderon period between 2006-2009 years); with this result, he officially started his eighth term. During Perez's tenure, Real Madrid has won more than 47 trophies including five UEFA Champions League championships, five La Liga championships, five FIFA Club World Cups and four UEFA Super Cups. Perez, who is also the architect of the new Santiago Bernabeu project, is seen as the key figure in the modernisation of the club.

Perez's campaign created a great agenda especially with the technical director preference. The current president announced through a short campaign video he shared from his official social media account on June 3, 2026, that Jose Mourinho would once again head Real Madrid; the video shared with the slogan "MOUcha historia por hacer" contained information that Mourinho had signed a three-year contract to start work after the election. The 63-year-old Portuguese technical man, who will leave Benfica in exchange for 15 million Euros compensation, had won a La Liga, a Copa del Rey and a Spanish Super Cup at Bernabeu in his first period between 2010-2013. Perez also emphasised the "Bernabeu Infinito" project developed in cooperation with Apple throughout the campaign, a technological investment that will allow fans to experience the Santiago Bernabeu in virtual reality through Apple Vision Pro headsets. On the transfer side, the promise of 150 million Euros for "a galactic player of the calibre of Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaká" in the Horizonte programme stood out; ready agreements such as Ibrahima Konaté and Denzel Dumfries were also among the important messages of the campaign.

The defeated candidate Enrique Riquelme had entered the election race with a different vision. The 37-year-old businessman had carried out his campaign with striking promises such as the promise to bring Jürgen Klopp as technical director, the Erling Haaland transfer plan and appointing Real Madrid legend Raul Gonzalez as sporting director. Riquelme had argued throughout the campaign process that the election was not about Florentino Perez or himself, but about whether to sell the club, and had announced with a notarised commitment that he would stand against opening the club to foreign investors. Despite this, the result that came out of the ballot box was in favour of Perez; the experience of the current president and the contributions of the current management to the Bernabeu investment were decisive in the preference priority of the members.

The agenda Perez will manage in the next four-year term includes starting the new technical era with Mourinho, the Vitinha and Joao Neves transfers targeted from PSG (the search for alternatives continues due to PSG's "not for sale" stance), the completion of ready transfers such as Konaté and Dumfries, and the implementation of revenue-generating projects such as Bernabeu Infinito. The 2026-2027 season is considered as the beginning of a period in which Real Madrid under Mourinho's management will once again play for the top spot, especially in the Champions League.

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