Buenos Aires province governor Axel Kicillof, the de facto leader of the Justicialista Party's left wing, told Reuters in a published interview on Wednesday that Peronist factions were in advanced talks to form a unity coalition for the October 2027 presidential election. The coalition would, Kicillof said, also extend to non-Peronist parties that have moved into open opposition to President Javier Milei, including small Radical Civic Union fragments and parts of the centre-left Frente Patria Federal.
The talks come as Milei's approval rating slipped to thirty-four per cent in the latest AtlasIntel survey, the lowest reading of his presidency and down from a peak above sixty per cent in mid-2025. Average formal-sector wages in February were nine per cent below their November 2023 level, the month before Milei took office, and the International Monetary Fund last week revised its 2026 Argentine inflation forecast up to 30.4 per cent from 16.4 per cent.
Kicillof did not name a unity candidate. The most-mentioned options in Peronist circles are former economy minister Sergio Massa, former Buenos Aires mayor Daniel Scioli, and Kicillof himself, but multiple senior figures in the Justicialista Party privately rule out a Kicillof candidacy on the grounds that his provincial campaign weakened the national ticket in 2023. Massa, who lost to Milei in 2023, has so far declined to confirm whether he will run.
The opposition build-out comes despite a string of recent procedural wins for Milei. The IMF executive board approved an additional $1 billion disbursement on May 20, and the Argentine Senate approved his contested labour reforms in February. Milei has used those wins to argue that the macroeconomic pivot is now self-sustaining and that the political costs of austerity will recede ahead of the 2027 vote.
Bond markets are still pricing in optimism on the Milei programme. The Argentine sovereign curve trades roughly six hundred basis points above US treasuries, the tightest spread since 2018, and the GD30 bond rose 0.9 per cent on Wednesday. But the central bank's parallel-rate band is again under pressure, and reserves remain roughly four billion dollars below the IMF's target for the second quarter.
Campaign rules require coalitions to register their names by August 2027, with primaries in September and the first round of the presidential vote on October 24. The Peronist talks will run through the southern winter recess and are unlikely to produce a public framework before the World Cup, which Argentina co-hosts with Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile in mid-2026.