The Colombian city of Cali has launched an open tender to modernize 100% of its public lighting with LED fixtures and remote management, a program that would touch more than 186,000 luminaires and rank among the largest single street-lighting overhauls in the country.
The process is being run by municipal utility Emcali, which presented the project on May 25, 2026 to media, residents and public oversight bodies before opening the call. Emcali set the scope at 101,037 luminaires to be modernized and an initial expansion of 3,945 additional points, with execution planned over 24 months.
The estimated investment is 450 billion Colombian pesos, roughly USD 124 million at late-May 2026 exchange rates. Emcali says the money will come entirely from existing revenue collected through the public lighting tax, with no new debt for the city.
“This project will allow the city of Cali to become the first city in the country with public lighting that is 100% modernized, 100% LED and also 100% remotely managed,” said Roger Mina, general manager of Emcali, during the project announcement, as reported by regional outlet Occidente.
A Pay-After-Delivery Model Shifts the Capital Burden Onto the Contractor
The financing structure is the most distinctive feature of the tender. According to Emcali, the selected partner will be required to fund the full upfront investment, and the city will only begin repaying once the entire project is delivered.
That arrangement transfers construction and financing risk to the private contractor and defers the public outlay, a logic familiar from public-private partnership (PPP) and energy-performance models used elsewhere for lighting retrofits. The procurement is described as an open and competitive call rather than a formally labelled PPP; the precise contract type has not been published.
Selection criteria will weigh experience in comparable public lighting projects, logistical capacity, financial strength and access to specialized personnel.
Remote Management Sits at the Centre of the Specification
Beyond swapping sodium lamps for LEDs, the project’s core requirement is a remote management layer covering every installed luminaire, allowing the network to be monitored and operated in real time.
Emcali frames remote control as the mechanism for faster fault response and finer operational tuning across different districts. On energy, Emcali estimates the switch could cut roughly 17 billion pesos a year from system running costs, about USD 4.7 million annually, citing LED efficiency gains of around 50% over the city’s legacy sodium fittings. The utility also links the upgrade to lower greenhouse gas emissions and to improvements in mobility and perceived safety in public spaces.
An Open Tender With Oversight Bodies Watching From the Start
Emcali has invited preventive accompaniment from Colombia’s national oversight institutions: the Procuraduría General de la Nación, the Contraloría General de la República and the Personería Distrital de Santiago de Cali.
The utility says the aim is to reinforce transparency and institutional monitoring across every stage of the process, a posture shaped in part by earlier public scrutiny of the pace of Cali’s lighting works. On the published timeline, the public invitation opens in May 2026 and the contract award is scheduled for July 2026, after which the winning bidder enters a mobilization period to deploy crews across the city.
The drive aligns with RETILAP, Colombia’s national technical regulation for indoor and public lighting administered by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which sets efficiency and quality standards that have pushed utilities away from high-intensity-discharge lamps.
The Project Builds on a Partial Retrofit, Not a Standing Start
Cali is not beginning from zero. Between 2024 and 2025 the city modernized about 30% of its lighting stock, installing more than 55,000 LED luminaires across 124 neighbourhoods, 50 parks and 21 stations of the MÍO transit system, according to Emcali figures published in November 2025.
That earlier phase also drew criticism over installation backlogs in central, southern and northern zones, underscoring why the new tender emphasizes oversight and a defined 24-month schedule. Cali operates the second-largest public lighting system in Colombia after Bogotá.
What sets Cali apart is the combination of full-network scope, a contractor-financed model and the explicit goal of reaching 100% remote management in a single 24-month push, an ambition that, if delivered on schedule, would make it one of the more comprehensive municipal lighting transformations in the region.
