Medellín, October 20, 2026. Mayor Federico Gutiérrez on Tuesday hailed a drone cargo flight across Medellín as a milestone for the city and for Colombia. The city’s drone-delivery story, though, goes back eleven years: to a cyclist’s online store, a beloved local burger chain and the creative who put them in the air, before the aviation authority grounded the idea.
Today’s “milestone”
At 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Mayor Gutiérrez wrote on X: “Un hito para Medellín y Colombia. Primera prueba de transporte de correspondencia por Dron en Colombia” (“A milestone for Medellín and Colombia. First test of mail transport by drone in Colombia”). In his post he thanked Olaya Herrera airport manager Doris Montoya, Aerocivil, and the companies Pelagus and Coordinadora, and described a 5.5-kilometer flight completed in five minutes, from Coordinadora’s La 30 hub to the Estadio Cincuentenario. Blu Radio reported that the pilot is led by the Olaya Herrera airport and that the service is not yet commercial (Publimetro, IFM Noticias).
Unlike the 2014 and 2015 flights, Tuesday’s test was authorized and accompanied by Aerocivil. That is the only novelty: the permit. Drone deliveries over Medellín’s skies turn eleven this year.
2014: a package over El Poblado
On November 27, 2014, the official YouTube channel of cyclist Rigoberto Urán posted the video “Entregas de RigoStore en Drone!” (“RigoStore deliveries by drone!”): a drone crosses the hillside apartment towers of El Poblado and brings an order from RigoStore — the online shop of the cyclist’s brand — to a customer’s balcony. It is the first recorded drone delivery in Medellín and one of Colombia’s pioneering projects of its kind.
The project was the work of Carlos Escobar, a Medellín creative and brand builder, architect of the Rigo brand and of the RigoStore launch, as documented by the store’s opening tweets, the first jersey designs and the photos of the era gathered in his portfolio Detrás de Grandes Marcas. That year, the sports press reported that Urán would hand-deliver orders to his fans (Mundo Ciclístico, July 25, 2014; Blu Radio, Sept. 3, 2014): the cyclist made bicycle deliveries streamed live to social media through Google Glass, back when he was still cementing his name in the world peloton.
2015: burgers by air
A few months later, in March 2015, Hamburguesas del Oeste — the burger chain that Horacio “El Loco” Jaramillo opened in downtown Medellín in the 1960s (La República) — began testing home delivery by drone. El Colombiano (March 4, 2015) reported that the company, then managed by Guillermo Ramírez, had run successful tests with six drones — two in El Poblado and one downtown — and hoped to launch the service within three to six months, even weighing deliveries straight to customers’ balconies. Noticias Telemedellín filmed (March 5, 2015) one of those drones carrying a package above El Poblado.
The service never took off commercially. Aerocivil, Colombia’s civil aviation authority, barred commercial drone use until rules were in place, with fines of 1 to 2,000 monthly minimum wages (Portafolio), kept the flying robot from reaching its first customer and fined the company for flying without permits. Regulation arrived in September 2015 with Circular 002: the bureaucratic price of getting there first.
Setting the record straight
What happened on Tuesday was the first authorized test of cargo and mail transport by drone — a far narrower claim than the day’s headline. The first drone delivery over Medellín took off eleven years ago, is recorded on video, was covered by the press of the day and has names attached: RigoStore, Hamburguesas del Oeste and Carlos Escobar (@zozyalco on X, @colombiailove on Instagram). Mayor Gutiérrez gets to celebrate the present; history gets to remember who got there first.
This outlet has asked City Hall to clarify in what sense Tuesday’s flight is a “first”. Pending: replies from the Alcaldía de Medellín, Olaya Herrera airport and Aerocivil.
Sources: @FicoGutierrez on X (Oct. 20, 2026) and his official video · Blu Radio (Oct. 20, 2026) · Publimetro (Oct. 20, 2026) · IFM Noticias (Oct. 20, 2026) · Rigoberto Urán’s official YouTube channel (Nov. 27, 2014) · Noticias Telemedellín (March 5, 2015) · El Colombiano (March 4, 2015) · Portafolio (2015) · Mundo Ciclístico (July 25, 2014) · Blu Radio (Sept. 3, 2014) · La República (Dec. 13, 2015) · Detrás de Grandes Marcas — Carlos Escobar’s portfolio · Carlos Escobar’s archive.
Image and video credits: official footage by @FicoGutierrez / Alcaldía de Medellín (Oct. 20, 2026); Rigoberto Urán’s official YouTube channel (Nov. 27, 2014); Noticias Telemedellín (March 5, 2015, reporter Jorge Mario Zuluaga). No AI-generated images. People shown in the archive footage are not identified by name.
