Colombia Country Code: How to Call +57 from Anywhere in the World

The country code for Colombia is +57. That little number is all that stands between you and your tía in Barranquilla, your cousin in Medellín, or the small hotel in Cartagena that only answers a landline. Dial it correctly and the call connects. Dial it wrong, or let your mobile carrier handle it, and you can watch twenty minutes of catching up turn into a bill that stings for the rest of the month.

This guide covers everything you need to actually place a call to Colombia: the +57 prefix, city codes, the 2021 numbering change that caught almost everyone off guard, mobile versus landline formatting, emergency numbers, and how to call any number in Colombia from your browser for a few cents a minute. If you are part of the large Colombian community in the US (concentrated in Miami, New York, New Jersey, Houston and the DC area), or the diaspora in Spain, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador, this is written with you in mind.

The short version

To call Colombia from abroad, dial your international exit code, then +57, then the ten-digit number.

From the US or Canada that looks like 011 57 XXX XXX XXXX. From most of Europe and Latin America it is 00 57 XXX XXX XXXX. From any mobile phone, or from Phonecall's browser dialer (which takes the plus form only), you just type +57 and the ten digits. The plus sign replaces whatever exit code the country you are physically in happens to use, which saves you from memorizing a different combination every time you travel.

That is the whole mechanic. The nuance, and there is some, lives in the ten digits that follow +57.

Why +57

The ITU hands out country codes by region. Codes starting with 5 cover Mexico, Central America and South America. Colombia sits on +57, flanked by +58 for Venezuela, Peru on +51, and Ecuador's +593. For decades Colombian numbers came in two obvious shapes: one-digit regional codes plus seven-digit landlines, and ten-digit mobile numbers starting with 3. Then came the reform that reshuffled everything.

The 2021 landline change (this is the part that trips people up)

Colombia's communications regulator, the CRC, moved every landline in the country to a ten-digit format in a changeover that began in September 2021. The country added a 60X prefix to the front of every fixed line, where X is the old single-digit area code. Mobile numbers were not touched.

What that means in practice:

• A Bogotá landline that used to be 1 234 5678 is now 601 234 5678.
• A Medellín landline that used to be 4 123 4567 is now 604 123 4567.
• A Cali landline that used to be 2 555 1234 is now 602 555 1234.

So when you dial from abroad today, the structure is:

• Landline: +57 + 60X + seven digits (ten digits total after +57)
• Mobile: +57 + 3XX XXX XXXX (ten digits total after +57)

If you have an old family contact that reads +57 1 234 5678, update it to +57 601 234 5678. The old short landline form no longer routes. This single edit fixes a large share of the "the number you have dialed is not in service" complaints I hear from people trying to reach Colombia for the first time in a few years. The Wikipedia page on Colombian telephone numbers has the full before-and-after table if you want to check an unusual prefix.

City codes you will actually use

Colombia uses one-digit geographic indicators (the X in that 60X prefix) grouped roughly by region. Below is a cheat sheet for the cities most calls go to, with the old single-digit code and the full landline dialing prefix as it exists today.

• Bogotá: area 1, landlines now begin 601
• Medellín and Antioquia: area 4, now 604
• Cali and Valle del Cauca: area 2, now 602
• Barranquilla and Atlántico: area 5, now 605
• Cartagena and Bolívar: area 5, now 605
• Santa Marta and Magdalena: area 5, now 605
• Cúcuta and Norte de Santander: area 7, now 607
• Bucaramanga and Santander: area 7, now 607
• Pereira and the coffee axis (Manizales, Armenia): area 6, now 606
• Ibagué and Tolima: area 8, now 608
• Villavicencio and the eastern plains: area 8, now 608
• Pasto and Nariño: area 2, now 602
• Popayán and Cauca: area 2, now 602

Yes, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Santa Marta share 605. The Caribbean coast is one region as far as the numbering plan is concerned. The ten digits after +57 are what uniquely identify the subscriber.

A full example: a boutique hotel in Cartagena's walled city with the local number 664 1234 is reached from abroad as +57 605 664 1234. From a US landline, that becomes 011 57 605 664 1234.

Mobile numbers: the easy case

Every Colombian mobile number starts with 3. There are no regional variations and nothing changed in the landline reform. Dial +57 followed by the ten digits exactly as written in your contacts. Example: +57 310 123 4567 reaches a Claro, Movistar, Tigo, WOM or virtual-operator subscriber anywhere in the country. The first few digits used to hint at the carrier, but Colombia introduced number portability years ago and that correlation is gone.

If someone in Colombia gives you their WhatsApp number, it is almost always their mobile, already in the right shape for +57 dialing.

From the US: three ways to actually place the call

Here is where the savings-versus-carrier framing comes in, because the mechanics are easy but the pricing differs by an order of magnitude.

1. Your mobile carrier's international dialing. Pick up your phone and dial +57 601 234 5678. It will connect. On a US pay-as-you-go international plan this typically runs between $1.50 and $3.00 per minute to Colombian mobiles, sometimes less to landlines but still well above a dollar. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all offer add-ons that bring it down, but you pay the add-on whether or not you call that month.

2. A traditional calling card or prepaid service. Rates are better, roughly $0.10 to $0.30 per minute, but you deal with access numbers, PINs, patchy audio and the usual expiration games.

3. A browser-based service like Phonecall. You type the number into a web page, click, and the call goes through at $0.07 per minute to Colombian mobiles and $0.14 per minute to landlines. Colombia is one of the countries where the mobile is the cheaper number to dial, so if your relative has both, call the cell. No app install, no SIM, no PIN. You get 30 seconds of free call time on signup so you can hear the quality before you commit to anything.

For a one-hour conversation with your mom's cell in Pereira, those three paths cost roughly $120, $12, and $4.20 respectively. Multiply by the number of calls you actually make and the choice usually makes itself.

Phonecall covers 218 countries on the same per-second billing model (you are charged for the time you are connected, with no connection fee). If your family is split across Colombia and Venezuela, or Colombia and Spain, or Colombia and the US, one account covers all of them. Every rate is listed on the rates page.

Try a call to Colombia with 30 seconds free

From Spain, Venezuela, Panama and elsewhere

The mechanics are the same, the exit code changes. From Spain, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru it is 00 57 followed by the ten-digit Colombian number. From any mobile, +57 directly is the format you should save contacts in. Phonecall works from any of these countries, in the browser, at the same price.

Dialing inside Colombia

If you are physically in Colombia, you no longer need the old 03 prefix or the 0 plus carrier codes for long distance. Since the changeover:

• Mobile to mobile: dial the ten-digit number.
• Mobile to landline: dial the ten-digit number (60X plus seven digits).
• Landline to landline: dial the ten-digit number, even within the same city.
• Landline to mobile: dial the ten-digit number.

The simplification was the point of the whole reform. You dial ten digits, every time, from any phone.

Emergency numbers in Colombia

Colombia runs a unified emergency line, 123. It routes to the police, the ambulance service and the fire department, and it works from any phone. If you are traveling in the country and something goes wrong, this is the number to remember.

Other numbers that still exist alongside the unified line:

• 119, fire department (Bomberos)
• 132, Cruz Roja (Colombian Red Cross)
• 165, Gaula, the anti-kidnapping and extortion unit of the national police

For most travelers and most situations, 123 is the only one you need to know. The US State Department's Colombia country information page is worth a read before any trip.

Time zone, no DST, when to call

Colombia sits on COT, UTC-5, and does not observe daylight saving time. The time difference with the US east coast slides by an hour each spring and fall: same time as New York and Miami during Eastern Standard Time (November through March), one hour behind during Eastern Daylight Time. Colombia is three hours ahead of Los Angeles in winter and two in summer; six hours behind Madrid in winter, seven in summer.

A 7pm family call in Bogotá reaches a dinner-time listener in Miami all year. A 9am call in Madrid is 2am or 3am in Cali, depending on the season. Plan accordingly, especially around the US and European clock changes.

Troubleshooting a call that will not connect

If +57 ... fails, run through this short checklist before you decide the number is dead.

1. Count the digits after +57. It should be exactly ten. If you have seven or eight, you are using a pre-2021 landline. Prepend the right 60X for the city.
2. Confirm the city prefix. A seven-digit landline from Medellín needs 604 in front; Bogotá needs 601; the coast shares 605.
3. Strip the leading zero. Some older contact exports write +57 0 310 .... The 0 is a holdover from the old long-distance prefix and should not be there.
4. Mobile numbers start with 3. If a ten-digit number starts with anything else, check it against the 60X landline pattern; a copy-paste may have mangled it.
5. Check for WhatsApp-only. If you dial a mobile and get nothing but a hang-up, the person may use WhatsApp exclusively. Message them first.
6. Try from a different network. Some US carriers aggressively block numbers they suspect of being fraud-adjacent. A browser call through Phonecall uses different routing and often connects when a mobile carrier gives up.

Who actually benefits from this

Three groups come up again and again when people tell me why they call Colombia.

Diaspora families. The classic case. A son in Jersey calls his mother in Soacha every Sunday. A daughter in Madrid calls her father in Manizales during the week. At carrier rates these calls get rationed; at $0.07 a minute to a mobile they do not. People talk longer, more often, and WhatsApp stops being the only option when the relative on the other end does not use it well.

Small-business owners dealing with Colombian suppliers. Flower exporters near Bogotá, textile producers in Medellín, coffee cooperatives in the Eje Cafetero, tourism operators on the coast. A thirty-minute negotiation call on your mobile plan can run $45. On Phonecall it is $4.20 to an office landline, or $2.10 to the owner's cell.

Travelers and digital nomads. Flying into El Dorado next week? You probably need to call a hostel, an Airbnb host, or a tour operator. A browser call is the fastest way to reach any of them without a Colombian SIM. The official tourism site, Colombia.travel, is a good place to plan the rest. And when you want to check in at home, the same dialer handles calling the US from Colombia.

Call Colombia without the carrier markup

If the only reason you have been messaging instead of calling is the bill, that reason is no longer load-bearing. Open Phonecall in your browser, sign in, and your first call to Bogotá, Medellín or anywhere else in the country starts with 30 seconds of free call time. After that it is $0.07 a minute to a Colombian mobile and $0.14 to a landline, with the same per-second billing we use for the other 217 countries we cover.

Family in Colombia should not be a line item you ration. Dial the +57, say hi, let it run.

Start calling Colombia now.