How Many Presidents Has Argentina Had?
Argentina has had 49 people serve as president across 59 presidencies since 1854 — but the headline figure hides a hard truth: 16 of those leaders were de facto military presidents installed by coups, not elected. Javier Milei, sworn in on 10 December 2023, is counted as the 59th president.
Why the count is really a history of coups
Argentina's presidential list looks long, but a third of it was never elected. Between 1930 and 1983 the military overthrew civilian governments five times — in 1930, 1943, 1955, 1966 and 1976 — and each coup installed de facto presidents who governed by force. Sixteen of the 59 presidencies fall into that category.
The 1994 constitutional reform formally rejected the old doctrine that treated such de facto governments as legitimate. So when Argentina counts its presidents, it does not erase the coup leaders — they remain on the list — but the country now draws a sharp line between those chosen by voters and those who simply seized the Casa Rosada.
Peronism: the movement the count keeps returning to
No force has shaped the office more than Peronism, founded by Juan Perón in the 1940s. Perón himself served in separate, non-consecutive spells — part of why there are more presidencies than presidents — and his third term ended with his death in office in 1974, handing power to his wife Isabel, the first woman head of state anywhere in the Americas.
The movement never left. Since the return to democracy in 1983, Peronist presidents — Menem, Duhalde, both Kirchners, Alberto Fernández — have held the office for the majority of the years. Argentine politics is often read as a long argument between Peronism and whoever is trying to govern around it.
The democratic era, in order (since 1983)
The full list of 49 includes the coup-installed military rulers and the 19th-century founders. Here is the part most people are asking about: the presidents of the unbroken democracy that began when Raúl Alfonsín took office in 1983.
The currency-crisis curse
Read the list of democratic-era presidents and a pattern jumps out: almost every one met an economic reckoning. Alfonsín was driven out early by hyperinflation in 1989. De la Rúa fell in the 2001 collapse that saw five presidents in two weeks. Macri's term ended in an IMF bailout. Alberto Fernández handed over with inflation above 200%.
That is the backdrop to Javier Milei, the 59th president and a self-described anarcho-capitalist who campaigned waving a chainsaw at the state. He took office in December 2023 promising shock therapy, and by 2025 his government was reporting a budget surplus and sharply lower inflation — the latest attempt to break a cycle that has toppled president after president.
How much power is in the job?
The Argentine presidency is constitutionally strong, but the real test has always been economic survival — the office that coups once ended is now more often undone by currency crises.
Think you know them? Prove it
A quick quiz. The counting questions catch most people.
- Wikipedia — List of heads of state of Argentina and President of Argentina (49 people, 59 presidencies, 16 de facto; the coups of 1930–1976)
- Britannica — List of presidents of Argentina; biography of Javier Milei
- AS/COA Approval Tracker (2026) — Javier Milei, 59th president, in his third year
- Presidency of the Argentine Nation — Javier Milei, sworn in 10 December 2023
- Natural Earth public-domain country data (via world-atlas), used on the Leaders of the World map
Forty-nine people, fifty-nine presidencies, sixteen of them installed by force and almost all of the rest tested by a currency crisis — in Argentina, counting the presidents is really a way of counting the country's upheavals.