Abstract How are institutions that regulate property rights related to the massive coercive dispossession of land that took place during the Colombian conflict? How did the workings of these institutions change during the conflict? We answer these questions through an analysis of a unique data set of rulings on land restitution issued between 2012 and 2015. The paper argues that the exclusionary nature of the institutions that regulate the access and assignment of property rights preceded the onset and escalation of the Colombian conflict, but shows how and why once the conflict began, the set of techniques used to promote coercive dispossession through those institutions could be significantly broadened and escalated. By doing so, it intends to advance the knowledge of how institutions are transformed, in this case in a deeply anti‐egalitarian and violent sense, during war.