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Background: There is an increase in the population of older adults in the world, which makes this population group a main target for public health, and in general for health sciences. Purpose: Characterize the oral conditions of the elderly in a geriatric care site in Cali, Colombia, year 2019. Methods: A descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study of the oral conditions of 97 patients was carried out. residents in a geriatric care setting. Sociodemographic information, presence of edentulous areas, occlusal pairs, use of dental prostheses, soft tissue injuries, root caries and oral hygiene were obtained from each older adult. Prior to the evaluation, a calibration of the observers was carried out, evaluated with Cohen's kappa index, a descriptive analysis and significant differences between some variables were carried out, through the Kruskal Wallis test. Results: The institutionalized population presented an average of 8 occlusal pairs, 70 % of the participants had no occlusal pairs, a diminished masticatory function, 39 % a non-functional dentition and around 25 % total absence of functionality, all the people presented edentulous areas, with a high prevalence of complete edentulism. Conclusions: Understanding oral health different from public health and being able to generate interventions aimed at Primary Health Care is key to improving the oral conditions of institutionalized older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]