Date: 4 October. Run-off for presidential and gubernatorial elections to be held on 25 October if no candidate receives over 50% of the valid votes in the first round.
Type: Presidential, federal legislative elections (all 513 seats in the chamber of deputies and two thirds of the 81-member senate), gubernatorial, and state legislative elections.
Main contenders: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT); Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Partido Liberal, PL); Ronaldo Caiado (União Brasil), the governor of Goiás state; Romeu Zema (Partido Novo), the governor of Minas Gerais state; Renan Santos (Missão); Aldo Rebelo (Democracia Cristã, DC).
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been ranked in recent pre-election opinion surveys as the favourite to win re-election, although this does not necessarily indicate widespread public support for his administration. Several long-term social and political trends suggest a general shift to the right in Brazil, which means that opposition-aligned figures could have opportunities in the coming months to boost their popularity. However, the Brazilian right is currently disunited. Uncertainty remains as to whether Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), can present himself as a candidate who appeals to both far-right and centre-right voters.
It is expected that Lula will sweep up the support of most left-wing and centre-left voters, just as he did in the 2022 presidential race. Despite concerns over the PT’s future, especially following its disappointing results in its north-eastern political strongholds during the 2024 municipal elections, Lula’s party has for decades been the dominant party of the Brazilian left, and its well-oiled campaigning machine will be behind his re-election bid. While the left has no strong alternative to Lula, several right-wing contenders have declared intentions to run for president. The list of presidential pre-candidates could change before October, as several prominent conservative figures may still throw their hat in the ring before April, with public officials such as mayors and governors needing to step down from their posts six months before the election if they plan to run for president.
Currently, Flávio Bolsonaro appears to be the main candidate of the far-right populist ‘Bolsonarismo’ movement, but the name that has loomed over pre-election speculations for months has been Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos), the governor of Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous state, São Paulo. De Freitas’ name is often included in pre-election polls, despite his public denials of plans to run for president. He has instead insisted that he will run for another term as São Paulo’s governor. But political pundits have highlighted that De Freitas is one of the few names who is favoured by the markets, due to his pro-business stance and pushes for privatisation and spending cuts; who can appeal to moderate non-populist conservatives due to his relatively professional, pragmatic personal leadership style; and who could also win over supporters from the more radical Bolsonarismo movement, given his closeness to Bolsonaro himself.
Bolsonaro legal woes
De Freitas served as Bolsonaro’s infrastructure minister from 2019-2022 and has frequently expressed support for his former boss, especially during Bolsonaro’s legal woes last year. In September 2025, the supreme court (STF) found Bolsonaro guilty of plotting a coup d’etát in 2022 to overturn his election defeat to Lula. He is now serving a 27-year prison sentence with his son, Flávio, considered his proxy candidate. Rather than throwing their weight behind De Freitas, Bolsonaristas appear to be hoping that their torchbearer can emulate the political comeback of Lula, who was convicted on corruption charges in 2017 and was behind bars from 2018-2019. Despite being in prison, Lula declared plans to run in the 2018 presidential race, but ultimately his political protégé Fernando Haddad (the current finance minister) ended up running as his proxy and lost to Bolsonaro in the run-off in October 2018.
Lula’s convictions were later overturned in 2021, clearing the way for his comeback in the presidential race the following year. There has been some speculation in the media that this is what Bolsonaro hopes to achieve – to have his conviction cleared or his sentence reduced so that he can run again in a future election, such as the 2030 or 2034 presidential race. Therefore, it might not matter much to Bolsonaro whether his son manages to defeat Lula. The main priority for the Bolsonarismo movement in the coming months may well be to keep the Bolsonaro family name in the national headlines and to keep the momentum behind Bolsonaro’s narrative that judicial authorities are persecuting him.
Rallying cries of the right
STF justice Alexandre de Moraes, the lead judge presiding over Bolsonaro’s coup plot trial, is one of the most reviled figures for the far right. Bolsonarista rallies in recent years have featured as much if not more vitriol directed at De Moraes than at Lula. The far-right hatred towards De Moraes is nothing new. During Bolsonaro’s presidency, the former president and his supporters frequently criticised and insulted De Moraes and other STF judges in public speeches and on social media. In 2022 De Moraes also served as the head of Brazil’s superior electoral court (TSE). Bolsonaristas painted him as the personification of Brazil’s supposedly tyrannical institutions, and they spread misinformation seeking to undermine the electoral process and push the argument that the 2022 election could have been stolen from Bolsonaro.
It is unclear how much far-right ire will be directed at the current TSE president, STF justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, given that she is considered a discreet figure who rarely makes public comments on divisive political topics. Media reports also indicate that Antunes Rocha will step down later this year before the October elections, leaving the TSE presidency to STF justice Kássio Nunes Marques, who was appointed to the judiciary by Bolsonaro in 2020. If a Bolsonaro nominee is leading the electoral authority, it is less likely that Bolsonaristas will criticise the TSE in the same way they did in 2022.
However, the Bolsonarismo movement thrives on confrontation and portraying its leaders and members as victims oppressed by the establishment or the system. The 2018 and 2022 elections saw the Bolsonarismo movement tap into anti-establishment discontent and expand from a radical fringe movement to become a mainstay in Brazil’s political landscape. It is expected to remain a major political force in 2026 and beyond. Bolsonarismo will command a significant political estate, and if the movement wants to help Flávio stand a fighting chance against Lula, it will likely need to channel its energy towards drumming up rage against the incumbent government.
The main issue that the Brazilian right could highlight is insecurity. Despite Brazil’s national homicide rate falling in recent years, the statistics do not correlate with a rising public feeling of safety. Instead, there is significant public appetite for tough-on-crime policies, rather than the holistic crime-fighting strategies advocated by security policy researchers, which involve better police intelligence to track and intercept the money laundering networks of criminal gangs and better community policing and poverty reduction initiatives to discourage young people in low-income communities from turning to a life of crime. This feeling of distrust towards the professional opinions of experts and increasing public preference for the supposed short-term fix of mass incarceration or tough police raids on gang-controlled areas could play into the hands of Bolsonarismo, which has often called for hardline measures.
Lula and the Brazilian left more broadly have struggled to present a convincing counter-narrative against the sentiment of ‘bandido bom é bandido morto’ (the only good criminal is a dead criminal), a slogan that has been attributed to various politicians in the 20th century and has in recent decades become a common phrase in debates on social media especially among right-wing Brazilians. While it is unlikely that Lula’s campaign rhetoric will veer too strongly towards the hardline stance, he will likely try to highlight how his government is taking the fight against organised crime seriously.
Economic outlook
In addition to focusing more on security issues, Lula is expected to highlight the encouraging macroeconomic data for Brazil. The country’s unemployment rate in the rolling quarter of September-November 2025 fell to 5.2%, which is the lowest figure on record since 2012, when the national statistics institute (Ibge) began recording the metric in the current historical series. Ibge’s data also shows that annual inflation in 2025 stood at 4.26%, which is within the target range of 3.0% +/-1.5. Lula is less likely to be hit by anti-incumbent frustration if the public is feeling less anxiety over the cost of living and the job market is stronger.
Regarding the economic outlook for Brazil and how it could affect consumer confidence and the public mood ahead of the election, it is worth noting that interest rates are still very high. As of January 2026, the benchmark interest rate (Selic) set by the BCB stood at 15.0%. Market analysts are expecting a rate-cut cycle at some point this year, although forecasts of private sector economists consulted by the BCB suggest that the Selic could still close this year at 12.25%. A decrease of a few percentage points in the Selic could bring consumers and businesses some sense of relief, but borrowing costs will still be high and there is unlikely to be a wave of increased consumer confidence and spending unleashed before October to lift the public mood.
To boost his own popularity, Lula could implement a more generous fiscal policy, throwing cash around through social programmes, infrastructure projects, and subsidised credit. Right-wing figures could seek to reiterate their arguments that Lula and leftists more widely are irresponsible spendthrifts and that four more years of a Lula government could spell disaster for public finances. However, it is uncertain whether voters will care as much about potential fiscal profligacy if they feel improvements in their personal finances and living standards ahead of the election. Indeed, in 2022 Bolsonaro ramped up spending on welfare and social programmes, which was widely considered an effort to boost his re-election bid. He began 2022 as the underdog, with pre-election polls showing Lula as the strong favourite against the unpopular far-right firebrand, but the October 2022 run-off turned out to be a knife-edge vote, with Lula narrowly winning on 50.9%. It is debatable how much Bolsonaro’s generous fiscal stance in the final year of his presidency contributed to him coming so close to victory in 2022, but it could provide a lesson for Lula to apply in 2026.
With the left clearly behind Lula, he and his campaign team will face a choice as to whether he should try to defeat Bolsonarismo by shoring up the support of his core left-wing voter bases or by making conciliatory gestures to win over centrist or centre-right voters. The 2022 election was regarded as a polarised contest in which many centrist voters ultimately chose Lula because they viewed him as the lesser of the two evils. In 2026 Lula could opt for boosting his left-wing credentials and riding the wave of polarisation to victory, but he will likely need to take care not to alienate moderates who lent him their support four years ago, especially centrist voters in Brazil’s densely populated south-eastern region, which includes states such as São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro.
Fragmented right
The Brazilian left does not appear to have any strong option aside from Lula, whereas the right is currently divided between potential candidates representing various shades of conservatism. Despite some signals in 2025 of attempts to shore up ties between centre-right and far-right parties, it is uncertain if Flávio Bolsonaro will give up on his presidential bid in the coming months and endorse a right-of-centre candidate. Some far-right figures, such as Bolsonaro’s second son Carlos Bolsonaro, have publicly insulted moderate conservative governors, calling them “rats” and accusing them of trying to steal Bolsonaro’s political estate after his conviction.
Battle for congress
In July 2025 Bolsonaro said at a rally that he wanted at least 50% of congress. Political pundits have highlighted how Brazil’s system of checks and balances places great power in the hands of lawmakers, and it is in congress that Bolsonaro would most likely hope for a way to reduce his sentence or be released from prison. Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, and his second son, Carlos Bolsonaro, are expected to run for seats in the senate, the legislative chamber which handles the appointment of supreme court justices and can also launch proceedings to impeach a justice.
Strength of the centrão
After the 2024 municipal elections, the parties that won the most mayorships were big tent parties such as the Partido Social Democrático (PSD), the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB), and other parties associated with the so-called ‘centrão’ (big centre), a loose grouping of parties which lean to the centre-right but are flexible in their political stances. The strength of the centrão in local politics does not necessarily mean that a centre-right figure would perform well in the presidential race, but local election results often correlate with federal congressional election results, which could suggest that the centrão is likely to continue dominating the national legislature.
