Flávio Bolsonaro tops Brazil’s first round and will face Lula in a runoff

Neither of the two leading candidates for the Brazilian presidency won outright on Sunday 4 October 2026, and the order in which they finished surprised the pollsters: the right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro came in ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

With 99.97% of ballots counted, Bolsonaro had 47.04% of valid votes, or 56,098,457, and Lula 45.15%, or 53,846,396, according to figures published that night by the Brazilian Senate’s news agency. A candidate needs more than half of valid votes, which exclude blank and spoiled ballots, to win outright. The runoff between the two is scheduled for 25 October.

Ten other candidates stood. The writer Augusto Cury came third with 2.89%, followed by Renan Santos and Ronaldo Caiado on about 2.2% each. Turnout was 78.92% of registered voters.

A result the polls missed

Most surveys before the vote had predicted a second round but with Lula in first place, Al Jazeera reported. The president acknowledged as much. “I admit, I was convinced I would win in the first round,” he said, adding: “In extra time, we will win over the Brazilian people.”

Bolsonaro, speaking outside his home in Brasília, drew the opposite conclusion. “Brazil wants change, that’s the reading of what happened today,” he said, according to the US public broadcaster NPR.

The contest is in part a rerun of 2022, when Lula narrowly defeated Flávio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro. The former president was later convicted of plotting to overturn that result and is serving a 27-year sentence; he had already been barred from office by the electoral court and chose his eldest son as the candidate of the Liberal Party (PL).

Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, a lawyer and senator for Rio de Janeiro since 2019, is standing for president for the first time. He has promised to cut the deficit, to bring foreign policy closer to Washington and to seek an amnesty for his father. Lula, 80, a former metalworkers’ union leader who was first elected president in 2002, left office in 2010 and returned in 2023, is seeking a fourth term on a platform of continued social spending and resistance to what he describes as foreign interference in Brazilian affairs. He has accused the United States of trying to meddle in the election, which the US State Department denied.

Congress and the markets

Voters also chose governors and members of both houses of Congress. Right-wing parties did well: the PL was on course to be the largest force in the Chamber of Deputies and gained ground in the Senate, where Michelle Bolsonaro, the former first lady, and Carlos Bolsonaro, Flávio’s brother, both won seats.

Financial markets read the result as favouring Bolsonaro. On Monday 5 October the Ibovespa, the main index of the São Paulo stock exchange, rose almost 9% by midday to a record of nearly 210,000 points, and the real strengthened against the dollar, the AFP news agency reported.

What decides the second round

The third-, fourth- and fifth-placed candidates were all on the right, which gives Bolsonaro a natural reserve of votes, though Caiado and Santos said they would not endorse either finalist. One analyst, Rafael Favetti, told Reuters that part of that support had already moved to Bolsonaro in the first round, limiting his room to grow.

Polling cited by NPR puts security, corruption and the economy at the top of voters’ concerns. Under Lula inflation has come under control and unemployment has fallen to historic lows, AFP noted, but Brazilians complain of lost purchasing power and the benchmark interest rate stands at 13.75%, among the highest in the world.