Brazil's 2026 presidential race: the candidates and the polls

Born in poverty in the drought-stricken northeastern state of Pernambuco in 1945, Lula migrated to São Paulo as a child, lost a finger working on a factory floor, and rose through the labor ranks to lead the landmark metalworkers' strikes of the late 1970s in the Greater São Paulo Area. He co-founded the Workers' Party in 1980 and lost three presidential bids before winning in 2002.

His first two terms saw tens of millions of Brazilians lifted out of poverty. His supporters credit that to the expansion of social policies under his leadership, while detractors tend to give extra credit to a commodities boom that boosted Brazilian exports and fostered growth in labor-intensive areas. When he left office at the end of 2010, Lula had over 80% approval — more than any other politician in Brazil’s democratic history.

But corruption investigations ensnared him in 2018, and he served 580 days in federal custody before the Supreme Court annulled his convictions on jurisdictional grounds. Later, the trial judge who convicted Lula was deemed biased by the Supreme Court.

He won the presidency again in 2022, defeating Jair Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin. His ticket had campaigned on defending democracy against Bolsonaro's authoritarian impulses — fears that were validated on Jan. 8, 2023, when far-right rioters stormed the headquarters of all three branches of government. The left frames Lula's re-election bid (which would give him a fourth term) as yet another front in that same battle.

After leaving office, former President Jair Bolsonaro was barred from running again. First, electoral courts convicted him of abusing his power as president during the 2022 campaign, and then he was sent to prison for 27 years for leading a coup attempt. Even so, the Bolsonaro family remains the dominant force of Brazil’s right wing, and the former president has moved to extend that influence through his eldest son.

In December 2025, he named Senator Flávio Bolsonaro as his political heir. Flávio quickly rose in the polls and is now Lula's likeliest challenger in a runoff, further squeezing the space for moderate conservatives.

A former Rio de Janeiro state lawmaker better known for embezzlement scandals than legislation, Flávio presents himself as a “softer” brand of Bolsonarism — an oxymoron that collapses under scrutiny. He has called for full amnesty for his father and coup co-conspirators, and warned he would "use force" against any Supreme Court attempt to block him from doing so.

When speaking to markets, he echoes his father's unmet promises of deregulation and fiscal discipline. The Bolsonaro name has proven enough to sustain his comfortable polling position — and to keep his platform conveniently vague.

Romeu Zema built his political career on a simple promise: to be nothing like a politician. 

A businessman with little name recognition, he rode the anti-establishment wave of 2018 onto the ballot in Minas Gerais — allying with Jair Bolsonaro to bury what both men called "old politics" — and defeated seasoned rivals to become the first state governor from Novo, a free-market party that brands itself as the antithesis of Brazil's patronage-driven political class. He was re-elected in 2022 in a first-round landslide.

In office, Zema's record has been defined as much by ideology as by turbulence. He championed privatizations and fiscal austerity, launched administrative reforms and, in his second term, accelerated infrastructure projects while cutting what his government deemed non-essential services. Behind the scenes, he worked to expand Novo's footprint in the 2024 municipal elections — with mixed results.

The controversies have been harder to manage than the agenda. Zema drew sharp criticism for his handling of Minas Gerais' chronic fiscal crisis and his alignment with Bolsonaro's pandemic response. More recently, he proposed a consortium of governors from Brazil's wealthier and conservative South and Southeast regions — a move widely interpreted as an attempt to create a conservative front, but one that failed to yield much result.

Ronaldo Caiado, the former governor of Goiás, officially launched his presidential bid late in March, becoming the Social Democratic Party's (PSD) pick for the October race. Caiado had joined the PSD earlier this year with his eye on running for president, after his previous political home, União Brasil, closed the door on his long-held ambitions. Caiado ran for president once before, winning less than 1% of the vote in 1989.

If Romeu Zema promises to break from “old politics,” Caiado is the definition of old politics — the first member of the Caiado family to govern Goiás state took office in 1883. Ronaldo gained prominence in the 1980s as the leader of a powerful landowners' union opposing land reform.

Agribusiness is Caiado’s base and ideological north star. When it comes to public security, he takes a hard-line stance — though he has backed amnesty for everyone involved in the Brasília riots on Jan. 8, 2023, including Jair Bolsonaro.

Set to compete for the same voters as Flávio Bolsonaro, Caiado casts himself as the seasoned alternative — experienced where Flávio is untested, steady where others perform. His main selling point is his political career spanning four decades — but that will be a reason for many voters to look elsewhere.

Renan Santos is one of the founders of the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), born out of the massive demonstrations of public dissatisfaction that erupted in Brazil in 2013. In late 2025, the MBL created its own right-wing political outfit, the Mission Party, and Santos will be its first presidential candidate — in what will be his first bid for elected office at any level. 

His pitch is radical and deliberately unfiltered. He has promised to speak "without self-censorship" in the Northeast and criticize the Bolsa Família welfare program to its own beneficiaries' faces. In one viral video, he proposed abolishing a small Maranhão municipality he said "shouldn't exist."

Santos’s provocations have found an audience. A recent Atlas Intel/Bloomberg poll put him at 4.6% of the vote nationally — level with some sitting state governors — and at nearly 25% among voters aged 16 to 24. In terms of social media reach and engagement, he trails only Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro.

His platform combines the familiar with the jarring: calls for fiscal austerity, privatization and tough-on-crime rhetoric sit alongside proposals to merge states and municipalities, strip mayors of political rights for missing performance targets, and turn the Northeast into a special economic zone he dubs a "Saudi Arabia" for data centers.

What sets him apart on the right is less the agenda than the attitude — and his refusal to play a supporting role to the Bolsonaro family. He has compared Flávio Bolsonaro to Judas, a traitor selling out "the cause" for silver coins, and reserved some of his sharpest attacks for the senator rather than for Lula. "The PT is the devil, our natural enemy," he told newspaper Estadão. "Flávio is the betrayer within."

Analysts note that the anti-system lane Santos is targeting was largely claimed by Bolsonarism in 2018 and has never fully reopened. His support, for now, is wide online and shallow everywhere else.

Polls do more than measure public opinion, they shape the electoral field itself. Parties, donors and candidates calibrate their behavior around polling numbers, which drives many campaigns to commission favorable surveys in hopes of manufacturing momentum. This observatory will therefore rely on four pollsters with proven track records: Datafolha, Ipec-Ipsos, Quaest and AtlasIntel.

Government approval ratings — a key variable in electoral calculations — will be tracked throughout, alongside voting intentions as the candidate field takes shape.

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