Key points
- Lula won 51.79% against Flávio Bolsonaro's 48.21% in the 25 October runoff, a margin of more than four million votes.
- The Supreme Court extended voting by two hours on Sunday; fewer than 35,000 votes, about 0.03% of the total, were cast in the extra hours.
- Bolsonaro refuses to concede and seeks an annulment, but his Liberal Party later acknowledged the result.
- Trump said on 26 October that the vote "looked like another rigged election", without citing evidence, while saying "I'm not running Brazil."
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a historic fourth term as president of Brazil, staging a comeback in Sunday's runoff after trailing in the first round. The 80-year-old leftist, who previously served as president from 2003 to 2010, took 51.79% of the vote against 48.21% for right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil's electoral court confirmed the victory after all votes were counted, and Lula claimed victory in a speech on Sunday night, celebrating a result that saw him defeat Bolsonaro by more than four million votes.
The comeback is striking because Bolsonaro had led the first round earlier in October, with 47.03% against Lula's 45.16%, according to the Superior Electoral Court. Lula was barred from running in 2018 after a corruption conviction, but the sentence was overturned in 2021, allowing him to run again in 2022 — and now to win a fourth term, which begins on 5 January 2027. Read more: Students defeat Vucic in Serbia — how a protest movement took parliament
The key figures
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Lula, runoff | 51.79% | Superior Electoral Court |
| Bolsonaro, runoff | 48.21% | Superior Electoral Court |
| Margin | More than 4 million votes | Electoral court |
| First round: Bolsonaro / Lula | 47.03% / 45.16% | Superior Electoral Court |
| Votes in extra two hours | Fewer than 35,000 (0.03%) | Insper analysis |
| New term begins | 5 January 2027 | Reports |
The two-hour extension
The runoff was marked by confusion after Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered polling stations to remain open for an additional two hours on Sunday. Both campaigns had asked for more time: Lula's campaign cited bus shortages in at least nine states, including São Paulo and Salvador, which tend to favour the incumbent, while Bolsonaro's campaign cited heavy rain in southern Brazil, where its candidate was favoured. The timing of the court's decision, however, meant that some polling stations had already closed and started counting ballots when they were suddenly ordered to reopen. An analysis of electoral records by Insper professor Pedro Burgos found that fewer than 35,000 votes, or about 0.03% of the total, were cast in the extra two hours — far too few to change a margin of more than four million.
A concession split — and Trump's verdict
Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat and says he will seek the annulment of Lula's victory, accusing "Lula's allies" in the government of fraud. Hours after the results were announced, he said Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered him to surrender his passport and banned him from leaving the country as part of an investigation into suspected money laundering. He later said he would comply with the police order to hand over his passports, following a visit to his father, who is under house arrest, and denied he was planning to flee Brazil. But his own party moved the other way: on Monday, Bolsonaro's Liberal Party said it acknowledged the runoff result, in a statement signed by party head Valdemar Costa Neto: "We recognize the presidential election results. But we believe the issues raised need to be properly clarified."
Then came the verdict from Washington. United States President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday, before flying to Mississippi for a campaign rally, that Lula's win "looked like another rigged election, frankly", adding: "I thought it had a very bad look, the way it was tabulated. The extension given was very strange." He offered no evidence, said he had not taken sides, and added: "I'm not running Brazil. I'm running America. I like Lula. I get along very well with him." Trump did not formally endorse in the presidential contest, although Reuters has reported that officials from his State Department led a campaign to return the Bolsonaros to power. The result leaves Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, under a left-wing government, even as a wave of right-wing election victories elsewhere in Latin America has been heralded by Trump's administration — and leaves Brazil and Mexico, the region's two most populous countries, with left-of-centre leaders.
What happens next
Lula's fourth term begins on 5 January 2027. Bolsonaro's annulment bid faces a steep obstacle in the margin itself: overturning a result decided by more than four million votes would require evidence on a scale nothing reported so far has suggested, and the extra-hours votes at the centre of the dispute amount to about three-hundredths of one percent of the total. His party, for its part, has recognised the result while asking for its questions to be clarified. Europe Unfolded will follow the annulment bid and the transition, and report what the courts and the electoral authorities decide.
Updates & corrections
Published 27 October 2026.
No updates or corrections have been made to this article since publication.
Sources
- USA Today, 26 October 2026, on Trump's remarks and the runoff result: usatoday.com
- The Hindu, 27 October 2026, on Trump's claim without evidence and the party's recognition of the result: thehindu.com
- The Jerusalem Post (Reuters), 27 October 2026, on the annulment bid and the Liberal Party statement: jpost.com
- Times Now, 27 October 2026, on the extension, the extra-hours votes and the term start: timesnownews.com