Summary:
Flávio Bolsonaro, the Liberal Party (PL) senator for Rio de Janeiro and son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, finished first in Brazil's presidential election on 4 October 2026 with 47.03% of valid votes. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party (PT) took 45.16%. Neither reached the majority needed to win outright, so the two meet again on 25 October. The Superior Electoral Court closed the count with Flávio Bolsonaro on 56,104,503 votes and Lula on 53,879,538, a gap of 2,224,965.
The Liberal Party took the largest bench in both houses of the next Congress — 121 of 513 deputies and a projected 28 of 81 senators — and won five governorships outright. Four Bolsonaros won seats: Jair Bolsonaro's wife Michelle, his sons Carlos and Jair Renan, and his brother Renato.
Jair Bolsonaro did not stand. The electoral court barred him from office in 2023, and a Supreme Court panel sentenced him in September 2025 to 27 years and 3 months over a plot to overturn the 2022 result. He is under house arrest on medical grounds.
The final polls had Lula level or ahead. He again carried the Northeast, the PT's stronghold, but finished nearly 2.3 million votes behind. Flávio Bolsonaro told supporters the PT era was over; Lula said the race had gone to extra time.
Detailed Report
1. Flávio Bolsonaro Leads the First Round as One in Five Voters Stays Away
The Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Brazil's top electoral authority, closed the first-round count with every section totalled. Flávio Bolsonaro finished on 56,104,503 votes, or 47.03% of valid votes, against Lula's 53,879,538, or 45.16% — a gap of 2,224,965.
The news agency Agência Estado, citing the same count, put abstention at 21.08% of 158,745,502 eligible voters, the highest share since 1998. A further 2,300,798 ballots were blank and 3,674,249 null, against 119,300,788 valid votes.
The count followed the map of 2022 closely. Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in 15 of Brazil's 27 states and Lula in 12, among them all nine states of the Northeast, according to the Brazilian news site Plural. Lula's strongest returns came in Piauí, on 70.97%, Bahia, on 66.09%, and Maranhão, on 63.94%. In Paraná, in the south, Flávio Bolsonaro took 59.91% to Lula's 31.20%. Lula carried the same region in 2022, when he led the first round 48.4% to Jair Bolsonaro's 43.2% and won the runoff 50.9% to 49.1%.
Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, is a lawyer and former state deputy of Rio de Janeiro, and this is his first presidential campaign. His running mate is Alfredo Gaspar, 56, a federal deputy for the PL. Lula, 80, governed from 2003 to 2010 and is in his third term, which began in 2023. His running mate is Geraldo Alckmin, 73, a doctor and former governor of São Paulo state, from the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB).
Augusto Cury of the Avante party, a psychiatrist and author, took 2.89%; Renan Santos of the Missão party, a co-founder of the Free Brazil Movement, took 2.24%; and Ronaldo Caiado, former governor of Goiás, took 2.18%.
2. Six Eve-of-Vote Surveys, One Direction of Error
Datafolha, commissioned by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and Globo and filed with the electoral court as BR-01708/2026, interviewed 4,006 people on 3 October. On valid votes it had Lula on 45% and Flávio Bolsonaro on 42%; on all votes, Lula on 42% and Flávio on 40%, with blank and null ballots at 4% and undecided voters at 3%. Its valid-vote reading put Caiado on 4%, Cury on 3% and Renan Santos on 3%.
Quaest, filed as BR-02197/2026, interviewed 3,702 people on 2 and 3 October and had Lula on 46% to Flávio Bolsonaro's 45%. Both institutes worked to a margin of two points, and both readings placed the two candidates level within it.
Gazeta do Povo set six eve-of-vote readings against the count. Only Gerp had Flávio Bolsonaro numerically ahead, at 46% to 44%, from 2,400 interviews between 30 September and 2 October, filed as BR-00509/2026. AtlasIntel, with 4,945 interviews from 27 September to 2 October and a margin of one point, had Lula on 47% of valid votes to Flávio Bolsonaro's 44.1% — a gap outside its margin. PoderData had 43% to 45%; CNT/MDA had 42.1% to 47.8%.
The miss ran in one direction. Datafolha placed Lula within 0.16 of a point of his final 45.16% and had Flávio Bolsonaro five points low; Quaest had Lula within a point and Flávio Bolsonaro two points low. The count put Flávio Bolsonaro 1.87 points ahead.
3. Largest Single-Party Result in Nearly Four Decades: 121 Deputies, a Projected 28 Senators
In the 513-seat Chamber of Deputies, the PL elected 121 deputies, 22 more than the 99 it won in 2022, according to the Porto Alegre newspaper GaúchaZH. That is the largest single-party bench since the 1988 Constitution, beating the 108 seats the Brazilian Democratic Movement took in 1990, when the Chamber had 503 seats.
The Brazil of Hope Federation, the joint list of the PT, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) and the Green Party, elected 88 deputies, 70 of them from the PT. The joint list of the centre-right União Brasil and the Progressistas (PP) elected 87, down 19 on 2022.
Voters filled 54 of the Senate's 81 seats. CNN Brasil and the Senate's news agency, Agência Senado, both counted 19 for the PL and six for the PT. Adding senators whose terms continue, Agência Senado projected the PL at 28 senators from February 2027 against the PT's nine, and said 28 would be the largest party bench at the opening of a Senate legislature since 1988.
Two of those 28 depend on substitutions. Cleitinho Azevedo of the centre-right Republicanos, a sitting senator, won the governorship of Minas Gerais, and his first substitute is Alex Diniz of the PL. Sergio Moro of the PL, also a sitting senator, won the governorship of Paraná, and his first substitute is Luís Felipe Cunha of União Brasil. Moro was the federal judge who convicted Lula in the Guarujá case in 2017; the Atibaia conviction was handed down in 2019 by Judge Gabriela Hardt, his successor on that court. Both were annulled by the Supreme Court in 2021.
The PL took both Senate seats in five places: the Federal District, which contains the capital Brasília, and the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Rondônia and Santa Catarina. In São Paulo, Guilherme Derrite of the PP and André do Prado of the PL took both seats ahead of two of Lula's ministers — Simone Tebet, the Planning Minister, on 19.23%, and Marina Silva, the Environment Minister, on 18.12%, according to the television network SBT.
In Paraná, Deltan Dallagnol of the free-market Novo party won a seat. He led the prosecution task force in Operation Car Wash, known in Portuguese as Lava Jato, the corruption investigation that jailed figures across Brazil's political class. O Globo reported that his candidacy was struck out and then restored by the TSE president, Kassio Nunes Marques.
The PL also won five governorships outright, more than any other party: Sergio Moro in Paraná, Jorginho Mello in Santa Catarina, Arthur Henrique in Roraima, Luciano Zucco in Rio Grande do Sul and Marcos Rogério in Rondônia. The PSD took four, and the PT and Republicanos three each. The PT held Bahia, Ceará and Piauí. In São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas of Republicanos was re-elected with 62.65% against Fernando Haddad of the PT on 36.42%.
4. A Bolsonaro Dynasty Takes Its Seats in a Congress Its Patriarch Cannot Enter
Four members of Jair Bolsonaro's family were elected to Congress on Sunday, extending a political dynasty into a legislature the patriarch himself is barred from sitting in.
Michelle Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro's wife, was elected senator for the Federal District in her first run for office, with 932,875 votes — more than the 833,480 Cristovam Buarque took in the district in 2010.
Carlos Bolsonaro, a former Rio de Janeiro city councillor who moved his electoral domicile to Santa Catarina in 2025, was elected senator there on 25.35%, behind his party colleague Carol de Toni. Jair Renan Bolsonaro, the youngest son, was elected federal deputy for Santa Catarina with 131,555 votes, and Renato Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro's brother, was elected federal deputy for São Paulo with 379,312.
Rogéria Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro's first wife and the mother of Flávio, Carlos and Eduardo, took 65,496 votes standing for federal deputy in Rio de Janeiro, enough only for a substitute's place, according to the Minas Gerais newspaper O Tempo. Eduardo Torres, Michelle Bolsonaro's brother, took 17,314 votes for district deputy in the Federal District, also a substitute's place and his third defeat.
5. From Ineligibility to House Arrest: the Court Actions That Kept Jair Bolsonaro Off the Ballot
Former president Jair Bolsonaro spent the campaign barred from office, and what the courts did to him became the election's central dispute. The Bolsonaro camp calls the proceedings lawfare — the courts used as a political weapon. The court and Lula's government call them accountability for an attempted coup.
Flávio Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil on 8 August, in remarks carried by Estadão, that he would use the transition to pass "uma anistia ampla, geral e irrestrita" — a broad, general and unrestricted amnesty — so that his father could walk the ramp with him on 6 January. On 29 September he told SBT News that if Congress did not pass it, he would pardon everyone convicted over the 8 January 2023 invasion of the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court.
On 30 June 2023 the electoral court voted 5 to 2 to declare Jair Bolsonaro ineligible for eight years from the 2022 election, for abuse of political power and misuse of the media at a meeting with foreign ambassadors at the Alvorada presidential palace on 18 July 2022. His running mate, Walter Braga Netto, was excluded from the ruling. Justices Raul Araújo and Kassio Nunes Marques dissented; Nunes Marques now presides over the court. The ban runs through 2030.
On 11 September 2025 a panel of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) convicted him over the attempt to remain in power after the 2022 defeat. Four justices voted to convict and Luiz Fux voted to acquit, questioning the panel's jurisdiction. The sentence was 27 years and 3 months, for armed criminal organisation, attempting to abolish the democratic state by violence, a coup, aggravated damage, and deterioration of listed heritage. The case covered the post-election plot and the 8 January 2023 invasion of the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court.
Bolsonaro had been under house arrest since August 2025. On 25 November 2025 Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the sentence to begin, and Bolsonaro was taken into custody after interfering with his ankle monitor, starting his term at Federal Police headquarters in Brasília. CNN Brasil reported in September 2026 that he was later returned to house arrest on medical grounds, and that in July 2026 Moraes barred political visits and election manifestos, including through third parties, eight days before the PL nominated his son.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro's son and a former federal deputy, did not stand. He has lived in the United States since March 2025, and the Chamber revoked his mandate in December 2025 for missing more than a third of ordinary sittings. In June 2026 the STF's First Panel convicted him unanimously of coercion in the course of proceedings and sentenced him to 4 years and 2 months, initially in a semi-open regime, for seeking United States sanctions on Brazilian justices and tariffs on Brazilian goods while his father's case was before the court. On 21 September 2026 the Ministry of Justice dismissed him from his post as a Federal Police clerk for abandoning it. He faces arrest if he returns.
The charge against Jair Bolsonaro was brought by the Procuradoria-Geral da República, the federal attorney general's office. Lula appointed his former lawyer Cristiano Zanin to the STF in 2023, and Zanin sat on the panel that heard the later appeal. The rapporteur, Alexandre de Moraes, was appointed by the former president Michel Temer.
6. Flávio Bolsonaro Declares the PT Era Over; Lula Says the Race Has Gone to Extra Time
Flávio Bolsonaro spoke at his campaign committee in Brasília on Sunday night, alongside Gaspar and his wife, Fernanda Bolsonaro. The news agency Agência Estado quoted him:
"It is the end of the PT era. The end of the PT era is decreed. The PT era that is leaving as its only legacy the record of women murdered, of Brazilians in debt, of high taxes, of hopelessness, of businesses closed."
The agency quoted him again on the Supreme Court:
"I am very happy with the real possibility that, three weeks from now, Brazil will give a definitive answer that it wants a modern government, with fewer ministries, that will rescue democracy, a government that will nominate at least four justices to the Supreme Federal Court, who will not try to interfere in elections."
Lula spoke in São Paulo, where the French news agency Agence France-Presse carried his remarks:
"I admit I was convinced I would win in the first round."
On the race ahead, the agency carried a separate line:
"We are in extra time. In extra time we will convince the Brazilian people."
7. Still to Come: The Runoff on 25 October and Seven Governorship Decisions
Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula meet again on 25 October. The last runoff Lula contested, in 2022, was against Jair Bolsonaro: the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral's proclamation of 6 December 2022 gave Lula 60,345,999 votes, or 50.9%, to Jair Bolsonaro's 58,206,354, or 49.1%. The institutes' runoff simulations, taken before Sunday, had this year's second round level, and no second-round poll has been published since the count closed.
Seven governorships also go to a second round that day: Acre, Amazonas, the Federal District, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte and Tocantins. In Rio de Janeiro, Douglas Ruas of the PL leads Eduardo Paes of the PSD by 49.27% to 42.76%; in the Federal District, Celina Leão of the PP leads Leandro Grass of the PT, 49.93% to 34.47%.
Cury, Santos and Caiado, who took 7.31% between them, have not endorsed either finalist. Gilberto Kassab, the PSD's president, said on Sunday night that the party would stay neutral in the runoff and free every state directory, member of Congress and leader to choose.
The PL's projected 28 Senate seats assume that Alex Diniz succeeds Cleitinho Azevedo in Minas Gerais and that Luís Felipe Cunha of União Brasil succeeds Moro in Paraná, both following their principals' election as governors.
Conclusion
Flávio Bolsonaro finished first with 47.03% to Lula's 45.16%, and the two meet again on 25 October. The Liberal Party will open the next Congress with 121 deputies, the largest single-party bench counted since 1988, and a projected 28 senators — a figure contingent on two substitute seats. Four members of the Bolsonaro family hold seats in that Congress. Jair Bolsonaro remains barred from office until 2030 and under house arrest on a 27-year sentence.
The next firm markers are the seven governorship runoffs, any endorsement from the three eliminated candidates, and the second round itself.