Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate for reelection, attends a campaign rally, ahead of the runoff election, in Brasilia, Brazil, October 9, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Men look at newspapers displaying coverage of Brazil’s presidential election results at a newsstand in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 5, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro held a narrowing lead in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday (October 4, 2026), after more than half the votes were counted, ‌with pollster Datafolha projecting that the election would proceed to a second vote.

Mr. Flavio, the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro who hopes to ​return his father’s right-wing movement to power, was leading leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (80), who is seeking a fourth term, following a campaign dominated ⁠by corruption scandals, economic anxiety and accusations of U.S. meddling.

With about 65% of votes reported, Mr. Flavio led Mr. Lula with 49.58% of the votes to the President’s 42.25%. A candidate must pass 50% in order to win outright in the first round.

The two leading candidates were expected to head into a second round vote, Brazilian pollster Datafolha said. Surveys have shown Mr. Lula and Mr. Flavio polling roughly even in an October 25 runoff.

Early results ‌showed southern states that lean to Mr. Bolsonaro reporting faster, while votes from Mr. Lula’s northeast stronghold are tallied more slowly.

Analysts told Reuters they believed Mr. Flavio was receiving “protest votes” of people voting against Mr. Lula rather than for the right-wing senator — votes they had been expected to save until a second round.

A victory for the senator would ‌extend a wave of wins across Latin America by right-wing candidates aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump, while Lula’s reelection could create a headache for Washington, which has clashed ‌with ⁠his government over trade and security.

Despite growing worries over Brazil’s public finances and sluggish economic growth, the campaign offered meager policy debate, as both leading candidates skipped ⁠the major TV debates.

Undecided voters

While polls right up until Saturday (October 3, 2026) showed Mr. Lula would likely lead the first round but not avoid a runoff, Mr. Flavio told journalists in Rio de Janeiro he was confident he could win the presidency in the first round, citing voters’ frustration with his chief opponent.

Mr. Flavio was counting on “a protest vote from people who would otherwise vote for another candidate but are opposed to Mr. Lula,” he said. “I hope it’s enough to secure a victory in ​the first round.”

Thaise Lima, a 41-year-old lawyer on her way to vote in ‌Sao Paulo, said her main goal was to get Mr. Lula’s Workers’ Party out of office.

“I don’t think Flavio is the best candidate, but I might decide to vote for him in the next few minutes,” she said, adding that she wished psychiatrist and author Augusto Cury were a more viable candidate.

Fernando Tempel, 49, a management consultant, told Reuters he was voting for Flavio despite initially planning to vote for Romeu Zema, the former governor of Minas Gerais state.

Outside interference

On the other hand, Mr. Lula’s allies have warned that the Trump administration ‌might refuse to recognize election results if he wins, pointing to an aborted effort to send U.S. officials to Brazil.

“What is at stake is the future of ​Brazil,” Mr. Lula said after voting in Sao Bernardo do Campo, in Sao Paulo state.

Mr. Trump has not formally endorsed a candidate, though he hosted Senator Flavio Bolsonaro at the White House and praised him publicly.

“I’m a little worried about everything that’s been happening recently, including internationally. I feel this election has had a ⁠lot of outside influence, more than in previous elections,” said Cristiano, 34, a doctor in Brasilia who voted for Lula and preferred to withhold his surname.

“We are confident in our President Lula, who will fight for national sovereignty,” said Pedro Palacio, 45, who was voting in Brasilia alongside his wife, Andreia, and their two sons and two dogs, all of whom wore outfits supporting the President.

As ‌of Sunday (October 4, 2026) afternoon, the election was proceeding normally, Brazil’s electoral court chief Kassio Nunes Marques said in a press conference.

“Teams monitoring international risks have not identified any risks whatsoever,” he said.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Brazilian intelligence officials briefed a French and German delegation on alleged U.S. and Russian interference before the election. The U.S. has rejected claims of interference in Brazil’s affairs.

Economic headwinds

Despite falling inequality and unemployment, Mr. Lula has struggled to win over voters grappling with high living costs, heavy household debt and the threat of street crime and more pervasive gang activity.

Flavio Bolsonaro has sought to capitalize on cost-of-living concerns, while Mr. Lula has moved to ban online gambling and, as the race tightened, expanded welfare and proposed fresh debt relief for families.

Rising spending and public debt above 82% of GDP have stoked fiscal concerns that Brazil’s next President will need to address. The government lowered its economic growth forecasts for this year and next to 2.0% and 2.3% respectively.

“I voted for ‌Brazil to start growing again,” said Marciano de Souza e Silva, a 52-year-old public servant in Brasilia and former Mr. Lula voter who moved right, voting for Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and 2022 and Mr. Flavio on Sunday (October 4, 2026).

“The best ​social program is one that encourages people to start businesses, to actually produce real wealth,” he said.

Scandal-plagued campaigns

Overshadowing the policy debate, a scandal surrounding the now-defunct Banco Master has engulfed much of Brazil’s political class and renewed public anger over corruption.

Daniel Vorcaro, who ran the bank, was arrested earlier this year and ⁠accused of a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme. The investigation has probed the banker’s ties to figures from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to Flavio Bolsonaro, who is being investigated for money laundering tied to ⁠the case by the federal police.

The candidate has denied any wrongdoing, although he confirmed raising millions of dollars from Mr. Vorcaro to make a movie about his father.

The banker’s connections to Mr. Moraes, widely perceived as a Mr. Lula ally, plunged the court into crisis a month before the vote, creating fresh problems for the President. Mr. Moraes has said the case ‌against him is politically motivated for his role in the conviction of the elder Mr. Bolsonaro.

On Sunday (October 4, 2026), voters will also elect all 513 lower house members and two-thirds of the Senate, where some lawmakers have pushed to impeach Mr. Moraes.

Congress has gained greater influence in Brazilian politics since the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff, a Lula ally, in 2016, raising the ​stakes of those legislative races.

US President Donald Trump.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 79, has been on a whirlwind campaign of interviews and public appearances in recent weeks to shore up dwindling support, but the numbers keep getting worse.

The latest survey from Datafolha puts his popularity rating at 24% — the lowest in the three terms the charismatic former metalworker has served as Brazilian President.

It’s the economy

Mr. Lula has promised that 2025 will be the “year of the harvest” of his electoral promises, after spending the first two years “fixing” destruction he said was left behind by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

One of these promises was that under his rule, Brazilians would be back to “eating picanha,” a popular cut of beef that had gotten out of reach for many.

However, inflation has kept food prices stubbornly high — with one meme saying that instead of picanha, Lula had delivered “intermittent fasting.”

In January, food prices increased 7.25% year-on-year.

Mr. Lula’s recent suggestion that the population could control food prices by refusing to buy goods they felt were too costly was met with ridicule from the Opposition and only irritated Brazilians further.

“It’s a fundamental element” of the government’s poor image right now, political analyst Andre Cesar said.

Mr. Lula has been at loggerheads with the central bank, which has raised its key lending rate to 13.25% to combat inflation, with another one-point rise expected in March.

The real reached record lows against the dollar in December, although it has since recovered slightly, amid investor concerns over Brazil’s ability to curb public spending.

The leftist Lula — who beat Mr. Bolsonaro in 2022 by a razor-thin margin — is facing a surge in strength of the global right with the return to power of U.S. President Donald Trump.

At home, Mr. Bolsonaro retains political strength despite being barred from holding public office, and Congress has a right-wing majority.

“Today the conservative agenda is very strong in Congress,” which is currently mulling the criminalisation of drug possession and a possible amnesty for Bolsonaro supporters jailed for a riot against the seats of power in 2023, said Mr. Cesar.

Mr. Lula and his government have struggled to remain ahead of the Opposition when it comes to the digital sphere.

In January, an avalanche of disinformation about plans to track financial transactions on the beloved PIX instant money transfer system proved so tricky for the government to navigate that they backtracked entirely.

The measure, a bid to combat tax evasion, was twisted online as a plan to tax transactions and attack the poor.

Nikolas Ferreira, 28, a fiery social media star who is now a lawmaker for the right-wing Liberal Party, released a video slamming the measure that racked up more than 300 million views.

Mr. Lula’s “government is reactive… it has to face a right that is always two steps ahead,” said Mr. Cesar. “The right is digital, the left remains analog.”

In a bid to retake control of the narrative, Mr. Lula recently appointed a new communications chief and has been energetically engaging the media and traveling around the country.

It is still unclear whether Mr. Lula will seek reelection in 2026, but there is “a certain fatigue” with the President, according to an editorial in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

This has been aggravated by his health problems. The president underwent emergency surgery to stop a brain bleed in December, a few months after he suffered a fall.

“I am 79 years old… I cannot lie to anyone and much less to myself,” Mr. Lula told a local radio station. “If I am well, and I think I can be a candidate, I can run. But it is not my priority now.”

A packed bus collided with a truck and burst into flames early on Saturday in Brazil, killing more than 30 people, the fire department said.

After removing all of the victims from a major highway near the town of Teofilo Otoni in Minas Gerais, the state’s fire department reported that of the 45 people on the bus, 38, including the bus driver, had been confirmed dead.

The other passengers remained in critical condition after being transported to a local hospital.

The truck driver fled the scene, and three occupants of a car that collided with the truck and became trapped underneath survived the accident, said the fire department.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated on social media that the government was ready to provide whatever assistance was needed, and that the Federal Highway Policy was at the site.

“I deeply mourn and extend my prayers to the families of the more than 30 victims of the accident in Teofilo Otoni, Minas Gerais. I pray for the recovery of the survivors of this terrible tragedy,” he wrote on X.

A forensic investigation will be required to determine the accident’s cause, as differing accounts were gathered from witness testimonies, said the local fire department.

Initially, firefighters reported the bus had a tire blowout, causing the driver to lose control before colliding at around 4 a.m. local time, with an oncoming truck on the BR-116 federal highway, a major route connecting Brazil’s densely populated southeast to the poorer northeast.

However, witnesses also reported that a granite block the truck was transporting came loose, fell on the road and caused the collision with the bus, said the fire department.

“Only the forensic investigation will confirm the true version,” said the fire department in a statement.

The bus departed from Sao Paulo and was headed to the state of Bahia.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, waves while leaves the Sirio-Libanes Hospital after a surgery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday (December 15, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Doctors discharged Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from the hospital on Sunday (December 15, 2024), his medical team told reporters, after a pair of emergency surgeries last week to treat and prevent bleeding in his head.

The 79-year-old leftist leader also spoke publicly for the first at a hospital press conference and the doctors said he will now continue his recovery from his home in Sao Paulo.

In brief remarks, an upbeat Mr. Lula said he was eager to get back to work as soon as possible, and his medical team gave him a green light to do so, though they advised him to avoid long-haul international flights and exercise.

“I’m here, whole,” said Mr. Lula at Sao Paulo’s Sirio-Libanes Hospital where he had been receiving care. “I’m healed, I just need to take care of myself.”

The team added that the President will on Thursday (December 19, 2024) undergo a CT scan, a medical procedure used to obtain detailed internal images of the body, before returning to the capital Brasilia.

Brasilia:

Brazilian police on Tuesday arrested five people, including a member of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet, suspected of involvement in an alleged plan to kill then-President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022, days before he took office.

Documents seized by police revealed a plan to shoot or poison Lula and his Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin and put two retired army generals, National Security Adviser Augusto Heleno and former Defense Minister Braga Netto, in charge of leading the country with the idea of holding new elections.

The conspiracy included the attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice with an explosive device or poison, police said in a statement.

The Army confirmed the arrests of retired Brigadier General Mario Fernandes, who had served as a deputy minister in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, and Lieutenant Colonels Helio Ferreira Lima, Rodrigo Bezerra de Azevedo and Rafael Martins de Oliveira.

The officers were in Rio de Janeiro but were not involved in the security operation for the summit of leaders of the G20 group of major economies that is ongoing in the city, the Army statement said.

Most of the men under investigation in the alleged 2022 coup plot are military personnel with Special Forces training, or close aides to Bolsonaro, a hard-right former army officer who won the presidency in 2018.

The arrests were the first time the federal police have described a plot to kill Lula and Alckmin, and stage a coup to prevent him returning to power.

Police identified the main plotter as Fernandes, who was found in possession of a plot outline that had been printed at the presidential palace.

“A detailed operational plan called ‘Green and Yellow Dagger’ was identified, which would be executed on December 15, 2022, aimed at the murder of the elected candidates for president and vice president,” the police said in a statement.

Federal police served five arrest warrants on Tuesday, without naming the men arrested, as well as three search and seizure warrants and other 15 precautionary measures.

These included banning suspects from contacting the others and forbidding them from leaving the country.

“Investigations indicate that the criminal organization used a high level of technical-military knowledge to plan, coordinate and execute illicit actions in the months of November and December 2022,” the police statement said.

FEDERAL POLICE PROBE

Lula defeated Bolsonaro in a presidential election in October 2022 and the leftist leader took office on Jan. 1, 2023. Bolsonaro had filled his government with military officers, many of them opposed to Lula.

Bolsonaro left Brazil days before Lula’s inauguration for Florida and never recognized his electoral defeat. He eventually returned to Brazil and is under investigation for his alleged role in encouraging the riots in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023, when his supporters stormed and vandalized government buildings in the capital, hoping to cause chaos and spur the military to take power.

A federal police investigation will conclude that Bolsonaro conspired to engineer the attempted coup after he lost the election, a source with direct knowledge of the investigation told Reuters. The probe is expected to be finished this month.

Bolsonaro has made no public comment on the coup plot allegations. Reuters was trying to reach representatives of the former president and Fernandes for comment.

The Brazilian army monitored the federal operation against the coup plotters, which was carried out on Tuesday in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, Goias and Amazonas states.

According to the sources Reuters spoke to, the plotters also planned to kill Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who led investigations into Bolsonaro for abuse of power and unproven attacks on Brazil’s voting system when he was president, and banned him from running for elected office until 2030.

More than 2,000 people were arrested for participating in the January 2023 uprising in Brasilia, although most were later released. Others have been convicted by the Supreme Court on charges of involvement in an attempted coup.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Venezuela reacted furiously to Brazil’s veto at a summit in the Russian city of Kazan earlier this week, calling the decision “hostile” and “immoral” act. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro vowed on Saturday (October 26, 2024) that his country would not be silenced after Brazil vetoed its bid to join the BRICS group of emerging economies.

The South American country is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis, which the Government says is a result of US sanctions, and has long sought to join the BRICS group.

Editorial : ​One-man rule: On Venezuela’s disputed presidential election

Venezuela reacted furiously to Brazil’s veto at a summit in the Russian city of Kazan earlier this week, calling the decision “hostile” and “immoral” act.

Returning home from Kazan, Mr. Maduro said on state television that “no one will block or silence Venezuela, not today, not tomorrow, not ever”, without mentioning Brazil.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a long-time ally of Mr. Maduro. But relations between them have been strained since Mr. Maduro’s disputed re-election following the July 28 ballot, which the Opposition claims to have won.

An advisor to Mr. Lula, former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, attributed the veto to a “breach of confidence” by Venezuela.

He said Mr. Maduro had promised Mr. Lula he would publish detailed results from the July 28 election but had yet to do so.

The Venezuelan Opposition has said those results would show that Mr. Maduro was handily defeated by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who fled to Spain in September after a warrant was issued for his arrest on what the Opposition calls trumped-up charges.

Mr. Maduro said he had met officials from “nearly 30 governments” in Kazan and that “all” had hailed his “great electoral victory”.

The BRICS, which already included Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China as members, were joined in 2024 by Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.