Incumbent radical leftist President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his main rival, conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, kicked off their respective campaigns on Sunday ahead of the October elections.
Brazil will hold general elections on October 4, including the first round of the 2026 presidential election, with a prospective runoff between the two most voted candidates scheduled for October 25. Although there are currently 13 candidates set to appear in the ballot, the election will largely be defined by the competition between Lula, who is seeking a fourth term, and Sen. Bolsonaro, who is running after his father, conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro, was banned from office and imprisoned for 27 years on “crimes against democracy” charges.
The ruling far-left Workers’ Party (PT) detailed that Lula launched his campaign with a rally at the Vila Euclides stadium in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo. According to the party, the event saw a turnout of about 40,000 attendees. At the rally, Rosângela “Janja” Lula da Silva debuted what Brazilian outlets describe as the “jingle” of Lula’s 2026 campaign.
Lula and the PT chose the Vila Euclides stadium to launch his campaign because it is the location that the Brazilian president used to deliver a speech in 1979 as a trade union leader. Per the PT party, Lula read a letter symbolically addressed to his younger self in which he “encouraged” and congratulated himself for his achievements in the decades following his 1979 rally.
Speaking to his followers, Lula affirmed that he has the same voice tone that he had 47 years ago, “maybe a little hoarser, perhaps without the innocence in the voice that I had.” Lula stated that he is the first Brazilian president to have been elected three times, and affirmed, “As long as I’m alive, I won’t stop fighting or let the right wing, a right wing that used to laugh at children dying from a lack of medicine, take over.”
“A right wing that is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people from COVID due to its irresponsibility in never vaccinating,” Lula said, without specifically naming anyone in his accusations. In reality, “COVID,” or the Wuhan coronavirus, spread globally as a result of the mismanagement of the world’s largest Communist Party, not the “right wing.”
The Brazilian president published an electoral ad video on Monday morning showcasing footage of his 1979 and 2026 speeches at the Villa Euclides stadium.
Senator Flavio Bolsonaro kickstarted his presidential campaign with a rally at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro alongside the PL party’s local candidates. Bolsonaro, wearing a shirt that read “Brazil will win” in Portuguese, delivered a speech that Jovem Pan described as going back to the “roots” of his father’s conservative movement.
Per Jovem Pan, Bolsonaro criticized Lula and his administration for the lack of results in the fight against crime and vowed to designate criminal gangs such as the Red Command (CV) as terrorist organizations as the United States did earlier this year. The Brazilian senator also accused Lula’s policies of saddling Brazilians with debt, higher taxes, and rising prices.
“Vote 22 [Bolsonaro’s number on the ballot]. We kicked off this Sunday and this campaign on the right foot, more than ready to pull Brazil out of the red,” Flavio Bolsonaro wrote on social media.
“The message from the streets is clear: OUT WITH LULA. Let’s reclaim our country and make Brazil great again. Brazil will win!” he continued.
The Brazilian senator said that he is aware that it is “difficult to compare Pelé’s son with Pelé,” referencing late Brazilian soccer legend Edson Arantes do Nascimento and his son and comparing them with himself and his father, Jair Bolsonaro. Sen. Bolsonaro vowed to uphold the security promises that his father had made in the 2022 election, such as the chemical castration of individuals convicted of rape. Regarding the ongoing trade disputes between Brazil and the United States, Bolsonaro reportedly affirmed that he is the “only one” who can sit down and negotiate trade deals with the U.S. and other countries such as China, Israel, India, and Argentina.
According to the state-owned news agency Agência Brasil, audio clips of Jair Bolsonaro reflecting upon family after he suffered an assassination attempt in 2018 were played during the event. Sen. Bolsonaro vowed to uphold his father’s defense of families during his Copacabana event.
Although polls released over the past months indicated that Lula had increased his advantage over Sen. Bolsonaro, Jovem Pan reports that the most recent poll published on Monday by the Brazilian firm Nexus indicates that the two candidates are “technically tied” within the margin of error in a prospective runoff scenario. Another poll, published by Quaest over the weekend, also suggests a technical tie runoff scenario between the two candidates.
As per Brazil’s electoral laws, all participating candidates have until early October to host campaigns events, publish electoral ads, and publicly call for Brazilians to vote for them, among other electoral-related prerogatives.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.