About this election
Portugal held a presidential election with a first round on 18 January 2026 and a run-off on 8 February 2026. In the first round, former Socialist prime minister Antonio Jose Seguro led with 31.1%, ahead of the far-right Chega leader Andre Ventura on 23.5%, the Liberal Initiative-backed Joao Cotrim de Figueiredo on 16.0%, the independent former admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo on 12.3%, and the Social Democrat Luis Marques Mendes on 11.3%. As no candidate passed 50%, the top two advanced to a run-off, which Seguro won decisively, 66.84% to 33.16%, on a turnout of 50.03%. His victory kept the presidency out of Chega's hands — a result widely seen as a significant moment given Ventura's strong first-round showing.
Portugal is a semi-presidential republic, and the contest took place against the rapid rise of Chega ("Enough"), which had become the country's third political force and won 50 seats in the 2024 legislative election. The outgoing president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, had served two consecutive terms and was constitutionally barred from standing again, leaving an open field. The campaign became, in effect, a test of whether the far right could capture the highest office in the state.
The president of Portugal is elected directly for a five-year term by a two-round system: if no candidate wins an absolute majority of valid votes in the first round, the two leading candidates contest a run-off within three weeks. The presidency is largely ceremonial but carries real reserve powers — vetoing legislation, appointing the prime minister, dissolving parliament in a crisis and declaring states of emergency — which makes the office an important check within the political system. A president may not serve more than two consecutive terms.
Antonio Jose Seguro, backed by the Socialist Party, had led the PS from 2011 to 2014 and offered a moderate, institutionalist profile. Andre Ventura of Chega ran as the insurgent right-wing challenger. The field also included the liberal Joao Cotrim de Figueiredo, the independent Henrique Gouveia e Melo — a retired admiral who had led Portugal's vaccination campaign — and the Social Democrat Luis Marques Mendes, splitting the centre and centre-right vote across several candidacies.
With the centre and left coalescing behind Seguro in the second round, he more than doubled Ventura's support, taking just under 67% of the vote. The breadth of that margin underlined a pattern seen elsewhere in Europe: a fragmented first-round field followed by a broad anti-far-right coalition in the decisive round. It was only the second Portuguese presidential election since 1986 to require a run-off.
In January 2021, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had been comfortably re-elected in the first round with about 60.7%, with Ventura then finishing third. The 2026 result confirmed Ventura's continued rise in raw support but also the limits of that support in a head-to-head contest, as the rest of the political spectrum united against him.
Seguro takes office as a Socialist-aligned head of state alongside a parliament in which the right and far right are strong, setting up a period of cohabitation. The president's powers to appoint prime ministers and to dissolve parliament give the office real influence over how any future government crisis is resolved.
The contest was also a measure of how far Chega has come. The party won a single seat in 2019, grew rapidly, and took 50 seats in the 2024 legislative election to become Portugal’s third force; reaching a presidential run-off in 2026 confirmed that trajectory. Yet the second round, in which Ventura was held to a third of the vote as the rest of the spectrum coalesced behind Seguro, also showed the ceiling that a broad anti-far-right coalition can still impose in a two-candidate contest.
National Elections Commission of Portugal (Comissao Nacional de Eleicoes, CNE) — cne.pt.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.