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The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced he will seek a historic fourth term in next year’s presidential election, potentially extending one of the most remarkable and enduring political careers in modern Latin American history.
The former metalworker, who returned to the presidency in 2023 after beating the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, confirmed his decision during a speech in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
“I’m about to turn 80 but you can be sure that I’ve got as much energy as I did when I was 30. And I’m going to run for a fourth term in Brazil,” announced Lula, who celebrates his birthday on Monday.
Even as he approaches 80, Lula remains by far the most influential figure on the Brazilian left – a status the former union leader has enjoyed for the last 40 years. If elected, he would be 85 by the time he finishes his fourth term and would have become the only democratically elected Brazilian to have spent 16 years of his life in power.
Joe Biden’s disastrous 2024 re-election campaign, which the 81-year-old president was forced to abandon after an excruciating debate with Donald Trump, left some Brazilian voters fretting over the wisdom of an octogenarian Lula seeking another term.
But Fernando Morais, Lula’s biographer and friend, insisted Brazil’s gym-going president was fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack and hadn’t smoked a single cigarette since quitting after overcoming throat cancer nearly 15 years ago.
“He’s not Joe Biden … I’ve never seen him suffer a memory lapse, neither in public nor in private when it’s just the two of us chatting … He’s someone who has astounding physical energy, not to mention the energy of his soul,” Morais said, showing off as proof a photograph of Lula taking a swipe at a punch bag with his red boxing gloves.
The Brazilian writer, who travelled around the world with Lula while researching his biography, recalled how the pair once spent 23 hours flying back to Brazil from India, with a layover in Mozambique. “When we landed … I was a total wreck – a corpse – and I said: ‘OK, President, let’s go home and get some kip,’” Morais said. “But he said: ‘No, I’m off to Taubaté [a city in São Paulo] because I’ve got a rally to do there to help one of our candidates.’”
“It’s unbelievable,” Morais added. “He’s one of those people who hardly needs to sleep. Four or five hours and he’s fine.”
Lula first ran for elected office in 1982 and launched his first (unsuccessful) presidential campaign in 1989 before eventually winning power in 2002 and becoming his country’s first working-class president.
The leftwing veteran appears well-placed to win next October’s election, with Brazil’s right currently in disarray after its most important leader, Bolsonaro, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stop Lula taking power with a military coup. Would-be successors are jostling to fill Bolsonaro’s shoes but polls suggest Lula would beat all of them.
Lula’s hopes of claiming a fourth term have been boosted by a cack-handed campaign by the Trump administration to help Bolsonaro avoid jail by hitting Brazil with 50% tariffs and sanctioning officials. That pressure failed to save Bolsonaro’s skin and gave Lula a bump in the polls.
Trump recently extended an olive branch to the Brazilian president, saying he “seemed like a very nice man”, and the pair are expected to meet in Malaysia this weekend.
Morais said he believed that if the 2026 election were held today, “Lula would win in the first round”.
“I’m convinced his fourth term will be his best term of all and it will be the term that allows him to enter history through the front door,” he said.
Not everyone is so convinced the 2026 vote will be a cakewalk.
Celso Rocha de Barros, the author of a recent book about Lula’s Workers’ party (PT), saw its leader as the slight favourite. “But the election is still completely open,” he added.
Barros predicted a tight race against the most likely rightwing candidate, the São Paulo governor and former Bolsonaro minister Tarcísio de Freitas, who would probably receive “the wholesale support of the political and economic elites”.
In a recent interview, Guilherme Boulos, a 43-year-old politician widely considered one of Lula’s most promising heirs, warned the election would be a bitter fight between Lula and whoever inherited Bolsonaro’s votes. “In the last election Lula only beat Bolsonaro by two million votes … [and] the country remains polarized. It will be a tough, difficult election. And I don’t doubt that the major internet platforms and big techs will act directly to favour the far-right candidate.
“It’s going to be war,” added Boulos, who Lula this week made a minister and gave orders to roam South America’s largest country country to mobilize support.
