We are mobilizing to Brazil. Here’s why.

In October 2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. For months beforehand, Bolsonaro had attacked Brazil’s electronic voting system with allegations that were repeatedly rejected by electoral authorities and contradicted by international observers. After his defeat, supporters refused to accept the result. On 8 January 2023, thousands invaded and ransacked Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace in an attempt to overturn the result.

In September 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted Bolsonaro of leading a plot to prevent the legal transfer of power and sentenced him to prison. His eldest son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is President Lula’s main challenger in this year’s election.

The attacks on Brazil’s electoral system have continued. In July, Flávio Bolsonaro revived doubts about the electronic voting machines, including the false claim that they were supplied by Smartmatic. Brazil also denied visas to two Trump administration officials whom Brazilian officials said planned to visit the country to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral system.

The Trump administration has deployed economic coercion to Brazilian domestic politics. In 2025, Washington imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Brazilian goods and explicitly linked them to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, while imposing sanctions on the Supreme Court justice overseeing his trial and revoking visas from other judges. Trump publicly demanded that Brazil “LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

In May 2026, Flávio Bolsonaro met Trump in the Oval Office. Trump subsequently described him as “a smart young man.” In July, Washington introduced a new 25 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods, covering billions of dollars of Brazilian exports.

The United States has designated two major Brazilian criminal organisations as terrorist groups, which could be used to justify US extraterritorial and extrajudicial action in line with the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September, Lula warned that Brazil was once again confronting “external interference in electoral processes.”

“Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard,” he said. “We will not allow the enemies of democracy, internal or external, to undermine the popular will.”

Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro lead the field, with recent polls placing them within the margin of error in a potential second round. If no candidate wins more than half of valid votes on 4 October, the two leading candidates will proceed to a runoff on 25 October.

The election is also a contest between sharply different political programmes. Lula’s government has banned online betting amid evidence that 10.9 million Brazilians displayed risky or problematic gambling patterns and announced a plan to buy distressed household debt at discounts of at least 90 per cent, passing the write-down on to borrowers. Flávio Bolsonaro has denounced the betting ban as “populist” and is campaigning on privatisation combined with tax and spending cuts, while making his father’s release a central political objective.

It is in this context that the Progressive International is mobilising to Brazil. The Observatory is deploying a high-level delegation of parliamentarians, former ministers, political leaders, academics, lawyers, organisers and experienced electoral observers from across the hemisphere and beyond.

The delegation will observe, monitor and report independently on the integrity of the electoral process. Particular attention will be paid to the operation of Brazil’s electronic voting system; political violence and intimidation; electoral disinformation; coordinated networks of bots and digital accounts; the conduct of online platforms and foreign political consultants; and attempts by foreign governments or other external actors to interfere with the free expression of the Brazilian people.

The election’s stakes extend across the hemisphere and beyond. Trump has pledged to reassert US dominance in the Americas, used military force in Venezuela and assembled a growing bloc of far-right governments behind his agenda. After recent right-wing victories across Latin America, Brazil stands as the last major obstacle to a sweep of Trump-aligned governments. 

At stake on 4 October is the resilience of Brazilian democracy after an attempted coup — and the ability of Latin America’s largest country to determine its own political and economic course amid tariffs, diplomatic pressure and renewed US intervention. That is why the Progressive International is mobilising to Brazil: to observe the vote, document threats to its integrity, and defend the right of the Brazilian people to determine their future free from intimidation or foreign interference.