Credit : BRICS News's X
BRASÍLIA, October 25, 2026 – Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro has refused to accept his defeat to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s presidential runoff and says he will ask the courts to annul the election, BRICS News reported, setting up a legal fight over a vote that Brazil’s top institutions have already recognised.
“JUST IN: Flávio Bolsonaro officially rejects results of presidential election against Lula da Silva,” BRICS News said in a post on X, quoting the right-wing candidate as saying: “It is impossible to recognize the election results… we will use our legal team, we will request the annulment of these elections.”
https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/2114538048843030909
In an earlier post, BRICS News said Flávio Bolsonaro was asking the court to overturn Brazil’s presidential election results, citing voting issues.
https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/2114535648065691759
Speaking in Brasília on Sunday night, the Liberal Party (PL) candidate blamed his loss on the decision by Supreme Federal Court (STF) justice Cristiano Zanin to extend voting by two hours, until 7pm Brasília time, Reuters reported. Flávio called the ruling “unacceptable” and said it amounted to “a total break in equality” between voters in different cities and states, according to Brazilian newspaper O Globo. “I will never know, in a state where the ballot boxes were not reopened, how many votes I could have had,” he said, as quoted by R7. “I will not accept that the rules of the game were changed in the middle of the game.”
He also argued that Zanin had overstepped the specialised electoral courts. Zanin served as Lula’s lawyer in the Lava Jato corruption cases and was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lula in 2023, R7 noted.
With 99.99 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Lula had 51.78 per cent of the vote against 48.22 per cent for Flávio Bolsonaro, a margin of more than 4.4 million votes, O Globo reported. The result gives Lula a fourth, non-consecutive term in office. The heads of the Supreme Court, Edson Fachin, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Nunes Marques, the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, and the Chamber of Deputies, Hugo Motta, have all recognised the outcome, the newspaper said.
The extension at the heart of the dispute was ordered late on polling day after Lula’s coalition complained that reduced bus services in several states were keeping voters away from the polls. Zanin later clarified, together with the TSE, that the extra time applied only to polling stations still open at 5pm. However, Flávio Bolsonaro’s own campaign had also asked the TSE for a two-hour extension in municipalities in São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina hit by heavy rain and flooding, according to R7 and O Globo, a point he did not mention in his remarks.
Electoral law specialists interviewed by BBC News Brasil said the chances of the runoff being annulled were remote, given the size of Lula’s lead and the fact that both campaigns had asked for voting hours to be extended. Lawyers said any challenge would likely rely on articles 220 and 224 of Brazil’s Electoral Code, which allow a polling station’s vote to be voided if it was held at a time other than that designated, and require a fresh election only if such problems affect more than half of the national vote. Turnout also improved between the two rounds, with abstention falling from about 21 per cent to 19 per cent, the BBC said.
Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, a senator since 2019, is the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of plotting a coup and is barred from running. Flávio had finished ahead of Lula in the first round on October 4 but fell short of the 50 per cent needed to win outright. The runoff was in effect a rematch of 2022, when Lula narrowly defeated Jair Bolsonaro.
The dispute is likely to be closely watched by Brazil’s BRICS partners, including Russia, India, China and South Africa, as Lula prepares for a new mandate in a deeply divided country.
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