'Thank you to everyone for believing it was possible,' André Ventura began, saying on arrival at the Marriott Hotel in Lisbon, where he will continue to follow tonight's presidential election, the early results of which place him in a second round against António José Seguro.
André Ventura says it is necessary to 'unite the right' in the second round against Seguro
Sunday, 18 January 2026RSS
Context & Explainers
The second round (segunda volta) is a runoff held if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first round of a Portuguese presidential election. Only the top two candidates advance to the runoff, which takes place 21 days after the first round.
Portugal's Constitution requires an absolute majority for the presidency, making runoffs a possibility whenever the field is fragmented. In practice, most Portuguese presidential elections since 1976 have been decided in the first round — the only runoff to date was in 1986, when Mário Soares defeated Diogo Freitas do Amaral.
The 2026 presidential election went to a second round for only the second time in democratic history, with António José Seguro and Henrique Gouveia e Melo advancing from a crowded first-round field. Second-round dynamics often differ significantly from the first round, as voters consolidate behind two candidates and tactical considerations become paramount.
Chega ("Enough") is a Portuguese far-right populist party founded in 2019 by André Ventura. It positions itself as an anti-establishment movement against what it calls a "rotten and corrupt system" of PS-PSD dominance. The party surged from 1.3% in 2019 to 22.8% in May 2025, becoming parliament's second-largest force with 60 seats. Chega's core platform emphasizes strict immigration control—ending automatic CPLP residency, deporting non-independent immigrants, implementing job-market quotas, and requiring five-year social security contributions before benefit access. It advocates radical constitutional reform, including reducing parliament to 100 members, abolishing the prime minister position for a presidential system, and dismantling public healthcare. Law-and-order policies include life imprisonment and chemical castration proposals.
The party is defined by inflammatory anti-Romani rhetoric, with Ventura convicted multiple times for discrimination. Chega maintains international alignments with European far-right figures including Marine Le Pen, Santiago Abascal, and Matteo Salvini. Mainstream Portuguese parties, including Prime Minister Luís Montenegro's government, have imposed a cordon sanitaire, refusing coalition with Chega despite its parliamentary strength.
