Presidential elections were held in Portugal in 2026, with a first round on 18 January and a second round on 8 February. The incumbent president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, supported by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), had already served two consecutive terms, so he was not eligible for re-election.

Fourteen potential candidates submitted formal applications, of which eleven were certified to appear on the ballot paper. They included the former coordinator of Portugal's COVID-19 vaccination task force Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who ran as an independent, and former PSD leader Luís Marques Mendes. The Socialist Party (PS) supported the campaign of their former party leader António José Seguro. André Ventura, the leader of Chega (CH), also stood. Other candidates supported by parties were the MEPs João Cotrim de Figueiredo for Liberal Initiative (IL) and Catarina Martins for Left Bloc (BE); the former MP António Filipe for the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP); and the MP Jorge Pinto for LIVRE (L).

In the first round, Seguro (PS) won the most votes with 31%, while Ventura (CH) came second with 23.5%. Because no candidate reached the required 50% threshold, Seguro and Ventura faced each other in a second round run-off on 8 February. This was only the second time that a direct Portuguese presidential election went to a second round, after the 1986 election.

Candidates eliminated in the first round included Cotrim de Figueiredo (IL) who came third with 16%, and Gouveia e Melo (independent) fourth with 12%. Marques Mendes (PSD) received 11%, the lowest in Portuguese history for a government supported presidential candidate, surpassing the previous negative record set by Mário Soares in 2006. Catarina Martins (BE) received 2%, the lowest for a female candidate in a presidential election, while António Filipe (PCP) received less than 2%, the Communists' worst result in a presidential election.

Overall voter turnout (including overseas) in the first round was 52 percent, thirteen percentage points higher than the previous election. In Portugal itself, turnout was 61.50 percent, an increase of 16.1 percentage points compared to 2021, and the highest since 2006. Seguro defeated Ventura by a wide margin on the second round, 67% to 33%, and became the most voted candidate ever in a Portuguese election by surpassing Soares' 1991 vote total record. Overall turnout in the second round dropped slightly to 50%. António José Seguro was sworn in as President on 9 March 2026.

Background Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was re-elected in January 2021, securing nearly 61 percent of the votes in the first round. He took the oath of office on 9 March 2021, and continued the period of cohabitation with Socialist Party Prime Minister António Costa, which lasted until April 2024. This cohabitation ended after the March 2024 election, which saw Luís Montenegro, from the Social Democratic Party (the same party as the President), nominated as prime minister. During his second term, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa suffered a considerable decline in his public approval according to polling, following a series of controversies, such as gaffes surrounding abuses in the Catholic Church or regarding his opinions on prime ministers, a case involving his son, and splashing the president, related to an alleged irregular and privileged access to an expensive healthcare treatment for twins of Brazilian origin, and the succession of parliamentary dissolutions, three in just under 4 years, the most contentious being the 2024 one, after Costa's resignation following Operation Influencer, and with the president rejecting alternative solutions proposed by the ruling Socialist Party. The relationship between Marcelo and the two prime ministers during his second term was also tense, ranging from disagreements with Costa over controversies in his government, to a distant and cold one with Montenegro.

Within the Portuguese political system, the president serves as the head of state with primarily ceremonial duties, though the president holds some political influence and can dissolve Parliament during a crisis. The president resides at the Belém Palace in Lisbon. Since the Carnation Revolution, all Portuguese presidents have been re-elected for a second term and never tried a third, with one exception: Mário Soares (PS), who sought a non-consecutive third term in the 2006 presidential election but lost. Thus, every president since 1976 has served exactly two terms.

Pre-campaign Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who rose to prominence as the coordinator of Portugal's COVID-19 Vaccination Task Force, quickly emerged as a leading candidate in early polling as far back as mid-2022. Over the next two years, he repeatedly oscillated in his public statements regarding his intentions to run, fueling speculation. By November 2024, having declined to be renominated as Chief of the Naval Staff, Gouveia e Melo started preparing his path for the presidency, signaling the support from local politicians and stating that he didn't want the support of any party. He ultimately announced his candidacy in May 2025.

On the traditional centre-right, the Social Democratic Party had several high-profile potential candidates for the presidency, including the former prime ministers Pedro Passos Coelho and Pedro Santana Lopes, as well as former party leaders Luís Marques Mendes and Rui Rio, and former Minister Leonor Beleza. Among these, Marques Mendes soon emerged as the leading candidate, announcing his candidacy in February 2025 and receiving the support of the party in May 2025. Meanwhile, the CDS–PP, the junior partner of PSD in the AD coalition, hoped that the former leader and former deputy prime minister, Paulo Portas, would run but, after he declined to seek the presidency, CDS declared support for Marques Mendes, despite internal divisions.

On the centre-left, Pedro Nuno Santos announced in January 2024, after being elected as Secretary-general of the Socialist Party, that he wanted the party to support a presidential candidate in the 2026 election, as the last time the PS had supported a candidate was Manuel Alegre in the 2011 presidential election. Multiple socialist figures soon emerged as potential contenders, but, as the political landscape changed, many of these started losing momentum. Former president of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, was considered as a strong candidate until he lost his seat as an MP in the March 2024 legislative election. The governor of the Bank of Portugal, Mário Centeno, was also considered as a strong contender, due to his popularity as Minister of Finance, until he declined to run in January 2025.

By then, two main candidates emerged to represent the traditional left, the former PS leader, António José Seguro, who had been out of politics since 2014, and the former director-general of the International Organization for Migration, António Vitorino, as a group of high-profile socialists rejected the possibility of Seguro being the party's candidate, even suggesting an internal referendum to decide the party's presidential candidate, an idea that was ultimately rejected. Vitorino, who had by then failed to gain much support within the party's leadership as was expected, ended up backing away from the race following the poor results of the PS in the May 2025 legislative election, paving the way for Seguro as the clear favorite to receive the party's support in the presidential election. Despite the attempt from Seguro's opponents to draft the runner-up of the 2016 presidential election, António Sampaio da Nóvoa, and a final failed effort from Santos Silva to gain support to run, António José Seguro ended up announcing his candidacy in June 2025, receiving an almost unanimous support of the PS following the 2025 Portuguese local elections.

On the left of the PS, the absence of Sampaio da Nóvoa from the race eliminated the prospects for a united left front, prompting each party to run their own candidates, despite attempts from Seguro supporters for a single left-wing candidacy. The Communist Party announced the candidacy of former vice president of the Assembly of the Republic, António Filipe, in June 2025, with Filipe resolutely stating that he would not withdraw from the race. Catarina Martins, former leader of the Left Bloc, and incumbent MEP, entered the race in September 2025, followed in October by Jorge Pinto, a LIVRE MP from Porto. André Ventura, the leader of the radical right-wing populist Chega, and a candidate in the previous presidential election, announced his candidacy in January 2025. Following unprecedentedly strong results in the May 2025 legislative election, that made him the leader of the opposition, Ventura considered alternative candidates, such as Passos Coelho, the former CDS leader Manuel Monteiro, Major general Isidro Morais Pereira, and even considered the idea of supporting Gouveia e Melo. Nonetheless, Ventura ended up confirming his own candidacy in September 2025.

For the liberals, with Rui Rocha's re-election as leader of the Liberal Initiative, parliamentary leader Mariana Leitão was initially designated as the party's presidential candidate. However, Rocha later resigned as party leader following the 2025 legislative election, and Leitão shifted her focus to run for the liberals' leadership, withdrawing from the presidential race. In August, former leader and incumbent liberal MEP, João Cotrim de Figueiredo, announced his candidacy, becoming a major right-wing contender, precluding figures, like outgoing mayor of Porto Rui Moreira, from entering the race. Both People Animals Nature and Together for the People decided not to present or back any candidate for the first round of the election, while PAN has said they would likely support a candidate in the second round. Despite that, both Inês Sousa Real and Filipe Sousa, sole deputies from both parties, supported Seguro in the first round.

Electoral system

To stand for election, candidates must be of Portuguese origin and over 35 years old, gather 7,500 signatures of support one month before the election, and submit them to the Constitutional Court of Portugal. Then, the Constitutional Court has to certify if the candidacies submitted meet the requirements to appear on the ballot. A candidate must receive a majority of votes (50% plus one vote) to be elected. If no candidate achieves a majority in the first round, a runoff election (i.e., second round, held between the two candidates who receive the most votes in the first round) has to be held. The highest number of candidacies ever accepted was ten, in 2016. Since the Carnation Revolution, there had only been a single runoff election, in the 1986 Portuguese presidential election, when Diogo Freitas do Amaral (46.3% of votes in the first round and 48.8% in the second) lost to Mário Soares (25.4% in the first round and 51.2% in the second).

Early voting Voters were also able to vote early, with voting starting on 5 January for hospitalized and incarcerated voters and on 6 January for Portuguese citizens living abroad, ending for both groups on 8 January.. For citizens living in Portugal early voting occurred on 11 January, one week before election day, with voters having to register between 4 and 8 January to be eligible to cast an early ballot. By 8 January deadline, 218,481 voters (around 2% of the total of voters) had requested to vote early, a number lower than that recorded in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the second round, 308,501 voters (around 3% of the total of voters) requested to cast an early ballot on 1 February, a considerably larger number than in the first round, with registration having been open between 24 and 29 January.

Candidates

Official candidates