Lula Wins a Fourth Term as Brazil's President in a Knife-Edge Vote

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as president of Brazil, narrowly beating the right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, in a knife-edge vote.

Lula is a former metalworker and union leader who was later imprisoned, and who has at times been at odds with Donald Trump.

Why a Brazilian election lands on an Ethiopian business page

Through the group both countries belong to, and through the commodities both sell.

Brazil and Ethiopia sit inside the expanded BRICS bloc, and Lula has been the most persistent advocate among its leaders for the argument the grouping exists to make: that trade, payments and development finance should run through more than one set of institutions. A Brazilian president with four terms of standing is the loudest voice available for a position Ethiopia has material reasons to want advanced — on development lending terms, on debt treatment, and on settling trade outside the dollar.

Then there is coffee. Brazil is the world's largest producer and sets the global price that Ethiopia's exporters receive. Brazilian agricultural policy, its currency and its harvest matter more to the earnings of an Ethiopian coffee exporter than almost any domestic decision — and coffee, alongside gold, is carrying Ethiopia's export numbers right now.

The narrowness is the story

A fourth term won on a knife edge is a mandate and a warning in the same result. Brazil is as divided as the margin suggests, and a presidency that begins with half the country against it is constrained at home — which usually means a leader looks abroad for the wins.

For a bloc Ethiopia has joined, that is not the worst arrangement.

Open

The final margin and turnout figures were still being reported, and Lula has not set out his foreign policy priorities for the term or indicated whether the BRICS agenda he pushed in his previous terms will be carried forward at the same intensity.

Sources: BBC News, 26 October 2026, BBC News, 26 October 2026