Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil)

What it is

Jair Messias Bolsonaro is a Brazilian far-right politician and former army captain who served as Brazil's 38th president from January 2019 to January 2023. After losing the October 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by 1.8 percentage points, he and a circle of military officers, former ministers, and security officials conspired to overturn the result. On September 11, 2025, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) convicted him on five counts related to that conspiracy and sentenced him to 27 years and 3 months in a closed-regime prison, the stiffest sentence among eight defendants tried together.

History

Born March 21, 1955, in Glicério, São Paulo, Bolsonaro graduated from the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras in 1977 and served as a paratrooper infantry captain. After a 1986 magazine article criticizing army pay led to his military arrest, he left the army in 1988 and won a Rio de Janeiro city council seat the following year. He won a federal deputy seat in 1990 and served seven consecutive terms in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies through 2018, building a reputation for provocative nationalist and authoritarian statements.

In October 2018, Bolsonaro defeated the Workers' Party candidate Fernando Haddad in a presidential runoff, winning roughly 55% of the vote after surviving a stabbing attack on the campaign trail in September. His four-year government loosened Brazil's gun laws, dismantled Amazon-protection institutions, and oriented foreign policy closely toward Donald Trump's first-term US administration. In October 2022, he lost a rematch with Lula 49.1% to 50.9%, the narrowest Brazilian presidential margin since re-democratization.

On January 8, 2023, crowds of Bolsonaro supporters stormed and ransacked Brazil's Congress, the STF, and the presidential palace in Brasília, demanding that the military intervene to reverse the election. Bolsonaro was in Florida at the time and did not publicly call off the attack.

Current state

In June 2023, Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) voted 5-2 to bar Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030, finding he abused presidential power by summoning foreign ambassadors in July 2022 to spread baseless claims about Brazil's electronic voting machines.

The STF's First Panel voted 4-1 to convict him in Criminal Action 2668 on September 11, 2025, on five counts: leading an armed criminal organization, violently abolishing the democratic rule of law, staging a coup d'état, and two charges of damaging public and listed heritage property. Justice Luiz Fux dissented. The seven co-conspirators convicted alongside him included former Defence Minister Walter Braga Netto (his 2022 running mate), former Defence Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and former Justice Minister Anderson Torres.

Bolsonaro began serving his sentence on November 25, 2025. In March 2026, the STF granted temporary humanitarian house arrest after he was hospitalized with bacterial bronchopneumonia; as of July 2026 he remains under house arrest. A criminal review petition (revisão criminal) is pending before the STF. A congressional amnesty bill pushed by his allies has stalled in the Brazilian Senate.

Relationships

Bolsonaro's two politically active sons are working to keep the movement alive. Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal deputy, was convicted by the STF in June 2026 to four years and two months for lobbying US officials to sanction Brazilian judges overseeing his father's case; see STFがエドゥアルド・ボルソナーロを有罪判決、トランプ政権にブラジル裁判官への制裁を求めたロビー活動で. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro was implicated in the 流出音声がフラヴィオ・ボルソナロと収監中の銀行家を結ぶ、1億3,400万レアルの映画資金要求, a recording linking him to a financial backer over a Bolsonaro biopic.

Lula, whose narrow 2022 victory triggered the coup attempt, is tracked in Lula leads Flávio Bolsonaro by double digits as the fourth-term campaign hardens against Bolsonaro-aligned candidates heading into the ルーラとボルソナロ息子がブラジルの10月投票に向けて全くの互角で臨む. STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes was both the presiding judge in the coup case and a named target of the alleged assassination plot, a dual role that Bolsonaro's defense argued constituted disqualifying bias.

What to watch

Whether the STF accepts Bolsonaro's revisão criminal or makes his house arrest permanent will shape his situation through the rest of 2026. The congressional amnesty bill, if passed, would not automatically reverse the TSE's 2030 ineligibility order. Eduardo Bolsonaro's pending appeal adds a US-Brazil diplomatic dimension. The October 2026 Brazilian general election will be the first test of whether Bolsonarismo functions as an organized force without its namesake on the ballot.