Presidential elections Portugal: January 18 and February 8, 2026
The Justice for Prosperity Foundation (JfP) investigated foreign manipulation and disinformation targeting eight European elections between September 2025 and April 2026. In our report, we mapped the operations, domestic amplifiers and their effect for each country. This page focuses entirely on Portugal.
André Ventura, founder of the political party Chega, became the first far-right candidate ever to reach the second round of the Portuguese presidential elections with approximately 24 percent. On February 8, he lost to former PS leader António José Seguro by nearly 67 percent . Democracy held firm.
The official Portuguese disinformation watchdog LabCom/ODEPOL documented 14 disinformation cases with a total of 7.7 million views. In 85.7% of those cases , the content originated from André Ventura, with anti-migration narratives and attacks on the media being the most prevalent. Although LabCom does not classify Ventura as a pro-Russian actor, his narratives overlapped substantively with Kremlin themes: migration as a threat and doubts about the reliability of media and elections.
One example of how Ventura further fueled disinformation is the well-known Vondelkerk fire. On January 1, he shared a video of the fire which damaged the Amsterdam Vondelkerk, titled “ Islamização da Europa” (Islamization of Europe). The result? 1,028,534 views and 3,487 shares on social media platforms like X and Instagram. The Vondelkerk fire was widely picked up by European far-right networks, influencers, and pro-Kremlin media. The lie that the fire was an attack on Christian Europe spread rapidly. JfP conducted extensive research into this.
Direct Russian support for Ventura has not been proven; he publicly rejected aid from the Kremlin. Pro-Kremlin networks amplified narratives that benefited his campaign.
FIMI operations per country
Click below for more information on election interference in other countries.
Justice for Prosperity (JfP) is an independent research and detection platform based in Amsterdam that exposes and helps counter societal manipulation and subversive threats. We investigate how actors organise themselves online and offline, what networks, narratives, amplifiers and revenue models drive them, and how they put democratic processes and institutions, social cohesion and fundamental rights under pressure.
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