Brazil's two main presidential candidates launched their campaigns on Sunday in venues rich with personal and political symbolism, marking the start of what analysts describe as one of the most consequential elections in the world this year. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, rallied more than 10,000 supporters at the Vila Euclides stadium in São Bernardo do Campo, a working-class city in the industrial belt outside São Paulo — the very place where, nearly half a century ago, he led landmark metalworkers' strikes that helped dismantle Brazil's 1964–1985 military dictatorship. Meanwhile, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45 and the eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, launched his campaign on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, previously the stage for massive rallies supporting his father.

Lula, who wore a hat following a skin cancer diagnosis, framed his bid for a historic fourth nonconsecutive term as a defence of Brazil's social progress against what he called the chaos of his predecessor's rule. He reminded supporters that hundreds of thousands of Brazilians died during the Covid-19 pandemic, which Jair Bolsonaro was widely accused of mishandling through anti-science policies, and that gun laws were loosened in ways that bolstered organised crime.