Ballot machine reports released on Sunday (25) by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the top judicial body that oversees and counts elections in the country, show Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) winning six Asian nations while President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) secured victories in five countries across Asia and Oceania. The early tally of Brazilian expatriate votes in the presidential runoff began as polling stations closed on the other side of the globe, hours before voting started in Brazilian territory.
Driven by a wide margin in Japan, Flávio Bolsonaro pulled ahead in the cumulative overseas count after receiving 80.08% of the valid votes in the latest updates from the country. In Oceania, Lula opened the international counting process with wins in New Zealand, the first nation to conclude voting, and in Australia, earning more than 63% of valid ballots cast by Brazilian citizens who turned out in both territories.
Breakdown of ballot reports across 11 nations in Asia and Oceania
In New Zealand, where 526 out of 3,119 registered Brazilian voters went to thefive polling sections in the capital, Wellington, Lula received 418 votes (80.54% of valid ballots) compared to 101 votes (19.46%) for Flávio Bolsonaro, alongside four blank and three spoiled ballots. In Australia, the most recent ballot machine reports show a victory for Lula with 6,017 votes (63.46%) against 3,465 votes (36.54%) for the PL senator, updating an earlier partial count that stood at 5,290 to 2,934 in favor of the incumbent president. In Japan, which holds the third-largest community of registered Brazilian voters abroad, Flávio Bolsonaro secured 28,538 votes (80.08%) to Lula’s 7,098 votes (19.92%) across 119 ballot reports from Tokyo, Nagoya, and Hamamatsu, advancing from an earlier tally of 25,543 to 7,141; turnout reached 37,616 voters in the country, with 1,132 blank and 848 spoiled votes.
Across China, the outcome shifts depending on whether the special administrative region of Hong Kong is grouped with the mainland polling stations. Counting only Mainland China, which comprises voting sections in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, Lula prevailed with 375 votes against 134 for Flávio Bolsonaro. In Hong Kong alone, the PL candidate finished ahead by a narrow margin of 133 votes to 127. Combining all four ballot reports from Mainland China and Hong Kong, where 810 of the 2,171 eligible voters cast ballots and recorded 14 blank and 27 spoiled votes, Lula totaled 502 votes (65.28%) compared to 267 votes (34.72%) for his opponent.
Among the other seven Asian nations with ballot reports published by the electoral court by Sunday morning, Lula won in two locations while Flávio Bolsonaro led in five. In South Korea, the incumbent president obtained 148 valid votes (64.35%) against 82 (35.65%) for the senator, while in Singapore the tally closed at 213 votes (63.77%) for the PT candidate and 121 (36.23%) for the PL contender. Conversely, Flávio Bolsonaro outpolled Lula in Taiwan by 130 votes (58.04%) to 94 (41.96%) in Taipei, where 239 of 622 eligible voters turned out and cast eight blank and seven spoiled ballots; in Thailand by 60 votes (51.72%) to 56 (48.28%) in Bangkok, with 118 of 310 registered voters participating and recording two blank and zero spoiled votes; in Malaysia by 44 votes (51.76%) to 41 (48.24%); in the Philippines by 39 votes (59.09%) to 27 (40.91%); and in Indonesia by 23 votes (60.53%) to 15 (39.47%).
Profile and distribution of Brazilian voters registered abroad
A total of 918,876 Brazilian citizens living outside the country are eligible to cast ballots for president in the 2026 runoff, a figure that represents roughly 0.5% of the nation’s overall electorate of 158.7 million people. Under Brazilian electoral law, expatriates vote exclusively for the presidency, with polling stations set up across 186 cities in 134 countries. According to TSE regulations, an overseas jurisdiction must have at least 30 registered voters to open a polling section, a requirement that left 16 countries in Africa, 10 in Asia, four in the Americas, and two in Europe without voting stations during the first round of the race.
The six countries hosting the largest populations of registered Brazilian voters abroad in the 2026 election cycle are:
- United States: 265,022 eligible voters
- Portugal: 134,374 eligible voters
- Japan: 88,293 eligible voters
- Canada: 46,345 eligible voters
- United Kingdom: 41,895 eligible voters
- Germany: 41,401 eligible voters
How the runoff numbers compare to the first round and 2022
In the first round of the presidential election, held on October 4, 2026, Lula finished first in the consolidated overseas vote by receiving 157,387 ballots (47.57% of valid votes), while Flávio Bolsonaro garnered 143,900 votes (43.49%) amid an international abstention rate of 62.69%. In that initial stage, the PT candidate won in 64 countries, the PL senator led in 36 nations, and Guinea-Bissau recorded an exact tie. Four years earlier, in the 2022 presidential runoff, Lula had defeated then-President Jair Bolsonaro among expatriate voters by 152,905 votes (51.28%) to 145,264 votes (48.72%).
Across the primary Asian and Oceanian jurisdictions that finished counting on Sunday, the October 4 first round had similarly produced a win for Flávio Bolsonaro in Japan by 24,601 votes to 5,234, along with a lead in Taiwan with 107 votes against 77 for Lula. Meanwhile, Lula had led the first-round tallies in Australia by 4,562 votes to 2,579, in China by 367 to 203, in New Zealand by 234 to 64, in Singapore by 190 to 92, and in South Korea by 123 to 72.
Global voting schedule and official TSE release rules
Because polling stations operate from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time across different time zones around the world, the overseas voting process spans a total of 29 hours. The first electronic voting machines opened in Wellington, New Zealand, which is 16 hours ahead of Brasília, at 4 p.m. on Saturday (24) Brasília time and closed at 1 a.m. on Sunday, generating the first printed ballot reports around 1:50 a.m.. Across Brazil, domestic polling stations opened at 8 a.m. Brasília time.
Ballot machine reports from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas were not yet available by 9:12 a.m. Brasília time on Sunday, as in-person voting and local machine closeouts remained underway across those continents. While media outlets and observers compile early figures directly from the printed ballot reports posted at individual overseas sections, the official consolidated count of expatriate votes is only released by the TSE after 5 p.m. Brasília time on October 25, 2026, when domestic polls close in Brazil, even though the final international urns conclude voting later at 9 p.m. Brasília time in Canada.
