António José Seguro

António José Seguro

António José Martins Seguro (born 11 March 1962) is a Portuguese politician who has been the president of Portugal since 2026, having won the 2026 Portuguese presidential election. A member of the Socialist Party (PS), Seguro previously served as secretary-general of the PS from 2011 to 2014, during which time he was also the leader of the opposition.

Early life and education

António José Seguro

António José Seguro as a child, in the 1960's

Seguro was born on 11 March 1962 in Penamacor, the third and youngest son of Domingos Sanches Seguro (1926–2017) and Maria do Céu Martins (1927–2011). The family comprised mostly rural workers from the Beira Baixa region; Seguro's father, Domingos, ran a newsagent's. He entered politics at a very young age and became a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) as a youth. He attended the 1st cycle program in business organization and management at the ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute, but he did not graduate. Seguro has a degree in international relations awarded later by the Autonomous University of Lisbon.

Career

Early activism, minister, and MEP

Seguro became involved in political activities from a very young age, always linked to the Socialist Party (PS). He was successively secretary general of Socialist Youth, president of the National Youth Council and chairman of the Youth Forum of the European Communities. He was first elected to the Portuguese Parliament in (/wiki/1991Portugueselegislativeelection). In (/wiki/1995Portugueselegislativeelection), the Socialist Party won the parliamentary elections, leaving the leader António Guterres to form a government. Seguro initially was Secretary of State for Youth Affairs and, starting in 1997, Secretary of State Assistant to the Prime Minister. He also played the role of coordinator of the Standing Committee of the Portuguese Socialist Party and president of the Municipal Assembly of Penamacor. In (/wiki/1999EuropeanParliamentelectioninPortugal), Seguro was elected as a Member of the European Parliament, being the second name in a list led by former President Mário Soares.

Official portrait as an MEP, 1999

Seguro served as an MEP between July 1999 and July 2001, being an effective member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (in these functions he was co-author of the Report on the Treaty of Nice and the Future of the European Union), and was also a substitute for the Commission for Employment and Social Affairs. He was also president of the Delegation for Relations with Central America and Mexico, vice president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and president of the Portuguese Socialist delegation.

Seguro resigned as an MEP in 2001 to serve as Minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, again under António Guterres. In (/wiki/2002Portugueselegislativeelection), he returned to the Assembly of the Republic, serving as the Socialist Parliamentary leader from 2004 to 2005. He was also appointed member of the National Secretariat of the Socialist Party. He accumulated these positions with membership in the Municipal Assembly of Gouveia after being elected in the 2001 local elections.

After Ferro Rodrigues' resignation as Secretary-general of PS in 2004, Seguro was considered as a potential candidate for the leadership election, but he was convinced by Jorge Coelho not to run since it was "not his time". He opposed the leadership of José Sócrates in several moments, breaking party discipline to vote against the party finances law, oppose consumption tax increases and defending a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon.

Secretary-general of the Socialist Party

Seguro on the election night of the 2014 European Parliament election in Portugal

After Prime Minister José Sócrates resigned as PS General Secretary on the election night of 5 June 2011, having lost the general election by a margin higher than expected, Seguro was elected leader of the party on 23 July 2011, winning 68% of the vote against his challenger, Francisco Assis, who got 32%.

As secretary-general, Seguro decided to abstain in the 2012 State Budget proposed by the Passos Coelho government, citing his decision as a "violent, but constructive abstention", a decision that ended up attracting criticism from inside the PS. Under Seguro's leadership, the Socialist Party managed to achieve one of its best results ever in the 2013 local elections and won the 2014 European Parliament election in Portugal with Francisco Assis as the main candidate, although by a narrow margin. The results of the 2014 elections were considered narrow and insufficient, which motivated the Mayor of Lisbon António Costa to defy Seguro and run for the party leadership.

At the first primaries open to party supporters, Costa defeated Seguro by a landslide. Seguro resigned from the leadership the same day, leaving Costa as Secretary-general. Seguro then retired to private life. Having successfully defended his Master thesis, he started teaching in the Department of International Relations of the Autonomous University of Lisbon.

2026 presidential campaign

In October 2024, then PS leader Pedro Nuno Santos mentioned Seguro as a potential candidate for president from the Socialist Party in the 2026 presidential election. In November 2024, after being mostly out of the spotlight since 2014, Seguro gave an interview to CNN Portugal as he was starting a role as a political commentator on the channel, stating that he was interested in running for President. Seguro then positioned himself as the main candidate from the party in opposition to others like Mário Centeno, António Vitorino and Augusto Santos Silva. He also founded the movement UPortugal, with the intention of promoting a greater participation from the citizens and fighting misinformation. In June 2025, he announced he was running for President, stating that "the country needs change and hope in a better life", defining his candidacy as a progressive alternative to the other conservative candidates, such as Luís Marques Mendes and Henrique Gouveia e Melo.

Seguro delivering the victory speech on the night of the first round of the 2026 election

Seguro launched his campaign on 15 June 2025, in Caldas da Rainha, with the presence of major PS personalities like Francisco Assis, Alberto Martins, Maria de Belém Roseira, João Soares and Álvaro Beleza, saying that, after leaving politics at a time when he could divide the party, he was now returning with the intention to unite the country. In the coming weeks, Seguro gained the support of most of the establishment of the PS, receiving the endorsement of more than half of the party federation chairs and more than 100 incumbent mayors. Despite that, José Luís Carneiro, the leader of PS, said that the party would only officially back any of the presidential candidates after the 12 October local elections.

Seguro received the official support of the Socialist Party on 19 October 2025, with the proposal for his support being written by the Secretary-general José Luís Carneiro and by the party's president Carlos César. Seguro chose scientist Maria do Carmo Fonseca as his national campaign chair, MP Paulo Lopes Silva as his campaign director, and former minister Guilherme d'Oliveira Martins as campaign chair for the Lisbon district. Seguro formalized his candidacy on 15 December 2025, delivering 10,000 signatures to the Constitutional Court.

In the first round of the 2026 presidential election on 18 January, no candidates secured a majority; Seguro won a relative majority of 31%, and André Ventura (leader of the right-wing populist party Chega) came second with 23.5%; the two most-voted candidates faced each other in a second round run-off on 8 February. This was only the second time that a direct Portuguese presidential election was not won on the first ballot, as in the 1986 election. In his first-round victory speech, in Caldas da Rainha Cultural and Congress Centre, a hoarse Seguro underlined the non-partisan nature of his campaign and invited all "democrats, progressives, and humanists" to support him in the second round in order to "defeat extremism and those who sow hatred and division among the Portuguese", distancing himself from his opponent. On the election night and the following day, Seguro received the endorsement of several important figures of the centre-right to right-wing political parties PSD, IL and CDS–PP.

Seguro won the second round by a landslide, beating André Ventura with 66.8% of the votes, being elected President. He won the record of the highest number of votes cast for him in a presidential election, after receiving more than 3.5 million votes. In his victory speech, he promised that things wouldn't be kept the same and that he'd be the President of "all, all, all of the Portuguese".

President of Portugal

Seguro taking the oath of office

António José Seguro took office on 9 March 2026, in the Assembly of the Republic, having in attendance King Felipe VI of Spain, president João Lourenço of Angola, president Daniel Chapo of Mozambique, president José Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste, president José Maria Neves of Cape Verde and president Carlos Vila Nova of São Tomé e Príncipe.

Honours and awards

Insignia of Office

• Grand Master of the Honorific Orders of Portugal (2026 - present)

Electoral history

PS leadership election, 2011

Candidate	Votes	%
	António José Seguro	23,903	68.0
	Francisco Assis	11,257	32.0
Blank/Invalid ballots	367	–
Turnout	35,527
Source: Diretas 2011

PS leadership election, 2013

Candidate	Votes	%
	António José Seguro	24,843	96.5
	Aires Pedro	892	3.5
Blank/Invalid ballots	990	–
Turnout	26,725	62.10
Source: Diretas 2013

PS primary election, 2014

Candidate	Votes	%
	António Costa	120,188	67.8
	António José Seguro	55,928	31.5
Blank/Invalid ballots	1,234	0.7
Turnout	177,350	70.71
Source: Resultados

Presidential election, 2026

Candidate	First round	Second round
Votes	%	Votes	%
	António José Seguro	1,755,563	31.1	3,502,613	66.8
	André Ventura	1,327,021	23.5	1,737,950	33.2
	João Cotrim de Figueiredo	903,057	16.0
	Henrique Gouveia e Melo	695,377	12.3
	Luís Marques Mendes	637,442	11.3
	Catarina Martins	116,407	2.1
	António Filipe	92,644	1.6
	Manuel João Vieira	60,927	1.1
	Jorge Pinto	38,588	0.7
	André Pestana	10,897	0.2
	Humberto Correia	4,773	0.1
Blank/Invalid ballots	125,840	–	275,414	–
Turnout	5,768,536	52.39	5,515,977	50.03
Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições