Old Paper Voter Cards May No Longer Be Valid, Brazil's Lisbon Consulate Warns Before the 25 October Runoff: How to Check Where You Vote

Brazilians registered in Portugal should not rely on an old paper voter card when they vote on Sunday, 25 October, in the second round of Brazil's presidential election. In a note sent to the Lusa news agency on Monday, the Consulado-Geral do Brasil em Lisboa (Consulate-General of Brazil in Lisbon) warned that the details printed on physical títulos eleitorais (voter cards) may be out of date and may not match the electoral register.

Which cards are affected

According to the consulate, cards issued up to 2006 that have seen no activity since were removed from the register, so a holder may have no active registration. Cards issued between 2006 and 2017 or 2018 may carry wrong or outdated details, including the polling section.

The consulate asks voters to check their registration and section on the website of the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Superior Electoral Court, TSE) or in its e-Título app, which also holds a digital card. A simplified card can be printed from the TSE site.

A cancelled registration cannot be fixed before Sunday. The register for voters abroad closed on 7 May and reopens on 3 November, the consulate in Faro says. Under TSE rules, three consecutive absences with no justification or fine paid cancel a registration, and each round counts as one election.

Where and when to vote

Polls open at 8:00 and close at 17:00, Portuguese time, because voting abroad runs on local time. The polling places are the same as on 4 October: the consulate says the TSE's runoff address changes, which Público Brasil puts at more than 2,000 sections in Brazil, did not affect Lisbon, Porto or Faro.

• Lisbon: three University of Lisbon buildings, the Reitoria (Rectorate) and the Law and Letters faculties. The e-Título app lists all three as one place, because the TSE treats Portugal as a single overseas zone. The "Eleições 2026" page of the consulate's website gives the building and floor for your section number, and there will be signs and staff on site.
• Porto: the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (Porto School of Engineering, ISEP). The Porto consulate's lookup page warns that ISEP has two entrances on different streets.
• Faro: the consulate's own premises.

Bring an official photo document. Which documents were accepted in the first round is set out in our preview of the 4 October vote.

If you cannot vote

Voting is compulsory for literate Brazilians aged 18 to 70, and for voters registered abroad the duty applies only to presidential elections. On the day, an absence can be justified in the e-Título app. Afterwards, the TSE allows until 8 January 2027 to justify a runoff absence through its online Autoatendimento Eleitoral (electoral self-service), with supporting documents; for a first-round absence the deadline is 3 December 2026.

Anyone who has neither voted, justified nor paid the fine cannot get an electoral clearance certificate and, as a rule, a passport, though residents abroad may still get one to return to Brazil.

A low first-round turnout

Final TSE figures put abstention in Lisbon on 4 October at 63.56 percent: 28,643 of the 78,607 registered voters cast a ballot, Público Brasil reported. That is below the 70 percent the consul general, Alessandro Candeas, estimated on election night, as we reported then. The consulate now expects turnout of about 50 percent on Sunday.

Portugal has 134,797 Brazilian voters registered, up from 23,182 in 2010, the consulate says; 57 percent are women. In the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.03 percent of the valid vote nationally and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 45.16 percent, Lusa reported; in Portugal, Lula won in Lisbon and Porto and Flávio Bolsonaro in Faro.