António José Seguro | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.png) Seguro in 2025 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President-elect of Portugal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assuming office 9 March 2026 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Luís Montenegro | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeding | Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secretary-General of the Socialist Party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 23 July 2011 – 28 September 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | José Sócrates | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | António Costa | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader of the Opposition | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 23 July 2011 – 28 September 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | Pedro Passos Coelho | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | José Sócrates | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Maria de Belém Roseira (acting) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 3 July 2001 – 8 April 2002 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | António Guterres | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Armando Vara | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | José Luís Arnaut | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secretary-General of the Socialist Youth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 29 April 1990 – 6 March 1994 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | José Apolinário | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Sérgio Sousa Pinto | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | António José Martins Seguro (1962-03-11)11 March 1962 (age 63) Penamacor,Castelo Branco, Portugal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Socialist Party (since 1980) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
António José Martins Seguro[a] (born 11 March 1962) is a Portuguese politician for theSocialist Party (PS) who is thepresident-elect of Portugal after winning the2026 Portuguese presidential election. Seguro previously served assecretary-general of the PS from 2011 until September 2014, during which time he was also theleader of the opposition in thePortuguese parliament.
Seguro was born on 11 March 1962 inPenamacor, 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 theBeira Baixa region; Seguro's father, Domingos, ran anewsagent's.[3] 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 theISCTE – Lisbon University Institute, but he did not graduate. Seguro has a degree ininternational relations awarded later by theAutonomous University of Lisbon.
Seguro became involved in political activities from a very young age, always linked to theSocialist Party (PS). He was successively secretary general ofSocialist Youth, president of the National Youth Council and chairman of the Youth Forum of the European Communities. He was first elected to thePortuguese Parliament in1991.[4] In1995, the Socialist Party won the parliamentary elections, leaving the leaderAntónio 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 ofPenamacor. In1999, Seguro was elected as aMember of the European Parliament, being the second name in a list led by former PresidentMário Soares.[5]
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 theTreaty of Nice and the Future of the European Union),[6] 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 theSocialist Group in the European Parliament and president of the Portuguese Socialist delegation.[7]
Seguro resigned as an MEP in 2001 to serve asMinister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, again underAntónio Guterres.[4] In2002, he returned to theAssembly of the Republic, serving as the SocialistParliamentary 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 ofGouveia after being elected in the2001 local elections.[8]
AfterFerro Rodrigues' resignation asSecretary-general of PS in 2004, Seguro was considered as a potential candidate for theleadership election, but he was convinced byJorge Coelho not to run since it was "not his time".[5] He opposed the leadership ofJosé Sócrates in several moments, breaking party discipline to vote against the party finances law, opposeconsumption tax increases and defending areferendum on theTreaty of Lisbon.[5]
After Prime MinisterJosé Sócrates resigned as PS General Secretary on the election night of5 June 2011, having lost the general election by a margin higher than expected, Seguro was elected leader of the party on23 July 2011, winning 68% of the vote against his challenger,Francisco Assis, who got 32%.[9]
As secretary-general, Seguro decided to abstain in the 2012 State Budget proposed by thePassos Coelho government, citing his decision as a "violent, but constructive abstention",[10] 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 the2013 local elections and won the2014 European Parliament election in Portugal withFrancisco 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 LisbonAntónio Costa to defy Seguro and run for the party leadership.[4]
At thefirst primaries open to party supporters, Costa defeated Seguro by a landslide. Seguro resigned from the leadership the same day, leaving Costa as Secretary-general.[11] 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.[12]
| Campaign | President of Portugal in the2026 Portuguese presidential election |
|---|---|
| Candidate | António José Seguro, formerSecretary-general of the Socialist Party(2011–2014) |
| Affiliation | Socialist Party |
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| Key people |
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| Slogan | Futuro Seguro ("Safe Future") |
| Website | |
| seguropresidente | |
In October 2024, then PS leaderPedro Nuno Santos mentioned Seguro as a potential candidate for president from the Socialist Party in the2026 presidential election.[13] In November 2024, after being mostly out of the spotlight since 2014, Seguro gave an interview toCNN Portugal as he was starting a role as apolitical commentator on the channel, stating that he was interested in running for President.[14] Seguro then positioned himself as the main candidate from the party in opposition to others likeMário Centeno,António Vitorino andAugusto Santos Silva.[15][16] He also founded the movement UPortugal, with the intention of promoting a greater participation from the citizens and fightingmisinformation.[17] 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 aprogressive alternative to the otherconservative candidates, such asLuís Marques Mendes andHenrique Gouveia e Melo.[18]
Seguro launched his campaign on 15 June 2025, inCaldas da Rainha, with the presence of major PS personalities likeFrancisco Assis,Alberto Martins,Maria de Belém Roseira,João Soares and Álvaro Beleza,[19] 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.[20] 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[21] and more than 100 incumbent mayors.[22] Despite that,José Luís Carneiro, the leader of PS, said that the party would only officially back any of the presidential candidates after the12 October local elections.[23]
Seguro received the official support of the Socialist Party on 19 October 2025, with the proposal for his support being written by the Secretary-generalJosé Luís Carneiro and by the party's presidentCarlos César.[24] Seguro chose scientistMaria do Carmo Fonseca as his national campaign chair,[25] MPPaulo Lopes Silva as his campaign director,[26] and former ministerGuilherme d'Oliveira Martins as campaign chair for theLisbon district.[27] Seguro formalized his candidacy on 15 December 2025, delivering 10,000 signatures to theConstitutional Court.[28]
In thefirst round of the 2026 presidential election on 18 January, no candidates secured amajority; Seguro won arelative majority of 31%, andAndré Ventura (leader of theright-wing populist partyChega) came second with 23.5%; the two most-voted candidates faced each other in a second round run-off on 8 February.[29] This was only the second time that a direct Portuguese presidential election was not won on the first ballot, as in the1986 election.[30] In his first-round victory speech, inCaldas 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.[31] On the election night and the following day, Seguro received the endorsement of several important figures of thecentre-right toright-wing political partiesPSD,IL andCDS–PP.[32][33]
Seguro won the second round by a landslide, beating André Ventura with 66.8% of the votes, being electedPresident.[34] He won the record of the highest number of votes cast for him in a presidential election, after receiving more than 3.48 million votes.[35] 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".[36]
| Year | Party | Constituency | Position | No. | Votes | % | +/- | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | PS | Lisbon | ? (out of 56) | 4th | 255,030 | 19.80 / 100.00 |  15.95 | Not Elected | Later joined parliament as an MP.[37] | |
| 1991 | Porto | 9 (out of 37) | 2nd | 313,893 | 32.92 / 100.00 |  6.19 | Elected | |||
| 1995 | Guarda | 1 (out of 4) | 1st | 49,498 | 43.65 / 100.00 | 16.88 | Elected | |||
| 2002 | Lisbon | 7 (out of 48) | 1st | 440,790 | 38.66 / 100 | 4.04 | Elected | Elected president of the Socialist parliamentary group in 2004.[38] | ||
| 2005 | Braga | 1 (out of 18) | 1st | 218,665 | 45.44 / 100.00 | 8.01 | Elected | |||
| 2009 | 1 (out of 19) | 1st | 207,695 | 41.73 / 100.00 | 3.71 | Elected | ||||
| 2011 | 1 (out of 19) | 2nd | 159,477 | 32.85 / 100.00 | 8.88 | Elected | Elected Secretary-general of the Socialist Party in 2011.[9] | |||
| Year | Party | Position | No. | Votes | % | +/- | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | PS | 2 (out of 25) | 1st | 1,493,146 | 43.07 / 100.00 | 8.20 | Elected | ||
| 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[9] | |||
| 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[39] | |||
| 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[40] | |||
| Candidate | First round | Second round | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | ||
| António José Seguro | 1,755,563 | 31.1 | 3,484,695 | 66.8 | |
| André Ventura | 1,327,021 | 23.5 | 1,729,894 | 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 | – | 271,620 | – | |
| Turnout | 5,768,536 | 52.39 | 5,486,209 | 50.03 | |
| Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições[41][42] | |||||
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