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Chega | |
|---|---|
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| Abbreviation | CH |
| President | André Ventura |
| Vice Presidents | |
| Founder | André Ventura |
| Founded | 9 April 2019; 6 years ago (9 April 2019) |
| Split from | Social Democratic Party |
| Headquarters | Lisbon |
| Youth wing | Juventude Chega |
| Membership(2025) | c. 70,000[1] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-right[2] |
| National affiliation | Basta! (2019) |
| European affiliation | Patriots.eu |
| European Parliament group | Patriots for Europe (since 2024)[nb 1] |
| Colours | Dark blue |
| Slogan | Deus, pátria, família e trabalho ('God, country, family and work')[4] |
| Assembly of the Republic | 60 / 230 |
| European Parliament | 2 / 21 |
| Regional parliaments | 8 / 104 |
| Local government (Mayors) | 3 / 308 |
| Local government (Parishes)[5] | 137 / 3,216 |
| Election symbol | |
 | |
| Website | |
| partidochega.pt | |
Chega (Portuguese:[ˈʃeɣɐ]; officially stylised asCHEGA!,lit. 'Enough!';CH) is anational conservative andright-wing populist[6]political party in Portugal, formed in 2019 byAndré Ventura.[7] It is on thefar-right[8] of the political spectrum.[9][10][11]
Chega won one seat in theAssembly of the Republic in the2019 election. Since this election, the party has rapidly grown in popularity, gaining significant support for its anti-establishment positions.[12] It was the third most voted party in the elections of2022 taking 12 seats. It saw a surge in support in the2024 winning 50 seats, more than quadrupling its previous seat count.[13] It improved its position further in the2025 election, winning 60 seats and overtaking theSocialist Party's tally to achieve second place.
André Ventura was theSocial Democratic Party (PSD) candidate for mayor ofLoures in theLisbon District in the2017 local elections. During his campaign, he made comments aboutRomani people in Portugal that led to a criminal complaint byLeft Bloc candidateFabian Figueiredo, and the withdrawal of the endorsement from theCDS – People's Party.[14]
AfterRui Rio's election asleader of the PSD, André Ventura founded a movement within the party called "Chega", with the objective of gathering enough signatures to unseat Rio.[15] After not being able to do so, in October 2018, he left the PSD, turned his movement into a new party with the same name, and resigned his seat on Loures city council.[16][17]
Chega had been initially prevented from registering as a political party as some of the 8,000 signatures presented to theConstitutional Court included minors and police officers.[18] The court accepted the party's registration on 9 April 2019.[19] Ventura made a coalition with thePeople's Monarchist Party,Citizenship and Christian Democracy and Democracy 21, for which he would be the lead candidate in the2019 European Parliament election in Portugal. The coalition was approved by the Constitutional Court at the third request as it was rejected the first two times for having a name that included "Chega"; it was finally namedBasta!, a synonym of Chega in Portuguese.[20] Ventura garnered controversy for not attending an electoral debate and instead appearing onCMTV in his role as a sports pundit; coalition representative Sofia Afonso Ferreira said that this was due to a late change of the debate's timing by broadcasterRádio e Televisão de Portugal.[21] The coalition targeted one or two seats in theEuropean Parliament but won none, taking 1.49% of the vote.[22]
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In the2019 Portuguese legislative election, Chega won one seat in theAssembly of the Republic, taken by Ventura for theLisbon constituency.[23] Throughout the 2010s, Portugal was widely seen internationally as an exception to the advance of right-wing populism in Europe.[24][25]
Chega entered theLegislative Assembly of the Azores with two seats in the2020 regional election. While theSocialist Party (PS) won the most seats, Chega gave support to a right-leaning government led byJosé Manuel Bolieiro of the PSD, in exchange for a review of the region's constitutional status.[26] Ricardo Cabral Fernandes ofJacobin reflected that "The Azores are a small region — but this was a big step in the normalization of Chega, and a trial run for a similar solution at a national scale".[27]
Ventura ran for the mainly ceremonial role ofPresident of Portugal in the2021 election, coming third with 12% of the vote, marginally behind runner-upAna Gomes of the PS. Ventura celebrated his result as the "first time an openly anti-system party has disrupted the traditional right".[28]
In the2022 general election, receiving 7.2% of the vote, it increased its seat count to 12, coming third behind the PS and PSD.[29]
In the2024 general election it received 18.07% of the vote, quadrupling its seat count to a final total of 50.[30]
In the 2024 election, the party was the most voted in theFaro constituency, which corresponds to theAlgarve. This was the first time that a third party was the most voted in a district since theUnitary Democratic Coalition (CDU) won theBeja District in1991.[31] The party was the most voted in ten municipalities, five of which were in the Algarve, though its highest percentage was 36.53% inElvas in thePortalegre District.[32] Portuguese political scientists credited Chega's advances to aprotest vote against the two largest parties, and the result in the Algarve to the difficulty that locals face finding housing in the tourism-heavy region.[33][34][35]
Luís Montenegro, leader of the PSD and theDemocratic Alliance (AD) coalition that took the plurality of votes in the election, refused the prospect of forming a coalition with Chega. When invited to form a government by PresidentMarcelo Rebelo de Sousa, he continued with this position and chose to form aminority government.[36] Ventura said that Chega would vote against the state budget proposed by AD if his party were not included in the government.[37]
During the 2024 election, Chega nominated twoEvangelicalpastors, both of whom were elected as MPs for the party.[38]
Chega improved its position again in the2025 general election, winning 60 seats, beating theSocialist Party, and gathering 22.8% of the votes. The party strongly outperformed polls, which had put their vote share under 20%.[39] Retaining its position as the most voted party in the Faro constituency, Chega added three more southern districts from the Socialists: Beja, Portalegre and Setúbal.[40] Alison Roberts ofBBC News put forward that Chega had been helped by recent scandals involving prime ministers from the Socialist and Social Democratic parties, respectively; the election had been triggered by a motion of no confidence in Luís Montenegro for allegedconflict of interest.[41]
In the2025 local elections, Chega gained its first three mayors –Albufeira,Entroncamento andSão Vicente, Madeira – though it had set a target of 30. It came third for votes with 11.86%, a halving since the general election, but fifth for mayors[42] and more than doubling the2021 local election results (4.16%).
In the2026 presidential election, party leaderAndré Ventura repeated his presidential run from five years ago, polling this time at second place with 23.5% of the votes and faced the PS supported candidate,António José Seguro, in a runoff.[43] Ventura was defeated, gathering 33% of the votes against the 67% of Seguro.[44]
Chega considers itself a party withnationalist,[45]conservative andpersonalist roots.[46] Third-party sources have defined the party asultranationalist.[47][48][49] It defends the promotion of an effective judicial system and the decrease of the state's intervention in the economy. The party also presents itself asnational conservative[50] andsocial conservative.[51]
The agenda of Chega is heavily focused on criminality issues, support forthe police forces of the country, and to control the misuse of taxpayers' money in terms ofcorruption at the top,overstaffing in the civil service at the middle andundeserving welfare recipients at the bottom.[52][53][54][55] Chega's president, André Ventura, has protested with a group of police officers called Movement Zero, who have suspected extremist ties.[56]
The party's slogan, "God, country, family and work" is an appropriation and elaboration of the slogan "God, country, family" used by the Portuguese dictator,António de Oliveira Salazar.[57]
Chega supports a rewriting of theConstitution of the Portuguese Republic to be "smaller and less ideological".[58] The current Portuguese constitution was drafted during theOngoing Revolutionary Process (PREC), a tumultuous period of Portuguese history where a transition to some form of socialist society seemed imminent. Two revisions in 1982 and 1989 removed some of the overtly leftist ideological bent (including allowing forprivatizations) as well as more charged language, but crucially, the phrase that the constitution itself "opens the way for a socialist society" remains. This is taken by many as an official declaration that thePortugal is, or at the very least, ought to be an ideologically socialist state. Despite being a relatively small section of the constitution, Chega takes this to be a form of ideological favoritism that ignores and alienates large sections of the Portuguese population, resulting in an overall unrepresentative constitution.
Proposed constitutional changes involve getting rid of several government positions and jobs (including but not limited to, the Ministry of Education), reducing the number of members of theAssembly to 100 down from 230, reviewingparliamentary immunity, and requiring that theprime-minister be a Portuguese citizen from birth. More drastically, Ventura has argued for the abolishment of the position ofprime minister,[59] thus ushering in a "Fourth Portuguese Republic" under apresidential system, as well as getting rid of the constitution's "material guardrails", which would facilitate further amendments to any and all of its parts.[60]
Chega supportslife imprisonment sentences, the reintroduction of thedeath penalty andchemical castration for reoffending rapists.[61][62]
Chega opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and the rights oftransgender people.[38]
Chega has ties to conservative Christian movements and prominent members such as the party's leader, André Ventura and vice president Pedro Frazão are well-known Catholics.[38] In 2024, 67.9% of Chega supporters identified as having a religious identity.[63] Chega also has ties with and enjoys support from many Christian movements, including severalEvangelical Churches where the majority of congregants are ofBrazilian origin. While this fact may be used to dissuade charges of xenophobia, critics of the party have highlighted the hypocrisy of touting anti-immigrant rhetoric while enjoying broad support from certain immigrant demographics, with some immigration restrictionists both within and outside the party even alleging a conflict of interest.[64]
Describing itself a "strong proponent ofWestern civilization", the party positions itself against "Islamist extremism" and proposes stronger border controls and a decrease of "mass and illegal immigration".[46] It has been also described asantiziganist.[65][66][67] The party supports integration measures for immigrants and states that all immigrants and foreign residents should be "obliged to respect our rules, rites, customs and traditions." It also supports bilateral agreements and priority for skills-based immigration from theCommunity of Portuguese Language Countries and former Portuguese colonies such asBrazil,Portuguese-speaking African countries,Macau andEast Timor while taking a more critical stance on non-Western immigration and arguing that all work visa applicants must undergo a selection test and demonstrate adaptability to the Portuguese language. It also calls for azero tolerance policy on illegal immigration and for the deportation of immigrants with criminal records or those who are economically inactive.[68] It is also opposed tomulticulturalism. The party claim that it rejects xenophobia on its platform.[69] The party opposesillegal immigration and "open door immigration" policies for both Portugal[70] and theexternal border of the European Union.[71][72]
The party advocates for a decrease of thetax incidence, considering the current system to be "brutal and aggressive to the ones who work and build wealth, taking away half of their incomes". It additionally defends a reduction of bothbureaucracy and the number ofbureaucrats, asserting that it is one of the main reasons for the "Portuguese competitive economic backwardness".[46]
Chega's stance on theEuropean Union has been described asEurosceptic.[73] The party states that it supports the original "four freedoms" principle of free movement of goods, capital, services and people among member states, but argues for a "Europe of sovereign nations united by sharedGreco-Roman andJudeo-Christian principles" and opposes interference into national political decision-making within member states by the EU. It also calls on Portugal to pursue more independent foreign and economic policies from Brussels and rejects compulsory EU migrant and refugee quotas. Furthermore, the party also argues that Portugal should work to drastically reform the EU and that the country must exit the block if the EU tries to become afederal state.[68]
On theRusso-Ukrainian War,António Tânger Corrêa, the party's vice president and leading candidate for the2024 European Parliament election, has been critical of Ukraine,[74] advocating a peace deal that would involve "reinforced cooperation" between Ukraine and Russia in a way that the "Russians feel comfortable".[75] On the other hand, Ventura has said that the defeat of Ukraine will be the defeat of the entireWest, and Portugal, as a member ofNATO and theEuropean Union, should send troops "in case of extreme need".[76]
Chega supported thepresidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, but party leader Ventura said that the formerPresident of Brazil deserves condemnation if proven to have instigated the2023 Brazilian Congress attack; Ventura also said that sections of the Brazilian population were right to be frustrated byLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva'svictory over Bolsonaro before the attack.[77]
Chega has taken a stronglypro-Israel stance on theGaza war, criticising other Portuguese political parties for their stances on the conflict.[78][79]
The 2020 Chega leadership election was held on 6 September 2020.André Ventura was re-elected with more than 99% of the vote, facing no opposition.[80][81] The party's statutes have been rejected by theConstitutional Court several times for concentrating excessive power in the hands of Ventura.[82]
In 2020, it was reported that there was a "guerrilla atmosphere" within the party, the result of tensions between the different factions that make up the party.[83]
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Chega maintains close links withVox, a similar party in neighbouring Spain.[84][85] In July 2020, Chega joined the European far-right[86]Identity and Democracy Party, where its allies included theNational Rally (France),Lega (Italy) and theAlternative for Germany.[87][88] The party has the mutual support ofJair Bolsonaro, the formerPresident of Brazil.[77]
Vote share in the Portuguese legislative elections
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | André Ventura | 67,826 | 1.3 (#7) | 1 / 230 | New | Opposition |
| 2022 | 399,659 | 7.2 (#3) | 12 / 230 |  11 | Opposition | |
| 2024 | 1,169,781 | 18.1 (#3) | 50 / 230 | 38 | Opposition | |
| 2025 | 1,438,554 | 22.8 (#2) | 60 / 230 | 10 | Opposition |
| Election | Candidate | First round | Second round | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Votes | % | Votes | % | |||
| 2021 | André Ventura | 493,162 | 11.9 (#3) | Lost N | ||
| 2026 | 1,327,021 | 23.5 (#2) | 1,729,894 | 33.2 (#2) | LostN | |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | EP Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | André Ventura | Basta! | 0 / 21 | New | – | |
| 2024 | António Tânger Corrêa | 387,068 | 9.8 (#3) | 2 / 21 | 2 | PfE |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Mayors | +/- | Councillors | +/- | Assemblies | +/- | Parishes | +/- | Parish Assemblies | +/- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | André Ventura | 208,232 | 4.2 (#5) | 0 / 308 | 19 / 2,064 | 173 / 6,448 | 0 / 3,066 | 205 / 26,797 | |||||
| 2025 | 653,943 | 11.9 (#3) | 3 / 308 | 3 | 137 / 2,058 | 118 | 635 / 6,463 | 462 | 13 / 3,216 | 13 | 1,175 / 27,973 | 970 |
| Region | Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azores | 2024 | José Pacheco | 10,626 | 9.2 (#3) | 5 / 57 | 3 | Opposition |
| Madeira | 2025 | Miguel Castro | 7,821 | 5.5 (#4) | 3 / 47 |  1 | Opposition |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Carlos Furtado | 5,262 | 5.1 (#4) | 2 / 57 | New | Confidence and supply |
| 2024 | José Pacheco | 10,626 | 9.2 (#3) | 5 / 57 | 3 | Opposition |
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | +/- | Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Miguel Teixeira | 619 | 0.4 (#13) | 0 / 47 | New | No seats |
| 2023 | Miguel Castro | 12,029 | 8.9 (#4) | 4 / 47 | 4 | Opposition |
| 2024 | 12,562 | 9.2 (#4) | 4 / 47 |  0 | Opposition | |
| 2025 | 7,821 | 5.5 (#4) | 3 / 47 | 1 | Opposition |
Due to itsanti-immigration,anti-Islam andpopulist stances,[89] Chega has been the target of its critics who underline the party's extreme views on various subjects, some of which include the negative comments regarding immigration and minorities, namely theRomani,[90] its opposition to certain aspects of theconstitution,[91][92] its criticism of the judicial leniency regarding serious crimes,[93][94] and governmental over-expenditure with public services.[95]
The party has also been targeted by critics for reusing a slightly modified version of the motto of the Portuguese dictatorAntónio de Oliveira Salazar "Deus, Pátria, Família" (God, Fatherland, Family).[96][97] The party has been criticized for having supporters of Salazar within their ranks.[98][99]
The Global Project against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), an American NGO specialising in the study of extremist movements, warned in a 2023 report that Chega is an "anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-LGBT,anti-Roma, anti-Muslim and conspiratorial party". The organisation also highlights the presence of numerouswhite supremacists,identitarians andneo-Nazis in the party's ranks.[82][100] A subsequent investigatory article by GPAHE found evidence of "more extreme" members in the Chega Youth group, including "white supremacists, fans of former dictator Antonio Salazar, andfascist sympathizers" including the President of the Coimbra branch João Antunes, the leader of the Porto branch Francisco Araujo, and Vila Nova de Famalicão leader Joana Pinto Azevedo.[101]
In 2023, Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said "Chega is a deeply anti-immigrant, anti-Roma, anti-LGBTQ party" and that "Ventura has also talked about things like thegreat replacement conspiracy theory".[102]
In a TV debate in 2024,Luís Montenegro called Chega leader André Ventura "xenophobic, racist and demagogic".[103]
In response to criticism of themainstream media, party president André Ventura denounced the accusations ofracism against his party, claiming that Chega defends equal rights and duties, and that it "doesn't desire a country on which minorities can believe they have more rights than others simply for being minorities".[104] On 27 June 2020, the party organized a protest entitled "Portugal is not racist", where Ventura further mentioned that there is nostructural racism in Portugal, and that the political left uses racism as a pretext to foment political agendas.[105]
News article on the campaign for Europeans Elections refers to the meager chance that the coalition "Basta!" to elect a MEP and advances the reasons for the country to resist the wave of far-right that reached the rest of Europe.
the ultranationalist Chega party
Media related toChega (political party) at Wikimedia Commons
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European political foundation: Patriots for Europe Foundation | |||||||
| Parties represented in the Assembly of the Republic (230) |
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| Legislative Assembly of the Azores Autonomous Region (57) |
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| Legislative Assembly of the Madeira Autonomous Region (47) |
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| European Parliament (21) | |
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