Brazil votes on Sunday in the first round of a presidential election that pits two well-known names against each other: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and a Bolsonaro. This time the name on the ballot belongs to Flavio, the eldest of the former president's five children, and he is running neck and neck with the incumbent in the polls. The 45-year-old Liberal Party candidate, nicknamed 'Bolsonaro Junior', has promised to pardon his jailed father as soon as he takes office.

A Jailed Father and a Pardon Promise

Flavio Bolsonaro is not a political newcomer: he has been a state senator for Rio de Janeiro since 2019 and now carries the Liberal Party's standard. His campaign, though, orbits a prison cell. Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison after his conviction for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat, and he is barred from making public statements while serving that sentence.

Public opinion around the imprisoned father has moved during the race:

• •Georg Walter Wink, a Latin America specialist at the University of Copenhagen, notes that Jair Bolsonaro is no longer as popular, and that slightly more than half the population believes he should serve his full sentence.
• •Flavio Bolsonaro's answer is the pledge that defines his candidacy: a pardon for his father as soon as he assumes Brazil's highest office.

The Family Machine Behind the Candidacy

Ask the Brazil watchers what the candidate brings beyond the surname and the answers are unflattering. Andreza Aruska, director of the Brazil Institute at King's College London, sees no 'charismatic and popular leader', and in her view he has almost nothing but the family name to legitimise his candidacy. Corneel Weyers, a Brazil specialist at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po in Paris, adds that he is not a great orator and can come across as lacking in self-confidence.

What the clan does have is organisation, and plenty of it. Georg Walter Wink maps Brazil's conservative blocs through the three 'B's - Bible, bullets and beef - shorthand for the Christian Evangelicals, the military and the landowners. To those, he notes, Brazilian politics adds a fourth B: family.

• •Carlos plays the role of the pit bull on social media.
• •Eduardo, who has gone into exile in the US, is responsible for forging international ties with other far-right movements.
• •Flavio was chosen to lead the campaign because he comes across as the most diplomatic member of the family.

Aruska reads the whole construction as a 'family joint venture to bring Bolsonarism back to power' in the 2026 campaign.

From a Deepfake Video to a Film Probe

The legal questions reached the campaign's own stage. An AI-generated video of his jailed father endorsing him was screened at the official launch in July, in a country where the use of deepfakes is as widespread as it is strictly regulated. Brazil's Supreme Court demanded an explanation about the appearance of the AI clone of Jair Bolsonaro, and the former president had to deny authorising the use of his image and voice for the deepfake video.

The candidate's own legal file runs longer:

• •Last month it emerged that Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering linked to the upcoming film 'Dark Horse'.
• •He stands accused of seeking funding for the biopic glorifying his father, who is played by Jim Caviezel, a US actor linked to far-right circles.
• •'Dark Horse' was originally scheduled for a September 11 release, but it was postponed indefinitely.
• •From his time as a Congressman, he is implicated in scandals and notably accused of close ties to the 'milicias', paramilitary groups made up of former law enforcement officers.
• •A case linking him to the embezzlement of civil servants' salaries was closed in 2025 without convictions.

A Softer Tone, the Same Ideology

On the surface, this is a changed Bolsonaro. Wink describes him as much less blunt in his manner of speaking, avoiding, unlike his father, any misogynistic or homophobic remarks, and careful not to be as aggressive towards the press.

Weyers has observed that he removed his father's - or his own family's - name from several campaign materials in recent months. Chris Lyon, a Brazil specialist at the University of Birmingham, frames the contrast: where Jair Bolsonaro played the angry outsider, the son presents himself as a mainstream politician who favours compromise and knows how to build coalitions.

Distance has its limits, though. Lyon noted that Flavio Bolsonaro cannot afford to truly distance himself from his father without risking the loss of votes among an electoral base that would accuse him of betraying Bolsonarism.

The tonal shift has a purpose. Aruska calls it a tactical imperative to expand his electoral base. Undecided voters remain in Brazil, Lyon notes, and Flavio Bolsonaro is primarily seeking to win over a segment of women who have not yet made up their minds - which helps explain his frequent public appearances with his wife, Fernanda Bolsonaro. Weyers is unimpressed, calling the imaging upgrade pure media spin.

Weyers' warning goes further:

The ideological substance, in his reading, is exactly the same.

Behind the styling, Lyon locates that substance: a highly repressive security policy and the defence of family values, in line with his father, an economic policy inspired by the model implemented by Javier Milei in Argentina, and opposition to any environmental regulations.

All of it now converges on Sunday's first round. Weyers believes the stakes for Brazil's democracy are higher this time, because Jair Bolsonaro's seriousness is no longer in question: "The first time with Jair Bolsonaro, we wondered how seriously we should take him. This time, we know." A more technocratic profile at the top of the ticket, in his view, makes the threat even greater.