Chega
Chega is a national conservative and right-wing populist political party in Portugal, formed in 2019 by André Ventura. It is on the far-right of the political spectrum.
Chega won one seat in the Assembly of the Republic in the 2019 election. Since this election, the party has rapidly grown in popularity, gaining significant support for its anti-establishment positions. It was the third most voted party in the elections of 2022 taking 12 seats. It saw a surge in support in the 2024 winning 50 seats, more than quadrupling its previous seat count. It improved its position further in the 2025 election, winning 60 seats and overtaking the Socialist Party's tally to achieve second place.
History
Foundation and Basta! coalition
was the Social Democratic Party candidate for mayor of Loures in the Lisbon District in the 2017 local elections. During his campaign, he made comments about Romani people in Portugal that led to a criminal complaint by Left Bloc candidate Fabian Figueiredo, and the withdrawal of the endorsement from the CDS – People's Party.After Rui Rio's election as leader of the PSD, André Ventura founded a movement within the party called "Chega", with the objective of gathering enough signatures to unseat Rio. 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.
Chega had been initially prevented from registering as a political party as some of the 8,000 signatures presented to the Constitutional Court included minors and police officers. The court accepted the party's registration on 9 April 2019. Ventura made a coalition with the People's Monarchist Party, Citizenship and Christian Democracy and Democracy 21, for which he would be the lead candidate in the 2019 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 named Basta!, a synonym of Chega in Portuguese. Ventura garnered controversy for not attending an electoral debate and instead appearing on CMTV 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 broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal. The coalition targeted one or two seats in the European Parliament but won none, taking 1.49% of the vote.
2019 and 2022 elections
In the 2019 Portuguese legislative election, Chega won one seat in the Assembly of the Republic, taken by Ventura for the Lisbon constituency. Throughout the 2010s, Portugal was widely seen internationally as an exception to the advance of right-wing populism in Europe.Chega entered the Legislative Assembly of the Azores with two seats in the 2020 regional election. While the Socialist Party won the most seats, Chega gave support to a right-leaning government led by José Manuel Bolieiro of the PSD, in exchange for a review of the region's constitutional status. Ricardo Cabral Fernandes of Jacobin 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".
Ventura ran for the mainly ceremonial role of President of Portugal in the 2021 election, coming third with 12% of the vote, marginally behind runner-up Ana Gomes of the PS. Ventura celebrated his result as the "first time an openly anti-system party has disrupted the traditional right".
In the 2022 general election, receiving 7.2% of the vote, it increased its seat count to 12, coming third behind the PS and PSD.
2024 election
In the 2024 general election it received 18.07% of the vote, quadrupling its seat count to a final total of 50.In the 2024 election, the party was the most voted in the Faro constituency, which corresponds to the Algarve. This was the first time that a third party was the most voted in a district since the Unitary Democratic Coalition won the Beja District in 1991. The party was the most voted in ten municipalities, five of which were in the Algarve, though its highest percentage was 36.53% in Elvas in the Portalegre District. Portuguese political scientists credited Chega's advances to a protest 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.
Luís Montenegro, leader of the PSD and the Democratic Alliance 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 President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, he continued with this position and chose to form a minority government. Ventura said that Chega would vote against the state budget proposed by AD if his party were not included in the government.
During the 2024 election, Chega nominated two Evangelical pastors, both of whom were elected as MPs for the party.
2025 election
Chega improved its position again in the 2025 general election, winning 60 seats, beating the Socialist Party, and gathering 22.8% of the votes. The party strongly outperformed polls, which had put their vote share under 20%. 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. Alison Roberts of BBC 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 alleged conflict of interest.In the 2025 local elections, Chega gained its first three mayors – Albufeira, Entroncamento and São 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 and more than doubling the 2021 local election results.
2026 election
In the 2026 presidential election, party leader André Ventura repeated his presidential run from five years ago, polling this time at second place with 23.5% of the votes and will face the PS supported candidate, António José Seguro, in a runoff.Ideology
Chega considers itself a party with nationalist, conservative and personalist roots. Third-party sources have defined the party as ultranationalist. 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 as national conservative and social conservative.The agenda of Chega is heavily focused on criminality issues, support for the police forces of the country, and to control the misuse of taxpayers' money in terms of corruption at the top, overstaffing in the civil service at the middle and undeserving welfare recipients at the bottom. Chega's president, André Ventura, has protested with a group of police officers called Movement Zero, who have suspected extremist ties.
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.
Constitutional revision
Chega supports a rewriting of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic to be "smaller and less ideological". The current Portuguese constitution was drafted during the Ongoing Revolutionary Process, 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 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 the Portugal 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, reducing the number of members of the Assembly to 100 down from 230, reviewing parliamentary immunity, and requiring that the prime-minister be a Portuguese citizen from birth. More drastically, Ventura has argued for the abolishment of the position of prime minister, thus ushering in a "Fourth Portuguese Republic" under a presidential system, as well as getting rid of the constitution's "material guardrails", which would facilitate further amendments to any and all of its parts.
Society
Chega supports life imprisonment sentences, the reintroduction of the death penalty and chemical castration for reoffending rapists.Chega opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and the rights of transgender people.
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. In 2024, 67.9% of Chega supporters identified as having a religious identity. Chega also has ties with and enjoys support from many Christian movements, including several Evangelical Churches where the majority of congregants are of Brazilian 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.