Historical replay · USD/BRL
The Real Lost 10% on Brazil's Runoff Night as Lula Won (October 2026)
On the night of Brazil's October 25, 2026 runoff, the dollar rose 11.4% against the real on Binance's USDT/BRL pair, from 4.915 to 5.4772, as Lula overtook Flávio Bolsonaro in the count. The pair swung 3.3% in 45 minutes when polls closed, printed no trades for 75 minutes while the result was declared, then jumped 4.15% in one quarter-hour. Replay an election night fifteen minutes at a time.
Flávio Bolsonaro had led the first round on October 4 with 47.03% of valid votes to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's 45.16%, and the real had rallied on that result. On Sunday afternoon, with Brazil's own currency market closed, the real kept firming before anything was counted: Binance's USDT/BRL pair, which tracks the dollar-real rate through a dollar stablecoin, slipped from 5.0079 at 13:00 UTC to a low of 4.915 in the 18:45 quarter-hour, 1.9% lower, with the 18:30 candle alone falling 0.57% on $8.9 million. Late in the afternoon, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin extended voting by two hours, to 19:00 Brasília time (22:00 UTC), after both campaigns had asked for more time, Lula's side citing bus problems in São Paulo and Salvador and Bolsonaro's heavy rain in the south. The pair drifted back to 4.9743 by 21:45 UTC.
Polls closed at 22:00 UTC and the count resumed. The 22:00 candle rose 1.43% to 5.0454 on $9.25 million; the 22:15 candle reached 5.1498 on $27.13 million and 4,633 trades; and the next two quarter-hours dipped as low as 4.9851, a swing of 3.3% in 45 minutes. Early returns put Bolsonaro ahead, and according to the published timeline of the electoral court's count his share peaked at 50.30% with 37.40% of ballots counted, at 20:15 Brasília (23:15 UTC), when the pair stood at 5.0849. Then late returns from the Northeast turned the count, and Lula was ahead before 80% had been tallied, shortly before 23:52 UTC. The 23:30 candle rose 2.74% to 5.2247 on $18.69 million, the steepest quarter-hour of the evening so far.
What followed is the strangest stretch of the chart. The 23:45 candle carried only 32 trades, and the five quarter-hours from 00:00 to 01:00 UTC show no trades at all, the price frozen at 5.229; the data does not say why. The electoral court declared Lula the winner at 21:47 Brasília (00:47 UTC), inside that gap, by 51.79% to 48.21%, a margin of about 4.3 million votes. It is the first time since the end of military rule in 1985 that the runner-up of a first round won the presidency, and CBS News reported that Bolsonaro refused to concede and asked for the result to be annulled. When trading resumed, the 01:15 candle rose 4.15% to 5.446 on $24.75 million, and the 01:30 candle printed the night's high of 5.4772 on $27.65 million and 5,294 trades, the busiest quarter-hour in the replay. That is 11.4% above Sunday's low; put the other way, the real lost 10.3% of its dollar value in under seven hours.
By 04:00 UTC the pair had settled at 5.3673, 7.2% above Sunday midday, after trading about $222 million between 22:00 and 04:15 UTC, more than in the whole of Saturday. Two things stand out. A currency on election night reacts to the order in which votes are counted, not only to the final tally: the real held while early returns favoured Bolsonaro and broke when the late regions came in. And the 75 minutes without trades are the risk that never shows on a daily chart: whoever was holding reais at 23:45 UTC could not sell until the result was already known, and the first quarter-hour after the gap moved more than 4%. The official market in São Paulo had not yet opened on Monday when this replay ends.