Political profile André Ventura edition
President of CHEGA
Name: André Claro Amaral Ventura
Born: 15 January 1983
Nationality: Portuguese
Political party: CHEGA
European political family: Patriots for Europe
Current position: President of CHEGA
In Parliament since: 2019
André Ventura has become one of the most visible public and political figures in Portugal. His party has grown exponentially in only a few years. Before CHEGA, he was involved in the PSD and ran for Loures in 2017, where he was elected as a councilor. CHEGA was formally registered on 9 April 2019 and, a few months later, Ventura entered Parliament as the party’s only MP.
How did he get there?
Chega went from one seat in 2019 to 12 in 2022, 50 in 2024 and finally 60 in 2025. In the 2025 legislative election, the party received 22.76% of the vote. The Socialist Party received 22.83%, but CHEGA ended with two more seats because of how mandates are distributed across constituencies.
Ventura followed a similar path personally. He finised third in the 2021 presidential election, then reached the second round in 2026 against António José Seguro. Ventura received 23.52% in the first round and 33.16% in the second.
What power does he actually have?
Ventura is president of CHEGA and an elected MP for Lisbon. He has major influence over his party’s political direction, message and electoral strategy, while Pedro Pinto formally leads CHEGA’s parliamentary group.
With 60 MPs, CHEGA can influence debates, negotiations and the political agenda. However Ventura alone by himself cannot govern Portugal or pass laws by his own will.
Political Perspective
Ventura and CHEGA have built their identity around anti-establishment politics, immigration, taxation and national identity. International news organisations often describe CHEGA as far-right and populist, while the party presents itself as a break between the old fashioned system and the “the new world democracies”.
While defending tougher criminal penalties, lower taxes and different political reforms and stronger borders, immigration is probably the most visible part of CHEGA’s agenda. Publically CHEGA also puts strong emphasis on crime and punishment, security forces and corruption. At European level, as said, they have two seats with Patriots of Europe.
Major issues associated with his leadership
Ventura and CHEGA have been quite a few times associated with social discrimination cases, race, minorities and the limits of political speech. For example, in 2021 a court ordered Ventura and CHEGA to apologise to a family from Bairro da Jamaica after he displayed their photograph during a presidential table and called them “bandidos” (outlaws). Also during the 2026 presidential election, a Lisbon court ordered Ventura to remove posters referring to Portugal’s Roma population after concluding that their message was discriminatory. Even in 2024, Ventura made a controverial statement against turkish people.
The controversy is not only associated directly to Ventura. In October 2025, Socialist MP Eva Cruzeiro complained that CHEGA MP Filipe Melo had said a xenophobic and racist sentence during a parliamentary commitee meeting on immigration. A later parliamentary inquiry confirmed this situation, and the committee censured his conduct.
Alongside this cases there’s also criminal one involving CHEGA representatives. Miguel Arruda, elected as a CHEGA MP for the Azores in 2024, became a suspect in an investigation into luggage allegadly taken from airport baggage carousels. He left CHEGA’s parliamentary group and, in December 2025, prosecutors charged him with 21 counts of aggravate theft. Another case involved Nuno Pardal Ribeiro, a former CHEGA municipal deputy in Lisbon. In April 2026, he was convicted him of two offences of resorting to child prostituiton and gave him a suspended prison sentence.
What does this tell us about Ventura’s leadership?
These cases were not commited by Ventura himself, however it should be his job to know what is really going on inside of his party, specially if we’re looking at a party that went from one MP to dozens of elected representatives in such a short period of time.
Digital Politics and Communication
Ventura’s rise is also closely connected to social media. During the 2025 legislative campaign, CHEGA and Ventura attracted a large amount of online attention.
A LabCom study carried out with Portugal’s media regulator analysed more than 4500 posts during the 2025 election period. Researchers identified 16 cases of disinformation, 13 of them, or 81%, from CHEGA. Those 16 cases represented only 0.4% of all posts analysed. During the 2026 presidential election, researchers analysed even more posts, around eight thousand, and identified 26 cases of disinformation. Twenty-three, or 88.5%, were associated with Ventura or CHEGA.
In conclusion
André Ventura has shaped the politics in Portugal. In a polarised world, Portugal is not an exception. CHEGA entered Parliament in 2019 with one MP and reached 60 seats six years later.
This growth can probably be read in two ways. It may mean that a large part of Portugal is genuinely tired of a political system that many people may see as old and unable to answer some of their concerns, something André Ventura repeats constantly in his speeches or debates. But for us, as No To Apathy, that frustration cannot make populist rhetoric, misinformation or the discrimination of minorities an acceptable answer. Xenophobia, racism or misogyny do not become less damaging because they are politically effective, quite the opposite. Changing democratic institutions cannot simply become the solution every time demoracry feels frustrating.
Whatever explains CHEGA’s growth, it is also part of a much wider and increasingly polarised political world, where the way we communicate and disagree with each other is becoming just as important as the politics itself.
