Will the Workers' Party nominate Lula for President of Brazil by August 15?

Brazil's Workers' Party has nominated Lula for president while he was in prison. That single historical fact contains the entire analytical case for this contract. In 2018, with Lula serving a corruption sentence and widely expected to be ruled ineligible, PT formally nominated him anyway — holding the candidacy open until courts forced a swap, with party leadership publicly insisting there was no Plan B until the last legally possible moment. That wasn't stubbornness or denial. It was a deliberate strategic posture reflecting PT's core organizational identity: the party is built around Lula, and abandoning that identity prematurely carries higher political costs than holding it as long as legally viable. The 2026 situation is structurally more favorable than 2018. Lula is the incumbent president rather than a jailed former president. He's publicly signaling readiness for another run. PT's incentive to register him by August 15 is if anything stronger than it was in the cycle where they nominated him from prison. The resolution criteria is specifically about nomination — not about whether courts ultimately permit him on the ballot, not about whether he wins, not about whether legal challenges succeed. PT filing with the TSE by August 15 is the procedural action this contract prices, and PT has demonstrated across multiple cycles that it executes that procedural action regardless of surrounding legal uncertainty. The only scenario where PT doesn't nominate Lula by August 15 requires either Lula himself declining to run or a legal barrier that preemptively prevents even the nomination filing — neither of which has visible current catalyst. Bottom line: This is party discipline pricing, not electoral outcome pricing. PT nominating Lula is what PT does. Watch for any direct statement from Lula declining to seek another term as the only signal that would move this contract meaningfully.