2026 Journalism prize finalist

Ana Lankes

1843, The Economist

Ana Lankes is The Economist’s Brazil bureau chief, based in São Paulo. She covers politics, economics, and society in Brazil and South America. Previously she was the paper’s Latin America correspondent, based in Buenos Aires. She has also worked for the New York Times and has been interviewed by the BBC World Service, Times Radio, and on Argentine and Chilean radio. Ana graduated with a double first class degree from Oxford University and has a joint master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris. She speaks German, Spanish and Portuguese.

Her shortlisted pieces were:

• The untold story of Bolsonaro’s weird and wild coup attempt
• Jair Bolsonaro’s trial shows Brazil a way out from polarisation and stagnation
• Brazil offers America a lesson in democratic maturity

Her investigation into the attempted coup in Brazil by former president Bolsonaro was a stunning piece of work. It was extraordinarily thorough. It was relentlessly honest in recording the wrongness not only of the plotters but also of some of those who blocked them. And since effectively she was exposing an organised crime conspiracy which included plans to assassinate Bolsonaro’s opponents,, it was also very brave. (And I love the detail about the priest collaborator who saw their wretched plot fall apart and reacted with a text which included eight f*cks.)

– Nick Davies, Judge, The Orwell Prize for Journalism 2026