Socialist politician and lawyer, who became president of Portugal in 1986 as the country's first elected civilian head of state in 60 years, holding the post until 1996.

His father, João Lopes Soares (d. 1970), had been a liberal republican, often jailed or exiled during the dictatorship of António Oliveira Salazar. The young Soares studied at the University of Lisbon and at the Faculty of Law, Sorbonne, Paris, becoming a student activist and thereafter taking up a law practice defending political dissidents. By the time that the army-imposed right-wing dictatorship fell in 1974, Soares had been jailed 12 times and twice experienced exile, in São Tomé (1968) and Paris (1970–74). In 1964 he and others founded a clandestine society, the Portuguese Socialist Action, which by 1974 had transformed into the Portuguese Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Portuguesa).

From 1974 to 1975 Soares was foreign minister in the new but still military-controlled government and oversaw the negotiations for freeing Portugal's overseas colonies. In 1976 he became the first constitutionally elected prime minister since the 1974 revolution (serving 1976, 1976–78, and 1983–85) and in 1986 became the first civilian head of state (president) since 1926, ending 60 years of army overlordship. Reelected in 1991, Soares was constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, and he left office in 1996. He ran again for president in 2006 but finished third.

Soares wrote a number of books on philosophy and politics, including a partly autobiographical work, first published in Paris, Le Portugal baillonné: un témoignage (1972; “Portugal Muzzled: A Testament”). He also authored Portugal's Struggle for Liberty (1975).