Thousands of Venezuelans marched through the streets of Caracas and other cities on Thursday against the nation’s socialist regime to demand presidential elections and the safe return of anti-socialist opposition leader María Corina Machado to the country.
Thursday’s round of protests in Venezuela were organized by Vente Venezuela, the only mainstream center-right party in the country and an organization whose members suffered an extensive persecution campaign during the rule of deposed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Vente is led by Machado, who has found herself unable to return to her country after the administration of President Donald Trump helped her escape from the country in December 2025 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported that the peaceful protest in Caracas began in the afternoon hours of Thursday near the Central University of Venezuela. Politicians, students, relatives of political prisoners, and civilians marched through toward Plaza Venezuela to demand that Venezuelan regime authorities establish an electoral timetable for a new presidential election in the country, in addition to allowing the safe return of Machado to her country, and the release of all remaining political prisoners.
According to Infobae, Thursday’s protest unfolded with a “notably scarce” presence of Venezuelan security forces — which stands in contrast with the events that occurred during a separate protest this month. In addition to Caracas, simultaneous peaceful demonstrations took place in Valencia, Maracay, San Cristóbal, and Maracaibo. Thursday’s protest in Caracas comes roughly a month after a similar peaceful demonstration took place in the Venezuelan capital.
“They tell us to be patient, that this is just the way things are. And we tell them: We’re going to get organized, and next year we’re going to have presidential elections and get María Corina Machado elected president,” Carlos Fernández, Vente Venezuela’s national youth coordinator, said during the protest.
“We won’t let the guys who destroyed the country stay in power. In 2027, we’re going to have presidential elections, and we’re going to take it upon ourselves to lead this country out of the darkness and into a brighter future,” he continued.
Machado and Vente Venezuela have repeatedly made calls for a free and fair election to take place in Venezuela, proposing July 24, 2027, as potential “Liberation Day.” Venezuelans mark July 24 as a public holiday to commemorate the birthday of their founding father, Simón Bolívar. The prospective date also represents a symbolic counterweight to Maduro’s last sham presidential election, which took place on July 28, 2024 — a date chosen by the socialist regime to mark late dictator Hugo Chávez’s birthday.
El Nacional and other Venezuelan outlets observed that the demonstration also served to commemorate the third anniversary of the Venezuelan opposition’s October 22, 2023, presidential primary election that resulted in an overwhelming victory for Machado, who nevertheless was not allowed by the Venezuelan socialist regime to run against Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 sham presidential election.
Jaime Domínguez, a 77-year-old Venezuelan engineer, spoke with El Nacional during the protest and explained that he lost a major contracting firm when the Venezuelan socialist regime seized a construction project in the town of Ocumare del Tuy, Miranda. Domínguez stressed to the newspaper that his motivation to participate in the demonstration is “the 27 years of disgrace that we have.”
“My demands are democracy, with democracy everything else flows — but this situation of dictatorship, control threats, harassment, and restrictions, added to a currency that lost 14 zeroes, is an economic tragedy,” he said.
Over the past months, representatives of the Venezuelan opposition have engaged in talks with the Venezuelan socialist regime for a democratic transition in the country under the backing of the U.S. State Department.
Speaking with Breitbart News this week, Dinorah Figuera, who leads the opposition delegation in the negotiations, emphasized the need to reconstruct the nation’s Supreme Court, electoral body, political parties, and the release of political prisoners as part of the transition process and the celebration of free and fair elections in Venezuela. As is the case with all Venezuelan institutions, Maduro stacked the Supreme Court and National Electoral Council (CNE) with loyalists throughout his rule. The Venezuelan socialists also hijacked numerous opposition parties, imposing “ad-hoc” leaderships while maintaining the purported notion of the parties still being part of the “opposition.”
“We have to appoint a National Electoral Council that is credible, trustworthy, transparent, that people have in that sense the guarantee that their vote will be respected,” Figuera stressed to Breitbart News.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks alongside Dinorah Figuera, the 2015 Venezuelan National Assembly President, in the Treaty Room at the State Department, Friday, October 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
“We have initiated technical and plenary forums. In the forum on the National Electoral Council, we are beginning with the organization of political parties,” she continued. “Since there was an unraveling of the right that political parties had to establish themselves and make proposals … people were afraid to participate politically and we are, as we say in Venezuela, picking up the pieces of broken glass.”
This week marked the third round of negotiations between both parties. U.S. State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott detailed on Thursday that the rounds of talks led to further advances towards the selection of new Supreme Court justices.
Figuera met with “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday. After the meeting, Rodríguez broadcast a brief address recognizing the efforts of both sides of the negotiating table towards “advancing political safeguards for everyone, for all political parties.” According to Rodríguez, a new round of talks is scheduled to take place in November. Rodríguez’s brother and head of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, is leading the regime’s delegation in the talks.
While the peaceful protests occurred without any notable incident or acts of repression, Vente Venezuela denounced on social media that the Bolivarian National Police detained seven individuals who were in charge of the three sound trucks used in the Caracas protest, seizing the three vehicles in the process, one of which was seized when the driver was arriving in the Caracas district of Antímano.
“We alert the international community about this attack against Venezuelans who provided their services for the peaceful protest of this October 22,” the message read in part.
“This occurs while Delcy Rodríguez meets with Dinorah Figuera, head of the negotiating commission of the 2015 Assembly, and one day after the agreements on democratic guarantees in the country,” the text continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
