With headlines such as "God Bless America", powerful media outlets around the world welcomed the defeat of Donald Trump but warned president-elect Joe Biden faced enormous challenges in healing the United States. 

The international press also focused on the feat of Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate who will become the United States' first female, and first Black, vice president.

"A new dawn for America", read the headline of The Independent in Britain, showing a photo of Biden standing next to Harris and noting her historic achievement.

The Sunday Times went with a picture of a black woman draped in the US flag and the headline: "Sleepy Joe wakes up America", taunting Trump by using the derogatory nickname he had used for Biden.

The Sunday People tabloid blared in capital letters: "GOD BLESS AMERICA".

Germany's mass-market Bild newspaper carried a photo of Trump with a headline: "Exit without dignity". "What a liberation, what a relief", reported Germany's left-leaning Suddeutsche Zeitung broadsheet.

In Australia, the Daily Telegraph tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's media empire also focused on Trump's expected defiance and described him as a "hotball of fury".

Iran's ultraconservative papers unsurprisingly celebrated the downfall of Trump, a leader who had applied a "maximum pressure" policy and punishing sanctions since his 2018 withdrawal from a landmark nuclear agreement.

Still, they reserved little warmth for Biden. "The maskless enemy left, the masked enemy arrived," warned conservative publication Resalat.

In Saudi Arabia, the only Gulf country yet to comment on the election results, the pro-government Okaz online newspaper questioned a US strategy in the Middle East under Biden after years of bolstered relations between Riyadh and the Trump administration.

Brazil's leading media outlets reported Trump's defeat in the context of its own populist leader, Jair Bolsonaro. "May Brazil's leaders seize the spirit of the times -- or die, like Trump, who has already left it too late," wrote Folha de Sao Paulo, one of Brazil's major daily newspapers.

Spain's centre-right El Mundo newspaper said Biden's win was a goodbye to Trump's populism, and described Harris as a "symbol of renewal".

Sweden's biggest daily, Dagens Nyheter, headlined its opinion-editorial piece: "Bittersweet victory -- Biden will struggle to heal the US".

Sweden's conservative Svenska Dagbladet daily warned of the dangers posed by the many millions of Americans who will continue to believe Trump's dangerous rhetoric that the election had been stolen from him.

"Election is over -- but conflict continues," read its headline.