What it’s like to live and work in Brazil

Brazil is a unique mix of nat­ur­al won­ders, great food, vibrant cul­ture and a dynam­ic econ­o­my. It has start­ed to offer visas for the grow­ing army of dig­i­tal nomads and with warm peo­ple and even warmer weath­er, Brazil offers plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als.

What to know before you move to Brazil

Brazil is famous for its nature, foot­ball and par­ties but as a large and com­plex coun­try, it offers many kinds of dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences for vis­i­tors. Most expa­tri­ates will like­ly move to one of its large urban areas – and there is no short­age to choose from. Accord­ing to the offi­cial Brazil­ian sta­tis­tics bureau (IBGE), 17 cities in 2021 had more than 1 mil­lion inhab­i­tants.

The megac­i­ties of Rio de Janeiro (6.7 mil­lion inhab­i­tants), São Paulo (12.3 mil­lion) and Belo Hor­i­zonte (2.7 mil­lion) all have large busi­ness dis­tricts, where lux­u­ry accom­mo­da­tion and world-class gas­tro­nom­ic expe­ri­ences are easy to find. But these cities also have pover­ty, wide social inequal­i­ty and, in some neigh­bour­hoods, vio­lence and crime, so choos­ing a safe place to live is para­mount.

If you are mov­ing with your fam­i­ly, it is impor­tant to research pri­vate schools and health ser­vices. Euro­peans, in par­tic­u­lar, should bear in mind that pub­lic ser­vices in Brazil are not like­ly to be up to the stan­dards they are used to in their home coun­tries.

Lan­guage is a point to con­sid­er, too. Brazil­ians speak Por­tuguese, which resem­bles Span­ish. Because of the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the lan­guages many Brazil­ians wrong­ly believe that they can speak Span­ish. Most peo­ple, how­ev­er, are solid­ly monoglot. In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Eng­lish might be spo­ken in large com­pa­nies and in lux­u­ry shops but in super­mar­kets and most stores peo­ple are most like­ly to exclu­sive­ly speak the local lan­guage. It can be a jar­ring expe­ri­ence to rely on Eng­lish being spo­ken at reg­is­ter offices, notaries, the police and oth­er pub­lic enti­ties cen­tral to Brazil­ian life.

Brazil has a mod­ernised finan­cial sys­tem and a dynam­ic dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment that togeth­er are grad­u­al­ly mak­ing life eas­i­er for com­pa­nies. What­sApp is an impor­tant busi­ness tool for Brazil­ians, who use it to make pur­chas­es, make sales and trans­fer mon­ey. For those who are paid in dol­lars or euros, Brazil will seem quite inex­pen­sive. Accord­ing to Expatis­tan, the cost of liv­ing in Rio de Janeiro is 59% low­er than in Lon­don and 66% low­er than in New York, while prices are even more afford­able out­side Rio and São Paulo.

New­com­ers can enjoy Brazil’s rich gas­tron­o­my, which ranges from fei­joa­da (black bean stew) in Rio de Janeiro and some of the best piz­zas this side of Naples in São Paulo, to chur­ras­co grills in the South and all kinds of afford­able seafood in the North East.

How to apply for a visa

For­eign­ers who move to Brazil to work will require a visa and get­ting one tends to be a com­plex and lengthy process. But recent­ly Brazil imple­ment­ed rules that cre­ate an eas­i­er path for inter­na­tion­al dig­i­tal nomads. News­pa­per Fol­ha de S.Paulo has esti­mat­ed that an aver­age of one visa a day has been issued to dig­i­tal nomads since the scheme began in Jan­u­ary 2022.

The new visa is aimed at dig­i­tal nomad work­ers who want to spend more than three months in Brazil. It is valid for up to one year and can be extend­ed by a fur­ther 12 months. It gives the visa hold­er the same rights as Brazil­ians, which includes access to pub­lic ser­vices such as the nation­al health ser­vice, although it is high­ly advis­able to take out pri­vate health insur­ance before mov­ing to the coun­try. 

To meet the visa’s require­ments, work­ers must show proof of income of at least the equiv­a­lent of around £1,200 a month or £1,450 in sav­ings. Diana Quin­tas, a part­ner at con­sul­tan­cy Fragomen in São Paulo, claims that the amount com­pares favourably to the require­ments for oth­er coun­tries. Addi­tion­al­ly, all the income earned by nomad work­ers must be paid by com­pa­nies based out­side Brazil. Remem­ber that work­ers who stay in Brazil for up to six months are exempt from pay­ing income tax in the coun­try, but the Brazil­ian author­i­ties will tax the glob­al income of work­ers who live in the coun­try for more than half a year.

Peo­ple can apply for these visas in Brazil­ian con­sulates in their home coun­try, or via a web­site main­tained by the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment. The inten­tion is to make the process a smooth one but experts say it is still a work in progress. The government’s web­site does include guid­ance in Eng­lish and Span­ish but it isn’t easy to find and some parts of the web­site are still in Por­tuguese.

Any­one who falls in love with Brazil while on hol­i­day and decides to apply for a visa can do so through an office of the Brazil­ian fed­er­al police. In which case, they should seek expert help unless they speak Por­tuguese and have lots of time (and patience).

“There is so much red tape that it isn’t viable for dig­i­tal nomads to do it them­selves,” Quin­tas says. “If some­one is plan­ning to stay up to three months in Brazil, it is more advan­ta­geous to come as a tourist.”

The best places to live in Brazil for expats

The gov­ern­ment of the Rio de Janeiro state has designed a pro­gramme to help dig­i­tal nomads in the hope that help with accom­mo­da­tion and co-work­ing spaces will con­vince many peo­ple to spend a sea­son in the city. Rio offers adven­tur­ous expats an array of activ­i­ties to keep them busy, from beau­ti­ful beach­es, bril­liant music and exquis­ite food to a vibrant nightlife and the annu­al car­ni­val. There is also a high­er prob­a­bil­i­ty of find­ing Eng­lish-speak­ing staff at stores and restau­rants in a city that is a tourism hotspot.

But secu­ri­ty is a real issue in Rio, the cost of liv­ing is high for Brazil­ian stan­dards, pub­lic trans­port can be chal­leng­ing and traf­fic is famous­ly hell­ish.

São Paulo, the eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal of Brazil, is small­er and cheap­er, mean­while coastal cities like Flo­ri­anópo­lis (pop­u­la­tion 508,000), in the South, and João Pes­soa (817,000) in the North East, are also mak­ing efforts to attract dig­i­tal work­ers. Brazil is a large coun­try and inter­na­tion­al trips from out­side the main air­port hubs of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro can feel like an odyssey.

If you pre­fer to spend time close to beach­es that look like true par­adise, head for one of the many vil­lages in the North East, close to main cities such as Sal­vador, Recife and For­t­aleza. Many of them have posadas (hos­tels) that cater for dis­cern­ing Euro­pean vis­i­tors, such as Tran­coso, Por­to de Gal­in­has and Jeri­coa­coara.

Pipa is a 90-minute dri­ve from Natal air­port and where Por­tuguese com­pa­ny NomadX is cre­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty for dig­i­tal nomads. With a beau­ti­ful beach and good weath­er the whole year round, some have com­pared the loca­tion to Bali “but with few­er peo­ple and a bet­ter time zone”, says Gonça­lo Hall, who is head of the project. Pipa has a sur­pris­ing­ly strong dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture and an afford­able cost of liv­ing. Accord­ing to Hall, a salary of between £1,000 and £1,500 a month is more than suf­fi­cient to live well there.

Tackling Brazil’s image problem

The polit­i­cal polar­i­sa­tion in the coun­try led to an attempt­ed coup at the start of the year when Jair Bol­sonaro sup­port­ers tried to storm Brazil’s Con­gress build­ing. The rise in defor­esta­tion of the Ama­zon rain­for­est under the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s term also cre­at­ed con­ster­na­tion in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Lawyer Gabriela Voss Cha­gas says these events have con­tributed to an image prob­lem for Brazil, which will take time to restore the pos­i­tive per­cep­tion the coun­try once had among the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Cap­i­tal­is­ing on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of dig­i­tal nomadism is one way to do this, thinks Cha­gas. “Brazil is a fan­tas­tic coun­try and a diverse one,” she says. “We just need to make peo­ple see that.“

You can read more from our Work­ing Around the World series here.