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Rio de Janeiro from the air in haze, the Sugarloaf standing over Botafogo bay and the city running back into the hills
Rio de Janeiro from the air · the Sugarloaf over Botafogo, and the city running back into the hills
Country brief · 10.3333°S 53.2000°W

Brazil

The coast everyone knows, and an interior nobody else has.

How long
Ten to fourteen daystwo regions, and a flight between them
Getting around
Domestic flightsLATAM, GOL and Azul; buses fill the gaps
When
May to OctoberPantanal July to October, the Lençóis lagoons May to September
Language
PortugueseEnglish about 5%, thin outside the tourist trade
Money
The real, BRLcards almost everywhere; the 10% service charge is the tip
Airports
GRU and GIGSão Paulo and Rio; Brasília BSB is the hub, and a regional strip sits near everything else
How long

How many days do you need in Brazil?

Ten to fourteen days for two regions. Every pairing is a flight, so a trip that tries for the coast, the Amazon and the Pantanal at once is spent in airports.

Getting around

How do you get around Brazil?

Domestic flights are the spine: LATAM, GOL and Azul between them cover the country, and Azul and GOL sell an airpass to visitors arriving on an international ticket. Buses fill the gaps, and a car earns its keep only inside a region.

When

When is the best time to visit Brazil?

May to October for Rio and the coast, July to October for the Pantanal, May to September for the Lençóis lagoons. The Amazon has two seasons, high water to about July and low water from August, each opening a different kind of trip.

Language

What language is spoken in Brazil?

Portuguese. English is thin outside the tourist trade: about 5 per cent of Brazilians say they speak it at all (British Council, 2014), and the country sits in the low band of the EF English Proficiency Index.

Money

What money does Brazil use?

The real, BRL. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, and the 10 per cent service charge on a restaurant bill is the tip.

Airports

Where do you fly into Brazil?

São Paulo GRU and Rio GIG are the international gateways, Brasília BSB the central hub, and there is a regional airport near almost everything else: Foz do Iguaçu IGU, Salvador SSA, Recife REC, Manaus MAO, Cuiabá CGB for the Pantanal, Porto Seguro BPS for Trancoso, São Luís SLZ for the Lençóis.

Visa

Do you need a visa for Brazil?

US, Canadian and Australian passports have needed an e-visa since 10 April 2025, applied for online. UK and EU passports enter visa free for up to 90 days.

Why you should visit

Ninety seconds on the country

Brazil is the fifth largest country on earth, and the mistake is to treat it as one trip. Rio to Salvador is a two-hour flight and Rio to Manaus is four. It is a set of regions that happen to share a language, and the honest itinerary picks two of them.

The coast is why most people come, 7,400 kilometres of it from the equator to the Uruguayan border. The interior holds the things nobody else has: the largest wetland on the planet, the widest waterfall system, a desert that floods into lagoons every winter, and a capital drawn from nothing in four years.

It is the only Portuguese-speaking country on the continent, and it does not run on English. That matters less than it sounds. The vocabulary a traveller needs is small, and the card machine has made cash almost optional in the cities.

The calendar does the rest of the planning. May to October is the dry half of the year on the coast, and the only window in which the Pantanal shows its animals. Carnival, 6 to 9 February 2027, is the one week everything costs double.

Five Ways to Travel It

Pick how you want to travel. The towns, the things to do and the map all change with it.

Baía do Sancho from the cliff above, a curve of sand between headlands and turquoise water
Baía do Sancho, Fernando de Noronha. Reached down a ladder through a cleft in the cliff.

Coast

The Best Places to Visit for Coastal Travel in Brazil

The coastline is longer than the distance from London to Kabul, and it changes character every few hundred kilometres. Rio’s beaches are urban and lifeguarded, Bahia’s are palm-backed and slow, and Ceará’s are dunes and wind.

The two to plan around are islands. Fernando de Noronha caps its visitors and charges an environmental tax by the day, which is why the water is what it is. Ilha Grande, three hours from Rio, has no cars, and its best beach is reached on foot.

Plan the trip

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