Brazilians in London
We’re already here
Eat with us
Upcoming London Events
By month
Last Updated 26th Sept 26
Test your Brazilian side
Where to go from here
Eat and shop
Where to find food from home
A bakery, a butcher or a restaurant, and the part of London you are in.
Open
Price a head
Hours and prices checked on 26th Sept 26.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Dance
Where to dance in London
London has learned to dance what is ours. There is forró in Camden, zouk in Exmouth Market, capoeira in Woolwich and a samba school that wins prizes at Notting Hill Carnival.
When
The week
By dance, by area, or the whole week. Today is marked.
The timetable moves. Who posts the class each week is on Going out.
Updated 26th Sept 26
The walk
Five walks through Brazilian London
Five walking routes, all free, each telling a different part of the story. Do them in your own time, alone, with someone, or with the whole crowd.
Select a path
Off the route, but worth the trip
You cannot do these on foot on the same day, but each one is a stop in its own right.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Community
Where the community meets
Sunday: Mass in Portuguese at 9am in Bayswater, at 3pm in Fulham, and on most Sundays at 5pm in Camden. The Brazilian chaplaincy runs from 8.30am in Crystal Palace to 7pm in Brixton. Saturday has a chaplaincy Mass in Bayswater, Whitechapel and Willesden, and Portuguese class at BREACC and Clube dos Brasileirinhos.
Brazil does not have one religion. In the 2022 Census, 56.7% declared themselves Catholic, 26.9% evangelical, 9.3% no religion, and 1% umbanda and candomblé, a rise of 233% on 2010. The list above reflects what we were able to confirm in London, and it is far from covering everything. If your community is not here, write to us.
Taking the children to Brazil
The dates from all 32 boroughs and the City, together, and how they fit the Brazilian summer.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Going out
A Brazilian week in London
A class, a room every week, or a match. The rest of the dates go up on Instagram.
Step 1 of 3: Build your social routine
Consider signing up to one of these two regular events
1 of 2 Regular dance classes Forró, zouk, samba and capoeira
Friday to Sunday
Church, live music, pastel and pagode.
The Brazilian year in London
Step 2 of 3: Stay up to date with what’s going on
A named show goes up months ahead. A party goes up two or three weeks ahead, on Instagram.
Step 3 of 3: From rodízio to the roda
Watching Brazilian football here
Who holds the rights, and which kickoff actually fits a bar.
Where to go from here
DanceLondon learned our steps
Eat and shopEat in Portuguese, all the way across London
HomeThe week, on one page.
Updated 26th Sept 26
History
How we got here
In 2001 the Census found fifteen thousand Brazilians in the whole UK. Today the consulate talks about more than two hundred thousand. Everything that exists now, the bakeries, the samba schools, the churches, the butchers, the Saturday Portuguese class, was built in that gap, by people who arrived and found none of it here.
People born in Brazil living in London, at the 2001, 2011 and 2021 censuses. Almost everything listed on this site was built in that gap.
Twenty years on the map
People born in Brazil living in each borough, in the 2001, 2011 and 2021 censuses. Each square is a borough, in roughly the right place, and the darker it is, the more people. Tap a square to see all three counts.
All of London
55,787 in 2021
Tap or hover over a borough.
Charles Miller, born in São Paulo and sent to school in England, went back to Brazil with footballs and the rulebook. There are records of earlier games, so he was not the first to kick a ball there, but he is the one who organised the sport. Football went and came back. What Brazil then did with it is another story.
The London School of Samba starts parading at Notting Hill Carnival. It still does.
Carnaval del Pueblo begins, working to give the Latin American community visibility in London.
Census data for that year points to around 15,000 Brazilian-born people living in the UK. The community is still small and almost invisible.
A report for the Strangers into Citizens campaign estimates around 30,000 Brazilians in the borough of Brent alone, including people without papers. For comparison, the census counted 3,606 people born in Brazil in Brent in 2011 and 5,532 in 2021. North west London was already the centre of the community.
A Brazilian pianist trained at the Royal Academy of Music founds the festival Brazil Three Centuries of Music at the Southbank Centre, to show Brazilian music to audiences here. Clélia Iruzun came to study and ended up building a stage for the whole country’s repertoire.
The Census counts 52,148 Brazilian-born in the UK. More than triple ten years earlier.
Southwark becomes the first London borough to recognise Latin American as an official ethnic category, after years of campaigning by community organisations. As one resident said at the time, seeing the category on a hospital form meant feeling like a visible part of society.
The London Assembly passes a motion for the recognition of Latin Americans as an ethnic group. Lambeth, Islington and Hackney follow Southwark.
The Greater London Authority recognises Latin American as an ethnic group, joining the boroughs that had already done so.
A Queen Mary study puts around 145,000 Latin Americans in London, with Brazilians the largest group at more than a third. The community is the eighth largest non-UK-born population in the city, and two thirds arrived after 2000.
The ONS estimates 87,000 Brazilian-born people living in the UK.
The Brazilian consulate estimates 220,000 Brazilians in the UK. Far higher than the Census, and both are right: one counts people born in Brazil who answered the Census, the other counts nationality.
The UK/Brazil Season of Culture begins, marking 200 years of diplomatic relations, with more than 100 events across both countries.
Haringey unanimously approves recognition of Latin Americans as a distinct ethnic group. The borough has the third-largest Latin American population in the country, which quadrupled between 2001 and 2021. In the same year the Seven Sisters community wins its twenty-year fight over the Wards Corner market.
London gets Boa Nova, billed as the city’s first festival with an entirely Brazilian line-up.
Who we are here
Most of us here are women
In the 2001 census, 61% of Brazilian migrants in London were women. In 2021 it was 30,389 of 55,787 people born in Brazil, about 54%. Women are still the majority, by a smaller margin than twenty years earlier, and it matches what anyone sees at a church service, a forró class or in the queue at the Brazilian butcher.
We bring the whole of Brazil, with all its variety
In the 2022 IBGE Census, 56.7% of Brazilians declared themselves Catholic, against 65.1% in 2010. Evangelicals reached 26.9%, the highest ever. 9.3% said they had no religion.
And umbanda and candomblé went from 0.3% to 1%, a rise of 233% in twelve years, which researchers attribute partly to more people feeling able to declare it. If your faith, or the absence of one, does not show up out there, it shows up here.
Checked on 22nd Aug 26 Source: IBGE, 2022 Census, religion data released June 2025.Almost half of us hold a higher qualification
In the 2021 Census, around 47.9% of people born in Brazil living in England and Wales held a Level 4 qualification or above, the equivalent of higher education, against 31.4% of the UK-born. Research on Latin Americans in London had already described a young, well-educated population.
What tends to hold people back at the start is the language, a qualification not recognised straight away, and no track record here.
Checked on 25th Sept 26 Source: ONS, Census 2021 qualifications analysis; McIlwaine, Cock and Linneker, No Longer Invisible, 2011.
Where we come from
There is no official data on state of origin: neither the British census nor the Brazilian foreign ministry asks. What exists is academic research with small samples, which gives the order of the states that send most people to London, not the percentage each one contributes. So that is what is here: the order, and not a chart with numbers we do not have. The list shows the largest groups in that research, not every state represented in London.
- 1 São Paulo Southeast
- 2 Minas Gerais Southeast
- 3 Paraná South
- 4 Rio Grande do Sul South
- 5 Rio de Janeiro Southeast
- 6 Goiás Central-West
The areas the research names
Beyond the census numbers, these are the areas named repeatedly in studies of the community.
Brent: Willesden Green, Harlesden, Kensal Green
The largest Brazilian cluster in London. A 2007 report for the Strangers into Citizens campaign estimated around 30,000 Brazilians in this borough alone, including people without papers. The census, which only counts those who respond, found 3,606 in 2011 and 5,532 in 2021. The gap between the two numbers is exactly what nobody can measure properly. Today there are eight Brazilian addresses almost side by side along Harlesden High Street and Willesden High Road.
Bayswater
Named for decades as the landing point for people coming to study English. Less commerce, more people passing through.
Lambeth and Southwark: Stockwell, Vauxhall, Elephant and Castle
Where the Brazilian community met the Portuguese and the wider Latin American one. It is also where the support organisations sit, such as IRMO and LAWRS.
Haringey and Hackney: Seven Sisters, Tottenham, Mare Street
More recent growth. Bakeries and grocers opening in the last few years, with less history and more new activity.
Lewisham and Catford
South east London, with established Brazilian butchers and grocers, well away from the better-known clusters.
The usual picture is Harlesden, Willesden and central London. But a 2026 survey catalogued Brazilian businesses and organisations across 17 different boroughs, and it spreads much further than the reputation suggests: Lambeth, Haringey, Newham, Hackney, Brent, Islington, Waltham Forest, Greenwich, Barnet, Richmond, Wandsworth, Merton. Central London shows up heavily on a list like that because of universities, associations and restaurant chains, not because it is where the community lives.
Brazilian food here runs on two different economies. One is the destination churrascaria in the centre, where you go to celebrate. The other is the network of neighbourhood butchers, grocers and cafes in the east, north east, north and south, where the same people go every week. If what you want is to find Brazilians, the second is worth far more than the first. A neighbourhood butcher and a Saturday Portuguese school gather more Brazilian families than any fashionable rodízio. And the east is no longer only food: Hackney has grocers and Mass, Tower Hamlets has the chaplaincy base and a university Brazilian society, Newham has food and two salons that work with Afro hair.
119,000
This was the last time the ONS published an annual country-by-country estimate. The series was discontinued afterwards, so there is no updated annual figure for Brazil-born residents.
111,477
People born in Brazil and resident here. It is the most solid figure there is.
116,174
Adding Scotland and Northern Ireland, with slightly different census dates.
230,000
Double the census, and nobody is wrong: the census counts people born in Brazil, while the consular estimate tries to count the community, including children born here and people the census does not reach.
The Itamaraty estimate for 2023, 230,000, is almost exactly double the 116,000 in the census. A difference of nearly 114,000 people, and neither one is wrong. The census counts people born in Brazil who live here. The consular estimate tries to count the Brazilian community, which includes children born here, people with dual nationality and people the census does not reach. There is no point averaging the two: they answer different questions.
After 2021 there is no yearly population count by country of birth. The Itamaraty estimate rose from 220,000 in 2022 to 230,000 in 2023.
Twenty years in three numbers
People born in Brazil living in London, across the three censuses. It is worth looking at the two decades separately, because they say different things. Between 2001 and 2011 the counted community grew by 284%, close to quadrupling. Between 2011 and 2021 it grew by another 78%. So the explosion was in the first decade, and after that growth stayed strong but at a different pace.
In 2001 there were 8,175 Brazilians in the whole of London. Anyone who arrived then arrived to almost nothing: no Brazilian butcher on the High Road, no Portuguese school on Saturdays, no Mass in Portuguese across eight neighbourhoods, no forró class every week. Everything listed on this site was built in twenty years, by people who arrived with none of it and made it. The list of places on this site is, in the end, the list of what our generation and the one before it built.
And the map moved. In 2001 the two largest groups of Brazilians in London were in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, the two most expensive boroughs in the city. By 2021 the four largest are Brent, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Haringey. The places that grew most over those twenty years were not central: Greenwich seventeenfold, Croydon sixteen, Sutton fifteen, Newham fourteen. Kensington and Chelsea grew least of all, barely doubling. In other words: from a small central community it became a large and dispersed one, and it went to the places where you can actually live. And the spreading was not only within London. In 2011, London held 62% of everyone born in Brazil living in England and Wales. By 2021 it was exactly half. The community grew in London and grew faster still outside it.
Where it is growing now
How many times over the counted community multiplied between 2011 and 2021, looking only at boroughs above 500 people so small numbers do not distort it.
Notice what that means in practice. The places growing fastest today are Croydon, Greenwich, Harrow, Bromley, Merton and Kingston, all outside the centre. Meanwhile Kensington and Chelsea grew by only 17% in ten years, Southwark 23%, Hackney 25%, Camden 28% and Westminster 30%. So anyone arriving today and hearing "go to Willesden" is hearing where the community has been, not where it is going. Rent explains a good part of it.
Where we have nothing listed
Boroughs with more than fourteen hundred Brazilians in the census and not one address on our list. It is not that nothing is there: it is that we did not find it.
If you live in one of these places and know a butcher, a church, a school, a class or a salon, write to oi@brasillondres.com
Born in Brazil, by borough
People born in Brazil and resident in each borough, in the count published by the GLA from ONS data. It counts people born in Brazil, so a child born here is not included. The British census has no Latin American category, so country of birth is the breakdown that exists. Community organisations campaign for a category of their own. The table covers the 32 boroughs and the City of London.
Where the community is moving
The most quoted figures are the familiar boroughs. Brent has 5,532 Brazilian-born residents, Lambeth 3,521, Wandsworth 3,156.
The most quoted figures are the familiar boroughs. Brent has 5,532 Brazilian-born residents, Lambeth 3,521, Wandsworth 3,156. Willesden, Brixton, Stockwell: the usual names.
But that is only one reading. Sort the same table by growth between 2011 and 2021 and a different map appears:
• Croydon: 586 → 2,186, 3.7 times
• Greenwich: 516 → 1,616, 3.1 times
• Harrow: 259 → 790, 3.1 times
• Bromley: 499 → 1,499, 3.0 times
• Merton: 801 → 2,133, 2.7 timesCompare the traditional boroughs over the same period: Brent grew 1.5 times, Southwark 1.2, Lambeth 1.3. The historic neighbourhoods are still the biggest, but the people arriving now are heading outward, and much faster.
That changes what is worth looking at. If you are choosing where to live, Croydon, Greenwich and Bromley now have Brazilian populations comparable to far better known neighbourhoods, and rent is generally lower.
On the food list, Croydon has Brasileiro on Whitehorse Road, CR0 2LF, and Bromley has Brasileiro in Penge, 195 High Street, SE20 7PF. Greenwich already has a school and a restaurant. Merton has Touro in Wimbledon, at 44 The Broadway, SW19 1RQ, and Brasileiro in Colliers Wood, 52 High Street, SW19 2BY.
One honest caveat: these are 2021 Census figures, the most recent that exist. Five years on, the movement has probably continued.
Checked on 23rd Aug 26 Source: 2021 Census, ONS, country of birth by borough. Comparison and ranking ours. Next review due 1 June 2027.
Brazilians who left a mark here
This is not a celebrity list. It is people who came through here and left something, in both directions: those who built something in London and stayed, and those who came to study, learned, and went back to do it in Brazil. There is physics, law, literature, design, music, food and football. Some from two hundred years ago, some very recent. Where there is a source, it is at the end of the block.
Carla Figueira de Morisson Faria
From Pará, in the Amazon delta. She read physics at USP, took her doctorate in Berlin and arrived at UCL in 2007. She became a full professor of physics in 2018 and now leads UCL’s strong-field and attosecond physics group, studying matter at the shortest timescales that exist in nature.
In 2021 she won the Institute of Physics Joseph Thomson Medal, and in 2025 she was elected a Fellow of Optica.
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva
Associate professor of Brazilian studies at UCL since 2014. She works on Brazilian literature and co-edited a UCL Press volume on the rise of the Brazilian novel.
Conceição Evaristo
One of the most important voices in contemporary Brazilian literature, from Minas Gerais, a Black woman, author of Olhos d’Água and Becos da Memória. In 2026 a British publisher acquired world English rights to three of her works, bringing her writing to readers here.
Grace Nemeth
A Brazilian-born design strategist who in 2025 co-founded JIG Studio in London, a gallery, shop and cultural platform for contemporary Brazilian design. The Soho space opened during Frieze 2025 with more than 35 works by seven Brazilian designers.
Yane Ferreira
A Brazilian designer who founded Leblon London in 2020, a label combining Brazilian colour with London tailoring. Her collections have shown at London Fashion Week.
Vinícius de Moraes
Came to Oxford in 1938 on a British Council scholarship to study English literature at Magdalen College. He went home and became the poet and lyricist who wrote The Girl from Ipanema with Tom Jobim. He was also a career diplomat.
José Israel Vargas
From Paracatu in Minas Gerais. He qualified as a chemist at UFMG and took a doctorate in nuclear science at Cambridge. He returned and helped shape Brazilian nuclear policy in the early 1960s.
He was president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, twice president of the World Academy of Sciences, and Minister of Science and Technology from 1992 to 1999, under Presidents Itamar Franco and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The UK, where he had studied, made him a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Anelize Lenzi Ruas de Almeida
A National Treasury attorney since 2006. She came to Oxford on a Chevening scholarship for a master’s in public policy, with a dissertation on data use and trust in Brazilian tax administration, completed in 2020.
She went back and, since 2023, has been Attorney-General of the National Treasury, the most senior post in the body that represents the Brazilian state in fiscal cases. She has sat on the boards of Banco do Brasil and Caixa.
Clélia Iruzun
From Rio, she began at the UFRJ School of Music and came to the Royal Academy of Music, graduating in 1988 with the Recital Diploma and several prizes. She has performed more than thirty piano concertos and recorded with the Royal Philharmonic.
Brazilian composers including Francisco Mignone and Marlos Nobre have dedicated works to her. In 2011 she founded the festival Brazil Three Centuries of Music at the Southbank Centre, to show Brazilian music here.
Milton Nascimento
Born in a boarding house in Tijuca, the son of a domestic worker, and raised in Três Pontas, Minas Gerais. He has a Grammy and more than one Latin Grammy. He played the Barbican in 2013 and returned in 2019 for a night devoted to Clube da Esquina, the project that changed Brazilian music.
Elza Soares
From Rio, Black, raised in a favela, she sang until she died at 91. In 1999, in a BBC London competition, Elza was named the Brazilian singer of the millennium. She never lived here, but the choice was made in this city, by a broadcaster based here, and that is why she is on this list.
Hipólito José da Costa
Jailed by the Inquisition in Lisbon for being a Freemason, he escaped via Gibraltar and reached London in 1805. In 1808 he launched the Correio Braziliense from here and published it for fourteen years, getting around colonial censorship: the paper was banned and smuggled into Brazil, read even by officials.
He died in London in 1823. Brazil’s Press Day is 1 June because of him.
Sérgio Ferreira
He was due to do his postdoc at Oxford but moved to London because his wife got a post at the LSE. He ended up in a small department with no research reputation at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1965, alongside John Vane.
He had already made the discovery in Brazil, in Ribeirão Preto: the factor in jararaca venom that potentiates bradykinin. It was that Brazilian work he brought to London, and out of it came captopril, the world’s first oral ACE inhibitor.
Caetano Veloso
Exiled by the dictatorship, he lived in London from 1969 to 1972 and recorded the album Transa here.
Oscar Niemeyer
At 95, he designed that year’s Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens: a red ramp, a partly submerged auditorium, his own drawings on the walls. It was the only building Niemeyer ever built in the UK.
Hélio Oiticica
In February 1969 he staged at the Whitechapel Gallery what he himself called The Whitechapel Experiment, with the installation Eden. It was the only retrospective of his lifetime. He stayed in London all year, the same year Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil arrived in exile.
Mayara Magri
From Rio, she won a scholarship at eight through a social project in Tijuca, trained at the Royal Ballet School and became a Principal of the Royal Ballet in 2021, the second Brazilian to reach that rank. Debuted as Giselle at the Royal Opera House in February 2026.
Rafael Cagali
From São Paulo. He opened Da Terra in Bethnal Green in January 2019. The first Michelin star came within eight months, the second in the 2021 guide.
Keila Reruska e Flávia De Oliveira
They saw the idea of combining a butcher and a restaurant in Italy and brought it to London. They opened Fine Cut, now also trading as Dom Carnivoro, in Bermondsey in April 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. You pick your meat at the counter in front and eat at the back. They nearly lost it in a dispute with the landlord, and stayed.
Tiago Cavalcanti
He took his economics degree at the Federal University of Pernambuco, a Brazilian public university, and became the first Brazilian to be a full professor of economics at the University of Cambridge. He is a fellow of Trinity College and remains linked to FGV in São Paulo.
Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos
Directs the King’s Brazil Institute at King’s College London. Previously directed the Brazilian Studies programme at Oxford.
Lucas Moura
He played for Tottenham, in north London, from 2018 to 2023. The match that took the club to its first Champions League final was away: Amsterdam, 8 May 2019, three goals in the second half, the last in the 96th minute. The club is here. The night was in the Netherlands.
Gilberto Silva
Born in Lagoa da Prata, Minas Gerais, he worked as a carpenter to help support his family before football paid. He arrived at Arsenal in August 2002 as a world champion and played 32 of the 38 games of the 2003/04 season, the Invincibles, the side that went the whole league campaign unbeaten.
He also scored Arsenal’s first competitive goal at the Emirates, and stayed at the club until 2008.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Brasil Londres First 90 days checklist, to print and tick off. Always check the official source before acting: rules and figures change.
First 90 days
The order to do things in
Thousands of Brazilians have done exactly this, and it has an order. Here it is: what to sort first, what to take with you, and the official link for each step.
Phrases to show at the counter
Situations where your right is written on an official page. The English is for showing; the Portuguese is so you know what you are showing. Tap Show to open it in large type, or Send to paste it into WhatsApp with the date and the link.
Here and in Brazil
Things that work one way here and another way in Brazil. Not that either is better: they are different systems, and nobody tells you which is which. Here we do.
The first winter
London gets wet more than it gets cold, and clothing sizes are a different system. The sum and the fitting-room line are here.
Where to buy
A neighbourhood shop on Harlesden High Street, and Brazilian brands with their own door in the centre. A bra fitting, which the size chart does not settle, is at the end. This is what we found, not every shop.
Sorting a bank, a flat, a doctor and a job is work enough in our own language. In English, in a system nobody explains, it is a great deal more.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Housing
The rent, the council and the damp
In Brazil a fiador settles it, the IPTU belongs to the owner and the deposit sits with them. Here each of those has another name and another rule. This page gathers the order and the official link. If our sentence and the government page disagree, theirs is the one that counts.
The postcode is used to find the borough. We do not keep it.
The deposit sentence, to show the agency
The new renting law, since May 2026
The Renters’ Rights Act changed private renting in England. It applies to people renting from a landlord who does not live in the property. Renting a room in the owner’s home has other rules, set out in the fourth item.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Work
What you are entitled to be paid
Most of these rights apply from your first day, with no minimum service. Here are the official figures, the rules, and where to find people who understand them. Figures checked in Aug 26: they change every 1 April, and this is information, not legal advice.
This is just arithmetic, done here in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and we store nothing. Rates in force since 1 April 2026.
April 2026, at 37.5 hours a week
Of the £975, £273 does not arrive, 28% of the rise. The tax-free band has been frozen at £12,570 since April 2021. Our calculation, at 37.5 hours, checked in Aug 26. GOV.UK.
What changed in April, and what is left for you
Every year the UK changes eight or nine numbers on separate GOV.UK pages, none referring to the others. Here they are together, with the sum nobody publishes.
Holiday, payslips and tax codes
Paid holiday applies from day one, zero-hours included. Here is the sum, what a payslip must show and where to complain. Checked in Sept 26, on Acas and GOV.UK.
Sites, apps and whoever pays you
Sites and apps pay another way. Here is the official name of each deduction, and the page that publishes today’s rate.
Working for yourself
In Brazil the MEI folds tax and social security into one bill. Here they are two conversations with HMRC, on different dates. The deadlines below are the ones on the government page the day we checked. The link is the year that is in force.
Around half of Latin Americans in London hold a university education, above the city average. Even so, plenty of people work below what they can do. What holds people back at the start is almost always the same three things: the language, a qualification not recognised straight away, and no track record here.
What your job is called here
A job title does not translate word for word. The literal translation is a name a British employer does not use, and a search for it comes back empty.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Money
Money between the two countries
Sending it home, what that really costs, and what happens to what you already paid here.
Sending money home
Pensions, INSS and qualifications
If you send money to Brazil, or know someone who does, this is the check before you send. This is the text to send them.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Health
How healthcare works here
Mostly the things that work completely differently from Brazil.
English phrases to show at the GP and the pharmacy
Updated 26th Sept 26
Children
School, and registration in both countries
In Brazil you enrol at the neighbourhood school, and a child of a Brazilian is Brazilian. Here a place is applied for, with a date, and being born here does not by itself answer either the British passport or the Brazilian one. The order is below. Each deadline lives on the official page, with the date we read it.
Saturday Portuguese, on the Community page
Updated 26th Sept 26
Documents
Paperwork between the two countries
This is the part that appears in no expat guide, because it only exists if you are Brazilian. Apostille, sworn translation, consular registration, power of attorney, and pensions on both sides. Every mistake here costs money and time.
A note for anyone planning to go back, whether in a year or in twenty. Much of what makes that return easy gets settled while you are still here, not afterwards. Apostilling a British certificate is simpler to do in London than from Brazil, because an apostille can only be issued by the country that produced the document. Registering a child at the consulate is easier now than as a legal process later. A British degree is easier to gather paperwork for now, with the university nearby. And time contributed here does not transfer to the Brazilian pension system, so knowing that early changes what you do with the money. This page holds all three: what you owe Brazil while living abroad, what to do with your degree from here, and what is best settled before you fly.
What you still owe Brazil
Living here does not switch everything off there. Tax, voter registration, military enlistment, CPF, registering a child and your driving licence all still exist, and three of them can block your passport. No British guide will tell you this because it is not their subject. Position as at Aug 26: confirm with the Brazilian body before acting, because these rules change.
The year in both countries
The deadlines that come round every year, from both governments, in one place. No guide puts the two together because each one only handles its own side. Dates checked in Aug 26: each has its source in the corresponding section of the site.
Regulated professions: the route for each one
This part is about your Brazilian qualification counting here. If what you want is the reverse, a British qualification counting in Brazil, that is just below, under A degree from here, valid in Brazil. Nine professions, with the body that decides, whether your qualification is assessed directly or there is an exam, the English required and the published cost. Position as at Aug 26: fees and timelines change often, so check the link before spending.
In three professions the Brazilian qualification is assessed directly, with no compulsory conversion exam: physiotherapy, psychology and engineering. In those, your training and experience are compared against the standard here, and good documentation can be enough. In the others there is an exam, but none of them makes you repeat an entire degree.
One thing applies to all of them: whoever decides your case decides by looking at paper. A detailed curriculum, placement and clinical hours, module descriptions, proof of registration with your professional council and a certificate of good standing, all with certified translation. The quality of the documentation changes the outcome. It is worth reading the apostille and sworn translation section on this same page before you start. And if you work in beauty or aesthetics, this is not your route: it is borough licensing, and it is on the Beauty page.
This applies to most people: if your profession is not regulated here, nobody needs to recognise your qualification. Marketing, technology, administration, accountancy, design, logistics, sales, human resources, hospitality. In those fields there is no council, no conversion exam and no compulsory registration. You simply apply for the job, like anyone from here.
What does exist, and helps, is UK ENIC: a paid service that compares your Brazilian qualification against the equivalent British level and issues a statement. That is not professional recognition and it is not a licence: it is a translation of level, useful for job applications, for university and for some borough licence applications. Plenty of people spend money on a course here believing they have to start again, when what was missing was an explanation of what their qualification already is.
The official cost, side by side
Regulator fees only, so you can see the difference in scale before choosing a route. It excludes the English test, sworn translation, preparation courses, travel and course fees, which in pharmacy and law are the larger expense. Figures checked in Aug and Sept 26.
The time, side by side
A planning estimate, not anyone’s promise. It counts from the point where you already have documents, translations and English in hand. Exam availability, incomplete paperwork and resits all stretch it.
The week of leaving
The exit declaration, INSS and what you already paid here are further up and on the Money page. This is the rest of the week: FGTS, who to tell on this side, and the visa for whoever is going with you. We do not pick a visa. The consulate publishes the list.
If someone dies
Consular registration is one line of the paperwork, further up. The week itself has another order, and it is written on GOV.UK and at the consulate. This page points at both. It recommends no funeral director and gives no repatriation price.
A degree from here, valid in Brazil
If you came here to study and intend to go back, a British degree is not automatically valid in Brazil: depending on what you plan to do, it has to go through revalidação or reconhecimento. If your case is the reverse, a Brazilian qualification for working here, that is just above, under Regulated professions. Position as at Aug 26, with the official link on each item.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Links
The official sources behind this site, in one place
Every official link cited on this site, gathered here with the date we checked it. The idea is simple: rules and figures can change at any time, and it is always the official body that decides, not us. If it matters to you, open the source and check today’s version.
Glossary
The words in the letter and the interview
NI number, council tax, GP, UTR, AST. Words that turn up in every letter and every job interview. Here is what each one means.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Where to get help
People who can actually help
There is a whole network built for this, much of it by Latin American women, and several of them work in Portuguese. These are the right doors to knock on.
Domestic abuse, sexual violence and exploitation
If you are in danger right now, call 999. Speak if you can, even in a whisper.
What follows are the words of the Metropolitan Police, on their own page about making a silent 999 call. The link is at the end of the block.
“If you’re in danger, call 999 and try to speak to the operator if you can, even by whispering.”
“If you don’t speak or answer questions, press 55 or tap when prompted and your call will be transferred to the police.”
“The police will usually be able to find your location.”
“If you don’t press 55 or respond, your call could be ended.”
Press 55 when prompted, not before: it is not a shortcut, it is the answer to the automated message. And staying silent and doing nothing else does not guarantee that police will come to you: correcting that misconception is why the IOPC ran the national Make Yourself Heard campaign.
For non-emergencies the police number is 101. The national domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247, 24 hours. LAWRS, in Portuguese, is 0808 145 4909, Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 1pm, free to call.
Checked and updated on 26th Sept 26. Quotations above are verbatim from the official page. Guidance can change: check the original. met.police.uk
First of all, about the device you are using. The red button above leaves this page immediately and replaces the address, but it does not erase your browser history. If there is any chance someone checks your phone or computer, it is worth using a private window, or a friend’s device, or a library computer. This site asks for no account and sends nothing about you to anyone. But the browser keeps your history and, for this site, a copy of the pages so they open offline, plus anything you save here, such as the hours notebook. In a private window, none of that stays once you close it.
What does not depend on your visa
Rights that already exist in law, each with its official source. This site gives no immigration advice and says nothing about anyone’s situation: what is here is only what the rule already guarantees to any person.
If you came here to study, start with your own university, because it is the closest and fastest support there is. Almost every large London university has free counselling, mental health support, visa guidance and sometimes emergency financial help, all already paid for inside your fees. And there are Brazilian student societies at Queen Mary, King’s College, the LSE and Imperial, listed below: they generally welcome people from outside the university at events, and it is the quickest way to meet other Brazilians who arrived when you did.
How to find your people, without depending on this list. Student societies change committee every year, change Instagram account, and sometimes vanish for a year and come back the next, so any list of handles ages fast, including ours. What does not change is the route: look on your university’s students’ union website, which lists societies officially and keeps the page up between one committee and the next; go to the freshers’ fair in the first fortnight of the academic year, which is when they recruit; and search Instagram for brazilian society plus your university name. If your university does not have one, many welcome people from outside at events, so it is worth writing to the nearest. Found one that is not here, or one that has died? Write to us.
Scams: how to spot them and where to report
The scams that most often catch people who have just arrived: rooms, jobs with a visa, agencies, fake messages and borrowed accounts. Each item says what the official body says, and who to call.
Where to look
If I leave, can I support myself?
Control of money is among the factors in abuse most often named by organisations serving Brazilian women in London, and the argument is always the same: you cannot manage without me. This does not answer whether you should leave. It only answers what the state pays a woman living on her own, with or without children, so you have a real number instead of his.
Checking a Brazilian professional
We do not keep a list of professionals and we recommend nobody. What we can do, and it is worth more, is show you where to check the person you have already found. Every one of these registers is public, free, and takes under a minute.
Ask for the full name and the registration number, and check it yourself. Anyone serious gives you both without hesitating. Someone who stalls on the number has already answered your question.
Updated 26th Sept 26
Beauty and aesthetics
Beauty and aesthetics in London
We take nothing to be listed.
What are you booking?
Premises licence: pick your borough
Updated 26th Sept 26
About
By Brazilians, for Brazilians
Brazilians have been in London for decades, but the growth is recent: in 2001 the Census pointed to just over fifteen thousand Brazilian-born people in the whole UK, and today the consulate talks about more than two hundred thousand Brazilians. Which means almost everything here today, the bakeries, the samba schools, the churches, the butchers, the Portuguese school on a Saturday morning, was built by this generation, from nothing, in a foreign language. Brasil Londres is simply an attempt to put all of it in one place.
Right now we charge nobody to appear here, and if that ever changes we will say so on this page. We are not lawyers, accountants or doctors, and we do not give advice. When something matters, we point you to people qualified to deal with it.
This is not the complete list, and it does not try to be. What we need already exists, scattered: a council page, a samba school’s Instagram, an NHS site, a consulate form. Nearly every line here links out, on purpose: their page stays right after ours goes stale.
If you run events and want to be listed, or you have found a link that is wrong or out of date, write to us.
We are not official
This site has no connection whatsoever to the Brazilian government, the consulate, the embassy, the British government or the NHS. We represent nobody and we provide no consular service. When we quote or link an official body, it is only so you can reach the source: whoever decides anything about your case is that body, not this site.
Your data
We ask for no registration, use no tracking cookies and have no visitor analytics. What happens when the map opens, or when you search for a postcode, is on Privacy.
Something wrong?
If you own a business or organisation named here and the information is wrong, out of date, or you simply do not want to appear, write to us and we will correct it or remove it. No argument and no bureaucracy. The same goes for any link, figure or date.