Brazil

Brazil is a very big country in South America.

It has a huge rainforest and long rivers. It has a long, sunny coast. Most people speak Portuguese. The capital city is called Brasília.

Brazil covers nearly half of South America. Only four countries in the world are bigger: Russia, Canada, China and the United States. Its coast along the Atlantic Ocean is about 7,400 kilometers long, and it borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador.

About 214 million people lived in Brazil in 2026, and most live near the eastern coast in big cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The capital, Brasília, was built in the middle of the country. Brazil was once ruled by Portugal, so Portuguese is its main language.

Brazil occupies half of South America's landmass and is the fifth-largest country in the world after Russia, Canada, China and the United States; its area, about 8.5 million square kilometers, exceeds that of the 48 conterminous U.S. states. It stretches roughly 4,350 km both north to south and east to west, has some 7,400 km of Atlantic coastline and more than 15,700 km of land borders.

Brazil's statistics office, IBGE, estimated the population at 214.2 million on July 1, 2026. Most people live along the eastern seaboard; the Southeast covers only one-tenth of the territory but holds two-fifths of the population, while the North covers more than two-fifths of the land but holds a limited share of the people. The government groups the states and the Federal District into five Major Regions: North, Northeast, Central-West, Southeast and South.

São Paulo is the biggest city in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro has beaches and pointy mountains by the sea. Brasília is the capital. It was built in a new, special shape.

São Paulo is Brazil's largest city, with about 11.9 million people in 2025, and its state is the country's business heartland. Rio de Janeiro, the capital from 1763 to 1960, sits between steep green mountains and the sea, and is famous for its beaches and the statue of Christ on Corcovado mountain.

Brasília was built from nothing in the middle of the country, starting in 1956, to become the new capital. The planner Lúcio Costa and the architect Oscar Niemeyer designed it so that every part fits the city's overall plan, which people often compare to a bird in flight.

São Paulo (11,904,961 people in 2025, Wikidata) anchors the Southeast, the country's economic and demographic heartland. Rio de Janeiro (6.73 million), the national capital from 1763 to 1960, remains Brazil's main cultural and tourist center; UNESCO inscribed its Carioca landscapes between the mountain and the sea in 2012, from the peaks of Tijuca National Park to the Botanical Gardens (1808), Corcovado and the designed shoreline of Copacabana.

Brasília, created ex nihilo in 1956 and inscribed in 1987, is in UNESCO's words a landmark in the history of town planning: Lúcio Costa's layout of residential and administrative districts, often compared to a bird in flight, and Oscar Niemeyer's buildings were designed to be in harmony with the whole. Moving the capital inland shifted migrants and industry toward the interior; the Central-West around it is now an expanding agricultural frontier.

Brazil has the biggest rainforest in the world.

The trees grow very tall. The Amazon River is huge. In the south, giant waterfalls thunder. A wet, grassy land called the Pantanal floods every year.

The Amazon River flows about 6,400 kilometers from the Andes to the Atlantic and carries more water than any other river on Earth. Around it grows the world's largest tropical rainforest, and Brazil holds about 60 percent of the Amazon basin. A single patch of Amazon forest of 0.4 hectares (one acre) can hold 250 or more kinds of trees.

In the Central-West, the Pantanal is one of the world's largest freshwater wetlands; it floods in the rainy season. On the border with Argentina, the Iguaçu Falls stretch about 2,700 meters. Brazil's highest point, Neblina Peak, stands near the border with Venezuela.

Brazil has six biomes: Amazônia, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal, Mata Atlântica (Atlantic Forest) and Pampa. The Amazon, rising in the Peruvian Andes and flowing some 6,400 km, contributes up to one-fifth of the world's continental runoff to the sea; six tributaries exceed 1,600 km. Britannica notes that the basin has the greatest variety of plant species on Earth, with 250 or more tree species on a typical 0.4-hectare plot, and a closed canopy that lets no more than 10 percent of sunlight reach the ground.

The Pantanal, about 140,000 km², is flooded by the upper Paraguay River each rainy season; UNESCO's Pantanal Conservation Area (2000) protects 187,818 ha of it. The Iguaçu falls, shared with Argentina, extend some 2,700 m (World Heritage, 1986). Highlands in fact cover most of Brazil; Neblina Peak, measured by IBGE at 2,995.3 m (Britannica gives an older 3,014 m), is the highest point. January lowland temperatures average about 26 °C, while the Northeast's drought quadrilateral, the hottest region, averages some 29 °C.

Lots of animals live in the Amazon rainforest.

Monkeys and birds live high in the trees. Capybaras live by the rivers. Pink river dolphins swim in the water. A tiny golden monkey lives in forests near the coast.

The Amazon rainforest teems with life. Most animals live high in the canopy: insects, snakes, tree frogs, many kinds of monkeys and hundreds of kinds of birds. Capybaras, caimans and anacondas live along the riverbanks, and the waters hold manatees, pink river dolphins and about 1,500 known kinds of fish, including piranhas.

In the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil lives the golden lion tamarin, a small monkey with a golden mane. In the early 1970s only about 200 were left in the wild. Thanks to conservation, about 2,500 live in the wild today. Giant otters and giant anteaters live in Iguaçu National Park.

Britannica describes the Amazon canopy as teeming with insects, snakes, tree frogs, monkeys and birds; several hundred bird species nest near the main channel, caimans (Britannica says alligators), anacondas, boa constrictors and capybaras live on the banks, and the waters hold manatees, freshwater dolphins such as the boto (Inia geoffrensis), endemic to the basin, and some 1,500 identified fish species, including about 450 catfish. The Pantanal supports the giant pirarucu, ibis, herons, armadillos, anteaters and rheas.

The Smithsonian's National Zoo reports that the pet trade and habitat loss, as forests were cleared for sugar cane, coffee, cattle, logging, charcoal and towns, left as few as 200 golden lion tamarins in the wild in the early 1970s; about 2,500 now live in the wild, mostly in or near the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve in Rio de Janeiro state, and about one-third of the wild population descends from tamarins raised in human care. UNESCO lists the giant otter and giant anteater among the rare species of Iguaçu National Park.

About 214 million people live in Brazil.

Most people speak Portuguese. Their families came from many places. Soccer is very popular. Samba is music and dance that many people love.

About 214 million people lived in Brazil in 2026. Their ancestors include Indigenous peoples, Africans who were brought as enslaved people, Portuguese settlers and later immigrants from Italy, Germany, Japan and other countries. Portuguese is spoken across the country, and more than 200 Indigenous languages are still spoken too, especially in the Amazon.

Brazilian Portuguese has borrowed many words from Tupí-Guaraní, an Indigenous language, and from immigrants: "tchau" (goodbye) comes from the Italian "ciao". African traditions are strongest along the coast from the Northeast to Rio de Janeiro, in foods, music and dance such as samba. Soccer is hugely popular, and Brazil has won the men's World Cup five times.

Britannica describes modern Brazilian life as formed by Indigenous, African and Portuguese cultures, with Portuguese influence dominant in language, main religion and customs, and with later Italian, German, Japanese and Spanish-speaking immigrants. Between two million and six million Indigenous people lived in the region at the time of European contact in 1500; today more than 200 Indigenous languages, such as Tucuna, Kaingang and Guaraní Mbyá, are spoken. Tupian was once the lingua franca between Indigenous peoples and the Portuguese and added perhaps thousands of words and many place-names in Brazilian Portuguese.

About two-thirds of Brazilians are Roman Catholic, and much of the rest of the population is Protestant; Catholicism ceased to be the official religion with the republic in 1889. African influences are strongest on the coast between the Northeast and Rio, in traditional foods, music and the samba. Brazil has won the FIFA World Cup a record five times (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002). The South has about one-seventh of the population, including many people of German and Italian ancestry.