Brazil has put itself at the centre of Latin America’s next big border-management experiment. In an interview released late on 26 December, senior officials from the Ministry of Tourism confirmed that the electronic visitor visa (e-Visa) relaunched in April for U.S., Canadian and Australian travellers is now the blueprint for a broader, biometric-enabled ecosystem.
Under a new working group formed with Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, Brasília is piloting a shared API standard that will allow the four countries to issue e-visas, collect selfie biometrics and exchange advance passenger information in real time. The first tangible deliverable—scheduled for beta testing with selected corporate travellers in Q2 2026—is a mobile “cross-border wallet” storing a Brazil e-Visa QR code and an image verified against the Federal Police database. Airlines at São Paulo/Guarulhos and Rio/Galeão have already begun installing e-gates capable of reading the credential.
![Brazil spearheads regional move to e-visas and biometrics, targets fully digital borders by 2026]()
Against this backdrop of rapid change, VisaHQ can serve as a practical ally for both corporate mobility teams and individual travellers. The company’s Brazil portal (https://www.visahq.com/brazil/) already streamlines the e-Visa application process and will be updated as biometric and wallet features come online, offering real-time status tracking and expert guidance on compliance across the region.
Policy-makers argue that a region-wide digital credential will slash queues and give governments earlier data for risk assessment. For multinational employers the upside is equally clear: shorter assignment lead-times, lower document-handling costs and the prospect of real-time travel tracking across multiple jurisdictions. Data-privacy lawyers, however, are urging HR teams to update consent language because biometric templates will be shared among several governments.
Participation in the scheme will remain optional—paper passports will still be accepted—but the Ministry of Justice is drafting a portaria that will make acceptance of the credential mandatory at all Brazilian international airports by December 2026. Mobility managers are being advised to engage early with travel-management providers to ensure booking tools and duty-of-care platforms can ingest the new QR and biometric data fields as soon as they go live.
Under a new working group formed with Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, Brasília is piloting a shared API standard that will allow the four countries to issue e-visas, collect selfie biometrics and exchange advance passenger information in real time. The first tangible deliverable—scheduled for beta testing with selected corporate travellers in Q2 2026—is a mobile “cross-border wallet” storing a Brazil e-Visa QR code and an image verified against the Federal Police database. Airlines at São Paulo/Guarulhos and Rio/Galeão have already begun installing e-gates capable of reading the credential.
Against this backdrop of rapid change, VisaHQ can serve as a practical ally for both corporate mobility teams and individual travellers. The company’s Brazil portal (https://www.visahq.com/brazil/) already streamlines the e-Visa application process and will be updated as biometric and wallet features come online, offering real-time status tracking and expert guidance on compliance across the region.
Policy-makers argue that a region-wide digital credential will slash queues and give governments earlier data for risk assessment. For multinational employers the upside is equally clear: shorter assignment lead-times, lower document-handling costs and the prospect of real-time travel tracking across multiple jurisdictions. Data-privacy lawyers, however, are urging HR teams to update consent language because biometric templates will be shared among several governments.
Participation in the scheme will remain optional—paper passports will still be accepted—but the Ministry of Justice is drafting a portaria that will make acceptance of the credential mandatory at all Brazilian international airports by December 2026. Mobility managers are being advised to engage early with travel-management providers to ensure booking tools and duty-of-care platforms can ingest the new QR and biometric data fields as soon as they go live.
