Brazil delays e-Visa rollout to April 2025 for select nationalities
Brazil is rescheduling the long-awaited e-Visa programme for Australians, Americans and Canadians until 10 April 2025, while Japanese citizens keep their visa-free access for two more years.
The Brazilian government has announced a further postponement to the introduction of electronic visas for travellers from Australia, Canada and the US, now scheduled to take effect on 10 April 2025. A decision originally slated for 1 October 2023 was already pushed back at the start of 2024 and was previously set to come into force on 10 April 2024.
Under the planned e-Visa scheme—previously announced—citizens of Australia, the US, Canada and Japan, who once enjoyed visa-free entry, would instead have been required to submit an online application before travel. The new visa will allow stays of up to 90 days over a two-year validity for purposes of tourism or business.
According to figures obtained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the original visa waiver policy is estimated to have cost the federal government US$15.9 million annually in lost fee revenue, prompting some legislators allied with President Lula to urge outright cancellation of the whole e-Visa project.
… while Japanese exemption survives until 2026
The government has now confirmed that Japanese passport holders will retain visa-free access until 29 September 2026 thanks to a reciprocal agreement signed by the Brazilian and Japanese authorities, permitting stays of up to 90 days.
The evolving story of visa waivers for Americans, Australians and Britons
The visa-waiver policy for travellers from the US, Canada, Australia and Japan was first adopted in 2019 under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, framed as a job-creation and revenue-generating initiative. At the time, the government argued that reciprocity principles were preserved because other countries granted similar concessions to Brazilians.
Two years later, the Ministry of Tourism floated the idea of scrapping visa requirements entirely, but Itamaraty—the Foreign Ministry—vetoed the plan on grounds of reciprocity, citing a 2017 Trump-era policy that had made it harder for Brazilians to secure US visas.
Spécialiste de la veille réglementaire et experte en contenus destinations, elle analyse quotidiennement l’évolution des formalités d’entrée pour traduire la complexité administrative en guides pratiques. Son rôle combine expertise terrain et précision technique afin de garantir la fiabilité des informations délivrées aux voyageurs.
