São Paulo

Currency budget Brazil

Cards and contactless are taken almost everywhere, down to the pastel stall in the market. Pix, the instant transfer every Brazilian uses, needs a Brazilian bank account, so as a visitor you are on cards and a little cash. Change money in the city rather than at Guarulhos, and decline the conversion when a terminal offers to charge you in your own currency.

ATMs & cards

Use Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, Itaú or Santander machines inside branches, shopping centres, metro-adjacent malls or the airport, in daytime. Avoid standalone kiosks on the street at night. Many machines stop serving foreign cards in the evening as an anti-fraud measure, so a refusal at 22:00 is not your bank.

Use machines inside branches, shopping centres or the airport, in daylight. Many stop dispensing to foreign cards in the evening.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety all of Brazil

The crime a visitor actually meets is a phone taken out of a hand on the pavement, often by someone on a bicycle or a motorbike — on Paulista, in the centre, at a café table by the kerb. Keep the phone away on the street and step into a shop to use it. Use app cars after dark rather than walking between neighbourhoods, and treat the old centre as a daytime place.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa Brazil visa rules

Health & emergencies all of Brazil

Required to enter

• Yellow fever certificate, but only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is present

Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

The largest Japanese, Italian and Lebanese communities in Brazil all cook here, so eat sushi in Liberdade, pizza on a Sunday night like every paulistano, and esfiha anywhere. The mortadella sandwich at the Mercado Municipal is enormous and worth it once. Feijoada is a Wednesday and Saturday dish in São Paulo, and the por-quilo buffets, where you pay by weight, are the cheapest good lunch in the city.

Nightlife

One of the great nightlife cities of the world, and almost entirely indoors and late — bars fill at ten and clubs at one.

• Vila Madalena — the bar streets, and samba on the pavement
• Rua Augusta — the lower end, below Paulista, for bars, clubs and the queer scene
• Pinheiros — cocktail bars and the newer restaurants
• Praça Roosevelt — small theatres and bars in the centre

Closing: 05:00 or later at weekends; clubs often run past dawn.

Take an app car home from the door of the bar rather than walking to the main road for one.

Getting around

• Metro — clean, frequent and the fastest way across the city; Line 2 runs under Avenida Paulista and Line 4 links it to Pinheiros and the centre
• Uber and 99 — cheap and everywhere, and the way back from a bar at night; allow for traffic, which can turn ten kilometres into an hour
• Train — CPTM suburban lines share fares and stations with the metro, and Line 13 runs to Guarulhos airport
• On foot — Paulista, Jardins, Pinheiros and Vila Madalena are good walking by day; the distances between them are not
• Airport: Guarulhos is an hour by car to Paulista and can be ninety minutes at rush hour; Congonhas, for domestic flights, is twenty minutes from Paulista

eSIM

A data eSIM for Brazil, installed before you fly and working the moment you land:Works hereWorks hereRevolutIn the app

Must-see

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

Portuguese (Brazilian)

• HelloOi / Oláoy / o-LA
• PleasePor favorpor fa-VOR
• Thank youObrigado / Obrigadao-bree-GA-doo / -da
• Yes / NoSim / Nãoseeng / nowng

Softer and more open than European Portuguese, and the de sounds like "dje".

Religion

Catholic and Evangelical

The largest Catholic population in the world, with a fast-growing Evangelical share and Afro-Brazilian traditions such as Candomblé and Umbanda practised alongside.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Greet with a kiss on each cheek between women, or a woman and a man; a handshake between men
• Expect physical closeness in conversation — standing back reads as cold
• Arrive late to social invitations; on time is genuinely early
• Learn a few words of Portuguese, and never open in Spanish

Don't

• Do not make the OK sign with finger and thumb — it is obscene here
• Do not walk with a phone visible in the street
• Do not wear obvious jewellery or watches on the beach or in the city
• Do not call Brazilians Hispanic or assume they speak Spanish