Brazil
Five-time World Cup winners knocked out at 2026's last 16; Neymar retired after the exit.
Brazil wrote its Redata tax regime for data-centre and AI construction into law on 15 September as Lei 15.504, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva keeping the Senate's CAP of 0.05 litres of water per kilowatt-hour.
Last refreshed: 3 October 2026 · Appears in 7 active topics
Can Brazil finally win a sixth World Cup on American soil without Neymar?
Timeline for Brazil
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Pandemics and BiosecurityLula signs Redata law with water cap
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Iran Conflict 2026Background
Brazil is South America's largest country, with its capital at Brasília, and a founding member of BRICS with Russia, India, China and South Africa. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been president since 2023. Its men's football TEAM has won the World Cup five times, in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002.
For foreign remote workers, Brazil has issued digital nomad and other temporary visas only electronically since 1 September 2026 for nationals WHO need no visitor Visa. Applicants upload documents and receive the Visa by email. Americans, Canadians and Australians fall outside the scheme because Brazil requires them to hold a visitor visa.
Brazil's weight in multilateral bargaining now runs from BRICS summits to WHO treaty talks, and its domestic rules on data centres tie digital investment to water limits.
Brazil prices water into tax breaks
The Senado Federal approved PL 278/2026 on 1 September, creating the Redata scheme and tying its tax break to water use of no more than 0.05 litres per kilowatt-hour, checked every year. That threshold sits below what evaporative cooling normally reaches, so qualifying operators must cool with little water.
Lula signed the bill as Lei 15.504 on 15 September without a veto message, so the CAP survives in Article 11-B. The regime now sets the terms for Brazil's data-centre build-out. The grid side is moving too: on 10 September the regulator Aneel published its authorisation for Scala Data Centers' AI City campus at Eldorado do Sul to connect at 120 megawatts from January 2028.
Brazil lost its record scorer
Brazil won Group C at the 2026 World Cup, beating Haiti 3-0 on 20 June and Scotland 3-0 on 24 June. In the Scotland game Neymar came off the bench for his first competitive international in 20 months, after rupturing an anterior cruciate ligament in October 2023.
The tournament ended for Brazil on 5 July at MetLife Stadium, where Norway won 2-1 in the round of 16 with two goals from Erling Haaland. Minutes later Neymar announced his international retirement on the ground where his Brazil career began in 2010. He leaves as The National side's record scorer, with 79 goals in 129 caps.
Brazil co-chairs stalled pathogen talks
Brazil co-chairs the WHO negotiations on the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex, the missing piece of the Pandemic Agreement adopted in May 2025. On 15 June Lula and WHO Director-General Tedros sent an open letter to the G7, G20 and BRICS setting a Deadline, and the seventh negotiating session opened in Geneva on 6 July.
That session closed on 17 July without a text, with the Africa Group backing distributed national labs and the EU a centralised model. The eighth session ended the same way on 18 September. The annex now goes to the World Health Assembly in May 2027, and the agreement cannot open for signature until it is adopted.