The short answer: Portuguese
Brazilians speak Portuguese. The country's constitution settles the question in one line. Article 13 reads: "A língua portuguesa é o idioma oficial da República Federativa do Brasil", meaning the Portuguese language is the official language of the Federative Republic of Brazil (Constituição Federal de 1988).
The mix-up is understandable. Brazil sits in South America, where Spanish is widely spoken, and Spanish and Portuguese look alike on the page. But Spanish has no official status in Brazil. It is a foreign language that Brazilian students may study, much as English is.
So if you are planning a trip, writing to a Brazilian colleague or choosing which language to learn for work in Brazil, the answer is Portuguese. The rest of this guide explains why, what role Spanish does play, and which other languages are spoken in the country.
What Brazilian law says about language
The constitution goes beyond naming an official language. Article 210, which deals with basic education, says that regular elementary education will be given in Portuguese, while Indigenous communities are also assured the use of their mother tongues and their own learning processes (Constituição Federal, Art. 210).
Article 231 recognizes the social organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions of Indigenous peoples, along with their original rights to the lands they traditionally occupy. Portuguese is the official language, but the constitution also protects Indigenous languages.
Brazil's national education law, the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases (LDB), follows the same pattern for secondary school. As amended by Law 14.945 of 2024, it says secondary education will be taught in Portuguese, with Indigenous communities assured the use of their mother tongues. The same article lists Portuguese and its literatures, English, arts and physical education within the "languages and their technologies" area of the national curriculum (Lei 9.394/1996 (LDB), Art. 35-D).
Where Spanish fits in Brazil
Spanish does have a place in Brazilian schools, just not as an official language. In 2005, Law 11.161 required schools to offer Spanish in secondary education, while leaving enrollment optional for students. The law set a five-year deadline to complete the rollout and allowed schools to add Spanish in the later years of elementary school as well (Lei 11.161/2005).
That requirement did not last. Law 13.415 of February 2017, which reformed secondary education, expressly revoked Law 11.161 (Lei 13.415/2017). The planalto.gov.br text of the 2005 law now carries the note that it was revoked, first by a 2016 provisional measure and then by the 2017 law.
Today the LDB says secondary school curricula may offer other foreign languages, preferably Spanish, depending on availability, location and schedules set by each school system (LDB, Art. 35-D, § 3). In short, English sits inside the core curriculum, and Spanish is the preferred optional extra where schools can provide it.
For a visitor, that history means you will meet Brazilians who studied some Spanish, but you should not expect Spanish to work as a shared language in shops, offices or government services. Portuguese is the language of daily life and official business.
How Brazil came to speak Portuguese
The colonial split between Portugal and Spain in the Americas goes back to agreements made at the end of the fifteenth century. The Treaty of Tordesillas, concluded on June 7, 1494, drew a line from pole to pole 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (Avalon Project: Treaty of Tordesillas).
Under the treaty, lands discovered on the eastern side of that line by the King of Portugal and his vessels would belong to Portugal, and lands discovered on the western side by the monarchs of Castile and Aragon would belong to them.
Six years later, Portugal reached the land that became Brazil. A Library of Congress account of Brazil's 500th anniversary describes the encounter: on April 22, 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral, commander of a Portuguese armada, sighted the South American mainland and staked a claim for Portugal (Library of Congress Information Bulletin, June 2000). The same account dates Brazil's colonial period from 1500 to 1822.
The article also records how that period ended. King João VI had returned to Portugal in 1821 and left his son, Dom Pedro, as regent in Brazil. Dom Pedro refused orders to return to Lisbon, established a legislative assembly in São Paulo and proclaimed Brazil's independence from Portugal on September 7, 1822. More than three centuries as a Portuguese colony explain why the independent country kept Portuguese, the language its 1988 constitution now names as official.
The Library of Congress piece adds a caution worth keeping in mind. Speaking at the Library, the Brazilian bibliophile José Mindlin noted that Brazil's human history predates European contact, and argued that "encounter" describes 1500 better than "discovery". The Indigenous languages counted in the latest census are part of that older history.
Indigenous languages: far more than one language in Brazil
Portuguese is the official language, but it is not the only one spoken. Brazil's statistics agency, IBGE, reported from the 2022 census that the country has 391 Indigenous ethnic groups and 295 Indigenous languages (IBGE: Censo 2022, 391 etnias e 295 línguas indígenas).
Those languages are the ones the constitution protects in Articles 210 and 231. They are spoken mainly within Indigenous communities, and for most travelers and businesses Portuguese remains the working language. The numbers are still a useful correction to the idea that Brazil is linguistically uniform.
Spanish or Portuguese: a quick vocabulary test
Spanish and Portuguese can look alike on the page, which is a big part of why people assume Brazilians speak Spanish. Looking alike in places is not the same as sharing vocabulary, though, and one of the first words any visitor needs shows the difference clearly.
"Thank you" is the classic example. The Cambridge Portuguese-English dictionary translates obrigado as "thank you", and its example sentences show that a man says muito obrigado while a woman says muito obrigada (Cambridge: obrigado). The Cambridge Spanish-English dictionary gives gracias for the same idea, an expression used to show gratitude to someone (Cambridge: gracias). Nobody could guess one word from the other.
Notice also that the Portuguese word changes with the speaker. Spanish gracias stays the same whoever says it, while in Portuguese the ending follows the speaker's gender. Small details like that are a good reminder to learn Portuguese on its own terms.
Practical tips for travelers and learners
If you are visiting Brazil, learn a handful of Portuguese courtesy phrases before you go, starting with obrigado or obrigada. Opening in Portuguese, even badly, signals that you know where you are.
If you speak Spanish, do not assume it will be understood everywhere just because some Brazilians studied it at school. The legal history above shows that, even when schools had to offer Spanish, enrollment was optional for students, and since 2017 it has not been a required school offering at all. Ask first whether the person you are talking to is comfortable in Spanish.
If you are choosing a language to learn for work with Brazilian clients or colleagues, pick Portuguese. It is the language of Brazilian law, schooling and public administration, and it is what the constitution itself requires.
Finally, if you are writing content or product copy for Brazil, localize into Portuguese, not Spanish. A single Spanish version labeled "Latin America" does not serve Brazilian readers, whose official language is Portuguese.