Brazil · Latin America
Moving to Manaus
Manaus quick facts
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World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationCIA World Factbook / national censuses
Cost of living in Manaus
Can you move to Brazil?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Brazil — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Brazil
CRNM registration, the 90-day clock, and one superintendency for an area the size of Western Europe
Register with the Polícia Federal and collect your CRNM within 90 days of entering Brazil on that visa — or within 30 days of publication in the Diário Oficial where residence was authorised from inside the country. The CPF comes before everything. Two things are locally relevant. The Amazonas superintendency in Manaus is the migration counter for a state of roughly 1.56 million square kilometres whose interior has no roads, so it also absorbs the Venezuelan and Colombian border traffic and the river frontier. And the Zona Franca gives you nothing here: a SUFRAMA-approved project is a corporate benefit, not a visa.
Read the full step-by-step guideConverting at DETRAN-AM, and the two roads out of a city with no road out
A foreign licence is good for a maximum of 180 days of regular stay, on the basis of the road traffic conventions Brazil has ratified and of reciprocity, in practice carried with an International Driving Permit. Conversion through DETRAN-AM then requires a sworn translation, a medical fitness examination and a compulsory psychological assessment that nobody from Europe or North America expects. What is genuinely different here is where you can drive to: Manaus has no paved road connection to the rest of Brazil. The BR-174 north to Boa Vista is the one good road out, and the BR-319 south to Porto Velho remains an unpaved middle stretch under slow, contested improvement.
Read the full step-by-step guideAccounts, Pix, and the boleto you will meet every month
The CPF is the hard gate. Past it, digital banks onboard foreigners in days where traditional branches want documents you will not have for months. Pix is what you use daily, and in a city where a great deal of commerce is informal or riverside it is close to universal. The other half of Brazilian payments is the boleto, a barcoded slip still used for rent, condomínio, IPTU and many services. Nothing about the Zona Franca changes any of this for a private individual.
Read the full step-by-step guideSUS, tropical medicine, and the vaccinations nobody will make you take
SUS will treat you free whatever your paperwork says, and Manaus has something most Brazilian cities do not: a dedicated state tropical-medicine hospital, the Fundação de Medicina Tropical Dr. Heitor Vieira Dourado, which is the reference centre for malaria, arboviruses and snakebite for the whole region. That matters, because the local disease picture is genuinely different. Yellow fever is endemic in the Amazon and vaccination is recommended at least ten days before travel; malaria risk exists year-round in Amazonas, concentrated at the city's periphery and at riverside bathing spots rather than in the built-up centre; dengue circulates as it does nationally. Brazil requires none of this to let you in, which is exactly why arrivals skip it.
Read the full step-by-step guideChips, fibre, and what happens to connectivity the moment you leave the city
Inside Manaus, Vivo, Claro and TIM all work and fixed fibre is widely available in the central and western residential districts — this is a city of two million with a large industrial base, not a frontier town. What is genuinely different is the edge: coverage falls away fast once you leave the urban area, the highways and rivers out of the city have long dead stretches, and satellite messaging or a satellite internet terminal is a normal thing for people who spend time upriver to own. Register on Celular Seguro before you need it.
Read the full step-by-step guideThe Zona Franca, what it does not do for your salary, and the 183-day rule
Manaus is Brazil's only large free-trade zone and the regime is the reason the city's industry exists — but it is a corporate one. The Zona Franca de Manaus, created by Decreto-Lei 288/1967 and administered by SUFRAMA, reduces or suspends federal industrial and import taxes and grants ICMS credits for approved manufacturing projects. Its continuity is written into the constitution: art. 92-A of the ADCT, as amended by Emenda Constitucional 132/2023, protects it to 2073, and Lei Complementar 214/2025 carries the incentives into the new IBS/CBS system, giving SUFRAMA exclusive competence to analyse projects for both. None of that touches personal income tax, which is federal, progressive to 27.5%, and identical to São Paulo's.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Portuguese phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
Manaus is on GMT−4 — an hour behind the rest of Brazil that matters to you
CriticalAmazonas keeps Amazon Time, one hour behind Brasília, São Paulo and Rio, and Brazil no longer observes daylight saving. If you work for a company anywhere else in the country, every meeting in your calendar is an hour earlier than the invitation looks, the national news runs an hour out, and a flight schedule quoted to you by a colleague in São Paulo needs converting. This is the single most common first-week mistake here, and it is entirely avoidable.
Get the CPF before you fly — nothing else can start without it
CriticalReceita Federal issues CPFs online and through consulates to people with no visa, no address and no presence in Brazil. Since 2023 it is the single identification number across every federal, state and municipal database. Bank account, phone chip, lease, health card: all gated on it. In Manaus, where a great many arrivals come through an industrial employer with a fixed start date, the CPF is what decides whether your first fortnight is productive.
Register with the Federal Police within 90 days of entry
CriticalThe clock starts at your arrival stamp under that visa. The Amazonas superintendency in Manaus covers a state of roughly 1.56 million square kilometres — larger than any country in Western Europe — where the interior is reached by boat or by plane, not by road. That makes it the migration counter for an enormous catchment with very few alternatives. Book in your first week and reschedule later if documents slip.
The free-trade regime taxes companies, not your salary
CriticalThe Zona Franca de Manaus reduces or suspends federal industrial and import taxes and grants ICMS credits for qualifying manufacturers. It does not touch personal income tax, which is federal and identical to São Paulo's — progressive to 27.5%, worldwide income once you are resident. Foreign professionals arriving to work at the industrial pole regularly assume some of the benefit reaches their payslip. It does not, and budgeting on the assumption that it does is an expensive way to learn.
There is no reliable road out, so freight is inside every price
CriticalManaus has no paved road link to the rest of Brazil. The BR-174 runs north to Boa Vista and Venezuela; the BR-319 south to Porto Velho has an unpaved 'middle stretch' that has been in that condition for decades, with works now advancing under a 2026 IBAMA installation licence for three concrete bridges. Practically, everything not made here comes by air or by barge up the Amazon. It is why electronics assembled in the pole are cheap and why the weekly shop is not: DIEESE priced the Manaus food basket at BRL 732.90 in June 2026, needing 99 hours and 28 minutes of minimum-wage work and 48.88% of the net minimum wage.
Take the yellow fever vaccination, and take mosquitoes seriously
ImportantYellow fever is endemic in the Amazon region and the municipal health service recommends vaccination at least ten days before travel — Brazil does not demand proof to enter, so nobody makes you do it. Malaria risk exists year-round in Amazonas and is higher on the city's outskirts and at the balneários than in the built-up centre; SEMSA's standing advice is to avoid being at riverside bathing spots from dusk to dawn and to use repellent. Dengue circulates as it does everywhere in Brazil. None of this makes Manaus dangerous to live in; all of it makes a first appointment at a health unit worthwhile.
Top industries & employers
Electronics & IT hardware
Samsung, LG, Positivo, Foxconn-supplied assemblers, Envision
Information-technology goods were the largest single subsector of the Polo Industrial de Manaus in 2025 at 21.17% of revenue. Nearly every television, phone and monitor assembled for the Brazilian market comes off a line in this city.
Motorcycles & two-wheelers
Honda, Yamaha, plus the component network around them
Two-wheelers accounted for 19.69% of the pole's 2025 revenue. Brazil's motorcycle industry is essentially a Manaus industry, and the engineering and supply-chain jobs that go with it are the most portable skills in the city.
Electro-electronics & white goods
Whirlpool, Panasonic, Philips, Semp TCL
A further 16.86% of the pole's 2025 revenue. Between them, these three subsectors are why the Polo Industrial de Manaus turned over R$227.67 billion in 2025 across 553 operating companies and an average 131,401 direct jobs.
Logistics, ports & air freight
Barge and river-freight operators, air cargo carriers, customs brokers
A city with no road connection runs on logistics, and the profession here is unusually technical: river levels, barge scheduling, air-cargo capacity and SUFRAMA documentation. It is also the sector most exposed to a drought year on the Rio Negro.
Environmental science & research
INPA, Fiocruz Amazônia, UFAM, FMT-HVD, conservation organisations
INPA is one of the world's principal tropical-forest research institutes and the city hosts a substantial scientific community. Note that Brazilian nationality is a statutory requirement for the civil service, with a narrow exception for teaching and research posts at federal universities and research institutes.
Tourism & river operations
Jungle lodges, riverboat operators, cruise agents
Manaus is the gateway to the central Amazon and the base for lodges, expedition boats and the ocean cruise ships that come 1,500 km upriver. Seasonal and heavily dependent on the water level, but a real employer of anyone with languages.
Where to go in Manaus
Teatro Amazonas
Landmark · Centro
The 1896 opera house built at the height of the rubber boom, with a Parisian-tiled dome and a French-imported interior, standing in the middle of the rainforest.
Local tip: The guided tour is worth doing once, but the point is to go to something. The Amazonas Philharmonic plays here regularly and tickets are often free or nearly so — it is one of the great value cultural experiences anywhere in Brazil.
Encontro das Águas
Nature · Confluence downstream of the city
The black Rio Negro and the sandy Solimões running side by side for kilometres without mixing, because of differences in temperature, density and speed.
Local tip: Every operator sells this as a boat tour, and it is genuinely worth seeing. Combine it with a stop at the Janauari lake and go in the cheia when the flooded forest is navigable — in the dry season the same trip is a very different and much less interesting outing.
Mercado Adolpho Lisboa
Food · Centro, on the waterfront
An 1883 iron-framed market modelled on Les Halles, full of river fish, Amazonian fruit and medicinal plants you will not have met before.
Local tip: Go before eight in the morning when the fish is landed. Ask someone at the fruit counters to explain cupuaçu, tucumã, bacaba and camu-camu — nobody will mind, and it is the fastest introduction to the food here you can get.
Ponta Negra
Neighborhood · West of the centre, on the Rio Negro
The city's riverside promenade and beach, which appears and disappears with the water level, backed by the newest residential towers in Manaus.
Local tip: The beach only exists in the vazante and seca, roughly September to January, and in a low-water year it is enormous. In the cheia the same place is a promenade over water. Sunset here is the standing evening ritual of the whole west side.
MUSA — Museu da Amazônia
Hidden gemNature · Reserva Adolpho Ducke, north of the city
A forest reserve inside the municipality with a 42-metre observation tower that puts you above the canopy.
Local tip: It is a genuine patch of primary forest twenty minutes from an industrial estate, and almost no visitor to Manaus knows it is there. Go early for the birds, and climb the tower before the heat builds.
Presidente Figueiredo
Nature · About 110 km north on the BR-174
The 'land of waterfalls' — dozens of falls, caves and swimming holes in the forest, on the only good paved road out of Manaus.
Local tip: This is the weekend everybody here does and it is the best argument for owning or renting a car. Check the water level before setting off — the falls are spectacular in the wet months and modest in the dry — and note that stretches of the BR-174 crossing indigenous land are closed overnight.
Emergency numbers in Manaus
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