The Brazil box office has sold 116.8 million cinema tickets so far this year, according to figures from the national film agency Ancine reported by O Globo. That would make 2026 the best January–October run of the decade, and it already passes the 112.8 million admissions Ancine recorded for the whole of 2025. The count runs to Wednesday 28 October and is 19.5% higher than the 97.8 million tickets sold in the same period last year. Dollar figures in this piece use the European Central Bank reference rates of 21 October 2026, the end of Filme B’s latest period, which give R$5.02 to $1.
Key facts
- 116.8 million admissions from 1 January to 28 October, per Ancine data reported by O Globo
- Up 19.5% from 97.8 million in the same period of 2025; the previous best for the period this decade was 102.5 million in 2023
- Ancine’s yearbook puts all of 2025 at 112.8 million admissions and R$2.30bn ($458m) in takings
- The tracker Filme B estimates takings at R$2.51bn ($500m) to 21 October, already above its own R$2.33bn ($464m) for 2025
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day leads the year with 18.87 million admissions, per Filme B
Brazil’s attendance has not come back to its pre-pandemic level. Ancine counted 177.7 million admissions in 2019, 125.3 million in 2024 and 112.8 million in 2025, a 10% fall that the agency put down mainly to the loss of two things that lifted 2024, starting with the record run of Inside Out 2. Clearing the 2025 total with two months left gives exhibitors their first growth year since then, and gives distributors a stronger base for the November and December holiday releases.
Two counts, and how they differ
Brazil has two running counts of cinema attendance. Ancine’s comes from the box-office reports that every cinema must file with the agency. Filme B, a private Rio-based tracker, compiles its own weekly figures. They measure the same market but do not match. For 2025, Ancine’s yearbook gives 112.8 million admissions and R$2.30bn; Filme B’s count is 115.5 million and R$2.33bn, about 2% higher on admissions.
We have not been able to open Ancine’s exhibition panel for 2026, so the agency’s 116.8 million comes to us through O Globo’s Lauro Jardim column. Filme B points the same way. Its weekly report put the year at 116.5 million admissions to 21 October, a week earlier than Ancine’s cut-off, and says it passed its own 2025 total on 17 October. Because the two series differ, this piece compares admissions only within each source: Ancine’s 2026 figure against Ancine’s earlier years, Filme B’s against Filme B’s. Takings and film-level figures come from Filme B alone, as Ancine has not published them for 2026.
On Ancine’s series, the first ten months of 2026 compare with 102.4 million in 2024, 102.5 million in 2023, 79.2 million in 2022 and 29.9 million in 2021.
Money has grown faster than attendance. Filme B puts takings at R$2.51bn to 21 October, up 29.9% on the R$1.93bn ($384m) of the same period a year earlier, while its admissions count is up 20.6% to 116.5 million from 96.6 million. By our calculation from those figures, the average ticket is about R$21.50 ($4.30) this year, against roughly R$20 ($4) for the same months of 2025. Pipoca Moderna puts the earlier revenue record down to more popular titles playing in pricier premium screens.
What drove it
Hollywood supplied most of the volume. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony) has sold 18.87 million tickets and taken R$412.8m ($82m), according to Filme B, and the entertainment site Pipoca Moderna reports it is now the third-biggest film by admissions in Brazilian cinema history. Toy Story 5 (Disney) has reached 8.4 million, and Pipoca Moderna lists Michael above 7.5 million, The Devil Wears Prada 2 close to 7 million and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey above 5.3 million.
The strongest local title is Minha melhor amiga (Paris Filmes), Susana Garcia’s comedy with Ingrid Guimarães and Mônica Martelli, with 5.88 million admissions and R$105.5m ($21m) after seven weeks. It is about 200,000 tickets short of Nada a perder – Parte 2, the next title above it on Filme B’s ranking of the biggest Brazilian films by admissions since 2000.
The pace has eased this month. The week of 15–21 October brought in R$33.7m ($6.7m) and 1.55 million tickets, Filme B’s weakest week since late March, and the weekend that followed was the quietest of the year. Exhibitors are trying to lift attendance for local films with a R$12 ticket week for Brazilian features, which runs to 4 November.
Our reading
The headline number rests on a reported agency figure, but the independent tracker shows the same scale of growth, so the direction is not in doubt. The weakness is concentration. By our calculation from Filme B’s figures, one Sony release accounts for roughly one ticket in six sold this year, and the local share leans on a single comedy. The next evidence is Ancine’s own year-end release, and whether the R$12 week and the November slate keep weekly admissions above 1.5 million. More in our Brazil box office coverage and the Brazil region page.