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In the world · Migration · 31 July 2026

Sebrae 2026: Brazil tops 106,000 foreign MEIs

In June 2026, Brazil passed 106,000 foreign individual microentrepreneurs, 24% more in a year. Who they are, where they are and what it reveals.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

Brazil reached more than 106,000 active foreign individual microentrepreneurs (MEIs) in June 2026, a record. The figure, released by Agência Sebrae on July 31, 2026, is 24% higher than a year earlier and more than double the 42,900 registered in 2019. Venezuelans, Bolivians and Colombians, in that order, are the ones who most often open their own CNPJ (company registration number) in the country.

What happened

Sebrae's survey cross-references the Federal Revenue Service's MEI database with the nationality of the owners. Foreigners are still a small slice of the total, 0.78% of the country's 13.5 million MEIs, but it is the fastest-growing slice. The series shows the acceleration: 74,200 in 2023, 76,800 in 2024, 85,400 in 2025 and 106,000 in 2026.

By origin, the top ten list is almost entirely Latin American:

  • Venezuela: 26,345 MEIs, 25% of the total;
  • Bolivia: 15,361, 14.5%;
  • Colombia: 10,547, 10%;
  • Argentina: 8,607, 8.1%;
  • followed by Cuba, Haiti, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru and Portugal.

Half of these businesses are in the Southeast (50,500) and a third in the South (35,200). São Paulo concentrates about 39,000, followed by Santa Catarina, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. The most common activities are clothing and accessories retail, garment making, hairdressing and beauty services, teaching and restaurants.

Why it matters

The MEI is the simplest door into formality in Brazil. Becoming an MEI means issuing invoices, contributing to Social Security and having a track record a bank can read. For an immigrant, it is often the first work document that depends on them alone.

The number also undoes a common image. The immigrant who shows up in these data is not just competing for a job. They are creating their own work, in a sewing shop in Brás, a neighborhood salon, a Colombian food kitchen or a Spanish class. OBMigra's 2025 data point the same way: more than 400,000 immigrants in formal employment and a record number of jobs created for them.

What the numbers do not show is the road to get there. Opening an MEI requires a CPF (taxpayer number) and an up-to-date migration document, and those still regularizing their status are left out. Formality grows fastest where access to information and documents is easiest.

In Bairo's view

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez, a Colombian living in Brazil since 2002, is part of the story these numbers tell. Before founding companies registered in Brazil and in London, he started with a neighborhood business: a salon opened with his partner when his daughter was born, and then a course in hair treatments. It is no coincidence that beauty and teaching are among the activities that appear most on Sebrae's list.

In his reading, those who crossed a border have already done the hardest thing, which is starting over from zero. Opening a business after that is less frightening. For Bairo, the immigrant who starts a business is not asking the country for a favor: they are giving back work, taxes and a bridge to other markets.

He often says the sun is for everyone, but shade, in the heat, is for few. For Bairo, each CNPJ opened by a foreigner is a bit of shade built on one's own. The story is in The sun is for everyone, and its beginning in Capoeira was the bridge.

Where this meets the ecosystem

Immigrant microentrepreneurs almost always run into the same wall: credit. Without a pay stub and without a long banking history, someone who has been selling at a street market for two years remains invisible to the traditional financial system. CEASA Bank, a financial platform for agribusiness that operates on the infrastructure of an authorized institution, starts from an idea that serves as a model for this problem: looking at the real transaction, the sale that happened, and not only at the paperwork the person has. Today CEASA Bank's focus is the producer and the trader at the wholesale food markets.

In Bairo's view, niche AI agents created by CLAIN can help the small foreign entrepreneur understand, in their own language, how to formalize, issue invoices and organize cash flow, always with human guidance when the decision carries weight. It is a proposal under development.

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