Most Dangerous Cities in Brazil: 2025 Data, Ranked

Updated August 2026: this guide uses the 20th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, published by the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública in July 2026 with 2025 data.

Brazil recorded 40,775 intentional violent deaths in 2025 — a rate of 19.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, down 8.2% from 2024 (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, 2026).

That national figure hides almost everything useful. Brazil's violence is not spread evenly across the country or across a city. It concentrates so tightly that the list of most dangerous cities and the list of places tourists go are nearly separate documents.

This is the companion piece to our ranking of Brazil's safest cities. It exists because "most dangerous cities in Brazil" is a question people ask before booking, and the honest answer changes what they should worry about.

Key Takeaways

• 40,775 violent deaths in 2025, a rate of 19.1 per 100,000 — down 8.2% year on year
• All ten cities with the highest rates are in the Northeast: five in Bahia, three in Ceará, one each in Pernambuco and Paraíba
• Almost none of them appear on tourist routes. The overlap between "dangerous city" and "place visitors go" is very small
• Salvador is the main exception — a genuine tourist destination with a high headline rate, driven by the periferia rather than the tourist corridor
• For visitors, the relevant risk is property crime in safe cities, not homicide in dangerous ones

Which Are the Most Dangerous Cities in Brazil?

The concentration is the finding. According to the 2026 Yearbook, the ten municipalities with the highest rates of intentional violent death are all in the Northeast region — five in Bahia, three in Ceará, one in Pernambuco and one in Paraíba.

Two cities that have persistently ranked near the top illustrate the scale. Feira de Santana, Bahia's second-largest city, recorded 66.4 homicides per 100,000 in FBSP data, and Macapá, capital of Amapá, recorded 63.6 per 100,000. Both are three times the national rate.

Now check those names against a travel itinerary. Feira de Santana is an inland commercial hub. Macapá sits at the mouth of the Amazon, reachable mainly by plane or boat. Neither appears in a normal Brazil trip. That pattern holds down the list.

The exception worth naming is Salvador, which is both a top-tier tourist destination and a city with a high headline homicide rate. Our Salvador safety guide explains why that number describes the periferia rather than Barra, Rio Vermelho or the Pelourinho by day.

Why Do the Rankings Disagree With Each Other?

If you search this question you will find lists that contradict one another, and the reason is methodological rather than sinister.

Different metrics. Some rankings use homicides only. Others use mortes violentas intencionais (MVI), which adds deaths from police intervention, robbery-homicide and bodily harm followed by death. MVI is the broader and more honest measure, and it is what the FBSP Yearbook reports.

Different population floors. A ranking that includes municipalities of 20,000 people produces wildly different results from one limited to cities above 100,000, because a handful of deaths in a small town creates an enormous per-capita rate.

Different years. Brazilian crime data publishes on a lag. A "2026 ranking" is usually 2025 data, and sometimes 2024.

Crowd-sourced indexes are not crime data. Numbeo and similar sites measure how safe people feel, based on voluntary responses. That is a legitimate thing to measure and a poor proxy for whether a place is dangerous.

When two lists disagree, check which metric, which population cut-off, and which year. Usually all three differ.

Is Rio de Janeiro One of Brazil's Most Dangerous Cities?

No — not by rate, which surprises people.

Rio de Janeiro's homicide rate was 20.35 per 100,000 in 2024, the lowest total since 2015. That is above the national average of 19.1 but nowhere near the 60-plus rates of the cities that top the list. Rio dominates international coverage because it is the city foreign media report from, not because it is the most violent.

What Rio does have is high property crime aimed at visitors: phone robberies rose 38% in 2024, to 21,423 recorded cases (Instituto de Segurança Pública, ISP-RJ, 2024). That is the number that should shape a tourist's behaviour, and our Rio safety guide ranks seven zones by day and night risk on that basis.

São Paulo is the sharper illustration. The state posted Brazil's lowest homicide rate in 2025 at 5.46 per 100,000 — safer than many US states — while the capital logged 29,169 phone theft reports in January and February alone (SSP-SP, 2025). Low lethal violence, very high property crime. Both facts describe the same city.

What Actually Drives Violence in Brazilian Cities?

Four factors explain most of the variation, and none of them are "the city is bad".

Drug-trafficking route position. Cities on cocaine corridors toward ports and export routes carry far higher rates than cities off them. This is the single strongest predictor and it explains much of the Northeast concentration.

Periferia scale. Violence concentrates in peripheral neighbourhoods with weak state presence. A city with a large periferia carries a high average even when its centre is calm.

Young male population share. Homicide victims in Brazil are overwhelmingly young men. Demography moves the rate.

Police intervention deaths. Included in the MVI count and a meaningful share of the total in some states.

None of these mechanisms reach a tourist in a hotel district. That is not luck — it is what the geography of the problem looks like.

Where Should Tourists Actually Be Careful?

Here is the inversion that matters, and it is the reason this article exists.

The cities where tourists lose things are the safe ones. São Paulo has Brazil's lowest homicide rate and its worst phone-theft problem. Within São Paulo, the highest-theft districts are Pinheiros and Bela Vista — the two most recommended places to stay. Avenida Paulista is the single worst address in the city at 469 reports in two months, and it is where every guide sends you.

Property crime follows density and disposable income, not danger. Somewhere with genuinely high lethal violence has fewer tourists and less worth taking.

So the practical answer to "which Brazilian cities should I avoid" is: you were probably never going to them. What you should actually plan for is:

• Phone discipline in the safe, busy, central places — not avoidance of dangerous ones
• Ride-hailing after dark, even for short distances (is Uber safe in Brazil)
• The scams that target visitors specifically, which are unrelated to homicide rates (common scams in Brazil)
• Choosing a base by neighbourhood, not by city-level statistics — Rio's Zona Sul and Rio's periferia are different worlds

If you are picking a destination on safety grounds, the safest-cities ranking is the more useful list, and the country-level picture is in our Brazil safety guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most dangerous city in Brazil?

It depends on the metric and year. Cities in Bahia and Ceará consistently top the intentional-violent-death rankings — Feira de Santana has recorded 66.4 homicides per 100,000 and Macapá 63.6, roughly three times the national rate of 19.1. All ten of the highest-rate municipalities in the 2026 Yearbook are in the Northeast.

Is Brazil's crime rate getting better or worse?

Better. Intentional violent deaths fell 8.2% in 2025 to 40,775, and both Rio and São Paulo recorded multi-year lows in homicides. Property crime aimed at tourists, particularly phone theft, has not improved at the same pace.

Is Rio de Janeiro dangerous for tourists?

Less than its reputation suggests for violent crime, more than expected for theft. Rio's homicide rate of 20.35 per 100,000 is far below Brazil's most violent cities, but phone robberies rose 38% in 2024. Staying in Zona Sul and using ride-hailing after dark removes most of the risk a visitor actually faces.

Which Brazilian cities should tourists avoid?

Very few tourists ever reach the cities that top the violence rankings, because those are inland commercial centres and remote capitals rather than destinations. The more useful discipline is avoiding specific areas within cities you will visit — peripheral neighbourhoods, city centres after business hours, and unlit streets at night.

Is São Paulo or Rio more dangerous?

For lethal violence, Rio. São Paulo state has Brazil's lowest homicide rate at 5.46 per 100,000. For phone and street theft, São Paulo is worse in absolute numbers. Both are manageable with the same habits.

The Bottom Line

Brazil's most dangerous cities are real, and they are almost certainly not on your itinerary. The list is dominated by Northeastern municipalities shaped by trafficking routes and large periferias, not by the coastal destinations that appear in travel guides.

The useful takeaway is not a list of cities to avoid. It is that the risk which reaches visitors — theft, scams, opportunistic robbery — lives in the safest, busiest, most central places in the country. Plan for that one, not for the headline.