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Free Geospatial Data for Brazil: Verified List, September 2026

This is a list of free geospatial datasets for Brazil where every link was tested on 15 September 2026 and each source states what we measured, not what the page promises: format, CRS read from the file itself, licence as printed, and a download URL to copy. The famous URLs that died are at the end, with their current address.

The test was the same for all of them: a GET with a browser user agent, without following redirects, reading status, accept-ranges and access-control-allow-origin; then a real download and an ogrinfo -so on every reachable file. There were 66 URLs across 18 datasets from 14 institutions: five open with a cross-origin header, sixteen open as a download, 29 answering 200 with no range support, seven refusing our script's request (five of them because of the Origin header), three redirecting and six dead. None required registration.

Three findings matter more than any single link. Almost every federal vector layer comes in SIRGAS 2000, EPSG:4674, but the API-generated GeoJSON files (IBGE, ANEEL, EPE) do not declare a crs and are therefore WGS 84 by the standard's own definition, while Embrapa's soil map is genuinely WGS 84. Four Shapefiles arrive with no .cpg, and there is no safe guess: FUNAI's and SICAR's are Latin-1, Embrapa's is UTF-8, PRODES's is plain ASCII, and guessing wrong reads Acim� instead of Acimã. And the CC BY-ND 3.0 footer on every gov.br page is the portal's template, not the data's licence.

How to read each entry

Every dataset has five fixed lines and a sixth, "open in the tools," only when the file is a zipped Shapefile or a GeoJSON under 50 MB that answered open. The CRS is whatever ogrinfo or gdalsrsinfo printed on a downloaded sample; with no .prj, the line says so and points to the Shapefile guide; the codes are in the EPSG codes for Brazil and Latin America cheat sheet. The download URL stands alone, inside backticks, to copy with one click; the verdict comes right after.

IBGE — territorial meshes and census tracts

The pages under www.ibge.gov.br answer 403 to any script and 200 to a browser; the geoftp server and the servicodados API answer 200 with a cross-origin header for anyone, and those are the links below.

2022 municipal and state meshes

  • What it is — the official boundaries of states and municipalities; the 2022 edition is the one that matches the Census.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile on geoftp (27 polygons, .prj and .cpg in UTF-8) or GeoJSON via the meshes v3 API, a simplified outline.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) in the zip, read from the .prj. The API's GeoJSON has no crs member: under RFC 7946 that is WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), as GDAL reports it.
  • Licence — the page does not state a licence; the footer only links to the portal's terms of use.
  • How to download — — open, with a cross-origin header, 13,717,460 bytes, tested on 15 September 2026. Via the API, — answers 200 with a cross-origin header, no range support, 65,655 bytes, GET only; the v3 API documentation lists the other levels.
  • Open in the tools — download the zip and drop it onto the Shapefile viewer.

2022 census tracts

  • What it is — the smallest Census 2022 collection unit, one polygon per tract.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile, one file per state in shp/UF/ (Sergipe: 5,346 polygons, .prj, .cpg in UTF-8). The whole-Brazil file, in shp/BR/, is 774,125,052 bytes — not one to drop into any browser.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), read from the .prj.
  • Licence — the page does not state a licence; the geoftp server is a bare Apache index with no README.
  • How to download — — open, with a cross-origin header, 4,989,763 bytes, tested on 15 September 2026; swap SE for your state or browse the states directory.
  • Open in the tools — download one state's zip and drop it onto the Shapefile viewer.

INPE — TerraBrasilis and Programa Queimadas (Fire Program)

PRODES and DETER are on TerraBrasilis's downloads page; the fire hotspots live on a different server, dataserver-coids.

PRODES — annual deforestation

  • What it is — the deforestation polygons by year and biome, July 2026 version (v20260717).
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile by biome; the Legal Amazon also comes as a whole base in GeoPackage (787 MB). The Pantanal file has 37,155 polygons in 18 MB and ships with no .cpg, but the fields are plain ASCII.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), read from the .prj (ESRI spelling, GCS_SIRGAS_2000).
  • Licence — as printed in the footer: "Este obra está licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição-CompartilhaIgual 4.0 Internacional" (this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence) — CC BY-SA 4.0, also on the licence page.
  • How to download — — open as a download, 18,117,779 bytes, tested on 15 September 2026. The Legal Amazon file is at — open as a download, 448,855,249 bytes.
  • Open in the tools — download the Pantanal zip and drop it onto the Shapefile viewer.

DETER — deforestation alerts

  • What it is — the near-real-time deforestation and degradation alerts, by biome; PRODES is the official annual measurement, made independently.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile generated on each request, with no content-length; the Pantanal file came in at about 24.5 MB, 23,915 polygons and .cpg in UTF-8.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674); the .prj carries a null TOWGS84 and GDAL lists a BoundCRS to WGS 84 — in practice, 4674.
  • Licence — the same as the downloads page, CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • How to download — — answers 200 with a cross-origin header and no range support, tested on 15 September 2026; swap deter-pantanal for deter-amz, deter-cerrado-nb or deter-nf.

Fire hotspots — Programa Queimadas

  • What it is — each satellite fire detection, with date, municipality, biome, days without rain, and FRP.
  • Format — CSV, UTF-8, one point per row; the most recent closed month, focos_mensal_br_202608.csv, has 651,243 rows and 103,708,076 bytes.
  • CRS — none declared: lat and lon in decimal degrees, and neither the file nor the page names a datum. Do not write "WGS 84" as if it were measured.
  • Licence — the open-data page does not state a licence, and TerraBrasilis's CC BY-SA footer is not on it.
  • How to download — — open, with a cross-origin header and range support, tested on 15 September 2026; the monthly directory lists the other months and the open-data page is the portal.

MapBiomas — land cover and land use

  • What it is — the annual land cover and land use classification, Collection 11 (Landsat, 30 m, 1985 to 2025).
  • Format — GeoTIFF by year, the whole country in one file: 154,470 × 146,501 pixels, LZW, 256 × 256 blocks, 763,286,575 bytes. Swap the year at the end of the URL.
  • CRS — WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), a 0.000269-degree pixel, read from the header with gdalinfo /vsicurl/ without downloading the file.
  • Licence — as printed in the footer: "Os dados do MapBiomas são de uso público, aberto e gratuito mediante referência. CC BY 4.0" (MapBiomas data is for public, open and free use, with attribution). It is CC BY, not BY-SA — the BY-SA in this list belongs to INPE.
  • How to download — — open as a download, tested on 15 September 2026; the GeoTIFF page is the portal.

ANA — hydrography and hydrographic regions

On 15 September 2026 every export from ANA's ArcGIS Hub answered 504; the files live in SNIRH's GeoNetwork catalogue.

Multi-scale Otto-Coded Hydrographic Base (BHO 6)

  • What it is — the official hydrography: drainage reaches, watercourses, drainage areas and otto-basins by level.
  • Format — GeoPackage, one file per layer: the drainage-reach layer is 4,058,632,192 bytes, the coastline layer 5,115,904 bytes. The GeoPackage guide explains the format.
  • CRS — the record prints EPSG:SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) and the downloaded coastline layer confirms SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) in ogrinfo; the drainage-reach layer (4 GB) was not opened — for it, the catalogue plus the sibling file stand in.
  • Licence — as printed in "Restrições legais" (Legal restrictions): "O acesso ao dado é livre." (access to the data is unrestricted)
  • How to download — — open as a download, 4 GB, tested on 15 September 2026; to test first, the coastline layer is at , and the record lists the other layers.

Hydrographic Regions (CNRH)

  • What it is — the twelve CNRH hydrographic regions, delimited over the BHO 2017.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile, 12 polygons, 41,080,571 bytes, .cpg in UTF-8 — and no projection file: six files, none of them the .prj.
  • CRS — no .prj — see the Shapefile guide. ogrinfo prints (unknown); the record says EPSG:SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), but the file does not.
  • Licence — as printed in "Restrições legais" (Legal restrictions): "O acesso ao dado é livre." (access to the data is unrestricted)
  • How to download — — answers 200 with a cross-origin header and no range support, tested on 15 September 2026; the record has the earlier delimitation.

ICMBio — federal conservation units

  • What it is — the boundaries of federal conservation units, "exceto Reservas Particulares Federais" (except federal private reserves) as printed on the page, updated on 8 August 2026: 347 polygons.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile, 18,871,898 bytes, .prj, .cpg in UTF-8 and a QGIS .qmd.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), read from the .prj.
  • Licence — the page does not state a data licence; there is only the standard gov.br footer, which is a template, not the file's licence.
  • How to download — — open as a download, tested on 15 September 2026; the geospatial data page is the new address and also points to ICMBio's WFS on INDE.
  • Open in the tools — download the zip and drop it onto the Shapefile viewer.

MMA — National Register of Conservation Units (CNUC)

  • What it is — the official register of every conservation unit in the country, federal, state and municipal: 3,488 polygons.
  • Format — service only: a WFS 2.0 on MapServer that returns GML (asking for geojson gets 400). The map's download button is a session-bound POST with no URL to link.
  • CRS — urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4674 in DefaultCRS; the five-feature sample came back as SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) in ogrinfo.
  • Licence — none printed: not in the application, and the capabilities have no Fees or AccessConstraints element.
  • How to download — — answers 200 as a WFS, no range support, tested on 15 September 2026; it works in QGIS and is not a download; the layer is ms:ucs_selected. The application lives at cnuc.mma.gov.br/map — the domain root answers 404.

CAR (SICAR) — Rural Environmental Registry

  • What it is — the perimeters of registered rural properties and their layers (APP, legal reserve, native vegetation, consolidated area, hydrography and more), by state.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile by state and by layer, on SICAR's public search (Consulta Pública). There is no login or registration: every download goes through an image captcha. The public pages send a cookie-less client to the same address without HTTPS before answering, so they are not linked. There is also a public GeoServer with 27 layers capped at 10,000 features per query — a sample, not the dataset.
  • CRS — EPSG:4674 across the 27 layers; the SHAPE-ZIP's .prj resolves to SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674). Watch out: the WFS 1.1.0 SHAPE-ZIP writes latitude into X; the same query with version=1.0.0 comes out lon/lat. It ships with no .cpg, with a .cst saying ISO-8859-1 — Latin-1.
  • Licence — none printed on www.car.gov.br nor on the downloads page; the WMS capabilities carry Fees and AccessConstraints as NONE.
  • How to download — — answers 200 with no range support, tested on 15 September 2026, a sample of 50 Sergipe properties. The by-state dataset is through the public search, starting at www.car.gov.br, state by state, with a captcha.

DNIT — National Road System (SNV)

  • What it is — the federal road network by segment, with route number, state, type, code and km; version 202607A is current.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile, 7,673 lines with 28 fields, 68,515,469 bytes, .cpg in UTF-8 with accents intact.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), read from the .prj.
  • Licence — the page does not state a data licence, only the standard gov.br footer; the share has no README or terms.
  • How to download — — open as a download, tested on 15 September 2026; the host dropped half the connections that day, so a failure is the connection, not the file. The PNV and SNV page is the portal.

Embrapa — soil map of Brazil

  • What it is — Brazil's 1:5,000,000 soil map, classified to the third level of SiBCS (2006), 2,852 polygons.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile inside another zip, with no .cpg but with a .cst saying UTF-8 — and the bytes really are UTF-8; assuming Latin-1 for every .cpg-less Shapefile reads Concrecionários.
  • CRS — WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), read from the .prj — not SIRGAS; the vector exception on this list.
  • Licence — none printed: the record's licence, restrictions and attribution fields are all empty.
  • How to download — — the record page answers 200, tested on 15 September 2026, but the download button was broken that day: the export answered 500 ("error during call with GeoServer") several times; the sample above came from an attempt that worked hours earlier. The old address, geoinfo.cnps.embrapa.br, no longer resolves.

FUNAI — indigenous lands

  • What it is — the indigenous-land polygons with ethnicity, municipality, state, phase and category; 665 features, updated monthly.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile generated by GeoServer on each request (about 22 MB), with no .cpg, with a .cst saying ISO-8859-1. This is the classic Latin-1 Shapefile: 288 of the 665 names carry an accent, and without SHAPE_ENCODING=ISO-8859-1 you read Acim� instead of Acimã.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674), with TOWGS84 in the .prj (a BoundCRS in GDAL, as in DETER).
  • Licence — as printed on the page: "Licença de uso: o conteúdo dos arquivos correspondentes a geoprocessamento e mapas poderão ser reproduzidos desde que citada a fonte" (terms of use: the geoprocessing and map files may be reproduced as long as the source is cited).
  • How to download — — works in a browser, not in a browser-based app: the GeoServer answers 200 to a navigation and 403 to any request carrying an Origin header, tested on 15 September 2026. The capabilities are at , and the geoprocessing page lists the other layers.

ANM — mining claims (SIGMINE)

  • What it is — the active mining-claim polygons, with number, year, phase, substance and holder — 269,695 nationwide.
  • Format — Zipped Shapefile by state (plus KMZ), regenerated nightly; Sergipe has 1,584 polygons in 636,786 bytes, Brazil 125,896,946 bytes. The geometries are PolygonZM ("3D Measured Polygon" in ogrinfo), and the bytes are UTF-8, even though ANM's own metadata claims Windows-1252.
  • CRS — SIRGAS 2000 (EPSG:4674) per the Shapefile; the .prj is a compound WKT with VERTCS, which is why gdalsrsinfo on the .prj alone answers EPSG:-1.
  • Licence — as printed in the dados.gov.br record: "Licença: Creative Commons Attribution" (cc-by).
  • How to download — — open as a download, tested on 15 September 2026; the directory lists the 27 states and BRASIL.zip, and the datasets page is the portal.
  • Open in the tools — download one state's zip and drop it onto the Shapefile viewer — it opens PolygonZM.

ANEEL — hydroelectric plants (SIGEL)

  • What it is — the 472 hydroelectric plants (UHEs) with name, owner, CEG code, municipality, river, capacity and legal act.
  • Format — ArcGIS service answering GeoJSON, JSON or PBF; the UHE query returns 833,511 bytes in one go (472 points, under the limit of 2,000 per page).
  • CRS — the service is EPSG:4674, but the GeoJSON has no crs — by the standard, the file is WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), and that is what GDAL reports.
  • Licence — none printed: the portal, the download app and the layer metadata all carry empty licenseInfo and copyrightText.
  • How to download — — answers 200 with no range support, tested on 15 September 2026; save as .geojson. The SIGEL portal is the starting point.

EPE — EPE Webmap

  • What it is — the energy sector's GIS: power plants, transmission lines, pipelines and exploration blocks across roughly 130 layers; the sample is layer 16, existing hydroelectric plants, 198 points.
  • Format — ArcGIS service answering GeoJSON; 65,619 bytes for layer 16. Layers with more than 2,000 features need pagination.
  • CRS — the service is EPSG:4674 and the GeoJSON comes out with no crs, i.e. WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) by definition — the same situation as ANEEL.
  • Licence — the site's footer prints "Todo o conteúdo deste site está publicado sob a licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0)" — a site footer, not the data's; the Webmap opens with a usage notice, "apenas para fins de referência" (for reference purposes only).
  • How to download — — answers 200 with no range support, tested on 15 September 2026; the Webmap has the download button and each layer's WMS.

Famous and offline

You have probably tried some of these already; everything was measured on 15 September 2026.

  • geoinfo.cnps.embrapa.br — the DNS does not resolve. The catalogue moved to geoinfo.dados.embrapa.br, with the same layer name.
  • cnuc.mma.gov.br — the root answers 404, but it is the application's shell; /map answers 200. The CNUC pages under www.gov.br/mma gave 404 or redirect to a login.
  • app.anm.gov.br/dadosabertos/SIGMINE/PROCESSOS_MINERARIOS/ — 404 for the directory and the zips we tested. The same file names are at dadosabertos.anm.gov.br/SIGMINE/PROCESSOS_MINERARIOS/.
  • The ICMBio geoprocessing page — www.gov.br/icmbio/pt-br/servicos/geoprocessamento/… answers 404 and geoservicos.icmbio.gov.br does not resolve; the current address is in the ICMBio entry.
  • certificacao.incra.gov.br/csv_shp/export_shp.py — answers 200, but the body is a gov.br login page; the Acervo Fundiário (land registry) redirects to a login and the i3Geo WFS does not answer within 60 seconds. With no public object at all, INCRA is not in this list.
  • SICAR's public-search pages — are not dead: they send a cookie-less client to the same address without HTTPS, hand it a cookie, and only then answer 200.
  • geoserver.funai.gov.br/geoserver/web/ — 302. Use the capabilities URL from the FUNAI entry.
  • www.gov.br/aneel/pt-br/assuntos/informacoes-geograficas — 404; SIGEL only exists on the ArcGIS portal.
  • www.gov.br/anm/pt-br/assuntos/acesso-a-sistemas/sigmine — 302 to a Plone login; use the datasets page.

One correction in the opposite direction: the pages under www.ibge.gov.br answer 403 to our script and 200 to any browser — they are alive.

For teams

The real work starts after the download: reprojecting, fixing the .dbf encoding, clipping 774 MB of census tracts, and getting it all open on the phone of whoever is in the field. Managing these layers for a whole team — importing, serving as tiles, controlling who sees what — is what Geodocs does.

Found a dead link, or a dataset that should be here? Talk to us. This list gets retested and republished, not copied and pasted.

Tested on 15 September 2026.

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