Who this is for: travelers planning a trip to Rio or elsewhere in Brazil who want verifiable numbers rather than alarming anecdotes or vague reassurance.
Search for “Is Rio safe?” and you will find two kinds of answer. One describes beach robberies and says you should not go. The other says everything is exaggerated and tells you to relax. Neither gives you what you need for a decision: numbers for a specific city in a specific year.
Those numbers exist. On May 26, 2026, Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), a government research body linked to the Ministry of Planning, and the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety (FBSP) released the tenth annual Atlas da Violência. The 172-page report uses Ministry of Health cause-of-death records supplemented by police data. Here is what it can—and cannot—tell a traveler comparing Rio with Salvador, Recife, and Fortaleza or planning journeys within Rio de Janeiro state.
What the report measures—and what it does not
The Atlas da Violência measures homicide: intentional killing, not theft, robbery, or fraud. This distinction matters because homicides in Brazil are distributed unevenly and are often linked to specific contexts such as disputes between armed groups, local drug markets, and domestic violence.
A visitor walking through Copacabana with a phone in hand is statistically more likely to lose the phone than become a homicide victim. The report contains no theft or street-robbery figures. Those risks require different sources and practical precautions, such as route choices, secure document storage, and careful use of taxis.
Homicide data is still useful. It shows which Brazilian regions and cities are objectively calmer than others and how the pattern changes over time.
Brazil: recorded homicides fall while concern rises
Brazil’s Ministry of Health recorded 42,590 homicides in 2024, or 20.1 per 100,000 residents. That was 7.4% below 2023 and 33.4% below 2014.
The report’s authors immediately add an important qualification. Part of the apparent improvement reflects weaker data quality rather than less violence. In 2024, deaths with an undetermined cause—cases in which doctors could not establish whether the death was homicide, suicide, or accident—rose by 23.8% to 17,207. Using machine learning, the authors estimated how many of these deaths were probably homicides and added them to the official total.
After that adjustment, Brazil’s 2024 homicide rate was 23.4 per 100,000, almost unchanged from 2023, with a decline of only 0.4%. The underlying picture is therefore more cautious than headlines announcing a historic low.
The report also examines public perception. Brazil’s homicide rate has generally fallen since 2018, yet public interest in crime has almost doubled over the past four years. Google Trends searches for crime rose from about 50 points in January 2022 to around 100 in January 2026. One reason suggested by the authors is a change in the kind of crime people experience: street robberies fell by half between 2018 and 2024 according to FBSP’s public-safety yearbook, while fraud—especially through mobile banking apps—increased more than fivefold. Anxiety shifted partly from physical space to digital systems, which homicide statistics do not measure.
Geography matters more than the word “Brazil”
Homicide rates vary enormously within the country. In 2024, the lowest state rates were São Paulo at 6.6 per 100,000, Santa Catarina at 8.1, the Federal District at 10.3, Minas Gerais at 12.8, and Rio Grande do Sul at 15.2. The highest were Amapá at 45.7, Bahia at 40.9, Pernambuco at 37.3, Alagoas at 35.9, and Ceará at 34.3.
This matters when comparing visitor destinations. Bahia, Pernambuco, and Ceará include the popular coastal capitals Salvador, Recife, and Fortaleza. Using the report’s adjusted estimate for 2024, the homicide rate was 52.7 in Salvador, 45.5 in Recife, 42.2 in Fortaleza, and 45.9 in Maceió. Rio de Janeiro recorded 21.1 under the same method. The comparison is not a reason to remove northeastern cities from an itinerary, but it does support taking basic precautions there at least as seriously as in Rio.
Rio compared with the rest of Brazil
Rio de Janeiro state recorded 20.4 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2024, almost exactly the national recorded rate of 20.1. From 2014 to 2024, the state’s recorded rate fell by 39.8%, with annual homicides declining from 5,718 to 3,520.
There is an important issue in the 2019 figures. The state’s recorded rate appeared to fall almost by half in one year, from 37.6 to 20.7. At the same time, however, deaths with undetermined causes rose sharply. After estimating hidden homicides, the report gives Rio state a 2019 rate of 35.0 rather than 20.7. Much of that apparent one-year improvement reflected misclassification rather than a sudden reduction in violence.
A more sustained decline occurred gradually between 2018 and 2024. The adjusted state rate fell from 39.6 to 24.4, a reduction of 30.9%.
The municipality of Rio de Janeiro, with 6.7 million residents, had 1,179 officially recorded homicides in 2024. The report estimates another 241 hidden cases, for a total of 1,420 or 21.1 per 100,000. That is below the adjusted national rate of 23.4 and well below the corresponding rates in Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, and Maceió.
Hidden homicides accounted for an estimated 17% of Rio’s total, much less than São Paulo’s 84.7% or Belo Horizonte’s 65.2%. This suggests that Rio’s medical mortality data was comparatively well classified.
Over ten years, Rio city’s pattern was less dramatic than individual headlines suggest: 21.8 in 2014, a peak of 29.2 in 2018, a decline to 19.5 by 2021, and a modest rise to 21.1 in 2024. The ten-year change was only −3.2%, but the decline from 2019 to 2024 was a more substantial −21.6%.
The report separately notes that armed territorial control by criminal groups has expanded beyond the traditional peripheral areas of major cities, a process the authors identify as especially characteristic of Rio de Janeiro. This is a qualitative observation rather than a rate, but it matters: falling homicide figures do not necessarily mean that armed groups control less territory.
Greater Rio and nearby cities
The report provides estimates for municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. These figures reveal large differences that can matter when planning airport transfers, mountain trips, and journeys along the coast.
| City | Why a visitor may encounter it | Estimated homicides per 100,000 (2024) |
|---|---|---|
| Petrópolis | Mountain day trip and Imperial Museum | 8.1 |
| Nova Friburgo | Mountain region | 9.8 |
| Niterói | Across Guanabara Bay; ferry from central Rio | 14.3 |
| Teresópolis | Mountain region and Serra dos Órgãos National Park | 15.3 |
| Volta Redonda | Industrial city on the Dutra highway | 16.1 |
| Maricá | Growing coastal city north of Niterói | 16.0 |
| Angra dos Reis | Departure point for Ilha Grande boat trips | 20.1 |
| Rio de Janeiro | Main destination | 21.1 |
| Itaboraí | Eastern side of the bay; oil-refining area | 32.1 |
| Resende | Dutra highway toward São Paulo and Itatiaia National Park | 30.5 |
| Cabo Frio | Lakes region near Búzios | 36.1 |
| Duque de Caxias | On routes between the international airport and central Rio | 28.0 |
| Nova Iguaçu | Baixada Fluminense | 27.5 |
| Belford Roxo | Baixada Fluminense | 36.5 |
| São João de Meriti | Baixada Fluminense | 37.1 |
| Itaguaí | Port city on the route to the Costa Verde | 49.2 |
| Queimados | Baixada Fluminense | 52.3 |
Búzios is not listed because its population is below 100,000 and the report does not calculate a separate municipal estimate for it.
The overall pattern is clear. Mountain cities such as Petrópolis, Nova Friburgo, and Teresópolis, along with Niterói, had lower rates than Rio city. The Baixada Fluminense—the belt of cities northwest of central Rio crossed by some airport routes and highways toward Minas Gerais and São Paulo—was consistently above the national average.
These cities are not generally tourist destinations themselves, but travelers may pass through them. For a late-night transfer or self-drive journey through the area, confirm the route with a driver or guide who understands current local conditions rather than relying only on navigation software choosing the shortest road.
Road fatalities: Rio is lower than most of Brazil
The report also covers road deaths, where Rio performs unexpectedly well relative to the rest of the country. Across Brazil, road mortality has risen again since 2019. It reached 37,150 deaths, or 17.5 per 100,000, in 2024 after falling to 31,945, or 15.4 per 100,000, in 2019.
Motorcycles account for most of the increase. Motorcycle-related deaths rose from 11,182 in 2019 to 15,459 in 2024. The authors connect this to the growth of app-based delivery and motorcycle-taxi work, especially in poorer parts of the North and Northeast.
Rio de Janeiro state recorded 7.8 road deaths per 100,000 in 2024—less than half the national rate and 54.7% below its 2014 level. This measures fatal outcomes, not driving quality or the stress of heavy traffic. It nevertheless indicates that the statistical risk of dying in a road crash was lower in Rio than in most of Brazil.
For wider context, 70% of Brazil’s recorded homicides in 2024 involved firearms: 29,870 of 42,590. This does not mean that firearms are generally directed at random passersby; they are most often connected to conflicts involving the people and groups participating in them. It is still part of the country’s broader violence pattern.
What the numbers mean for a traveler
Rio’s homicide rate is close to the Brazilian average and substantially below the corresponding rates in the popular northeastern capitals of Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, and Maceió. That is not a reason to stop paying attention, but it also does not support treating Rio as uniquely dangerous among Brazil’s major visitor destinations.
These figures do not replace ordinary protection against theft and robbery because the report does not measure those crimes. Keep your phone away from the curb, do not carry every card and your passport to the beach, and arrange transport carefully. Our separate guide covers practical Rio safety rules.
If your route crosses the Baixada Fluminense—for example, during a late airport transfer or a self-drive trip toward Minas Gerais—ask a knowledgeable driver about the current route rather than choosing solely from a map. Petrópolis, Teresópolis, Nova Friburgo, and Niterói had lower estimated homicide rates than Rio and can be considered when choosing day trips.
Road mortality in Rio state is well below the Brazilian average, while motorcycle-related deaths are rising nationally. If your plans involve hiring a motorcycle or using a motorcycle taxi, treat that as a separate transport risk rather than drawing conclusions from the homicide rate.