It’s confirmed. In addition to Rio de Janeiro, five other Brazilian cities will stage the 2016 Olympic Games and host the men’s and women’s football matches. The 58 matches will be played in Belo Horizonte (Mineirão), Brasília (Estádio Mané Garrincha), Manaus (Arena Amazônia), Rio de Janeiro (Maracanã and the Olympic Stadium), Salvador (Arena Fonte Nova) and São Paulo (Arena Corinthians), totalling six cities and seven stadiums.

Brazilian airline Azul has revived plans for an initial public offering as it prepares to launch flights to the United States. The carrier revealed plans to list preferred shares on the Level 2 chapter of the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange, and American depositary shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Drama, joy and emotion – three essential ingredients of any FIFA World Cup – were in plentiful supply yesterday. It was a day on which heroes joined forces to lead their teams to glory, while others completed unlikely comebacks and one player in particular was unable to withstand the emotion of it all, leading to a rumour or two on social networking sites. All in all, it was another excellent day for South America, with Colombia striding into the second round for the first time in 24 years, while Uruguay bounced back to revive their hopes of pulling off another Maracanazo and leave England’s chances of making further progress hanging by a thread.

Brazil welcomed the world to the opening of the FIFA World Cup 2014 yesterday with a bright, colourful opening ceremony in the city of Sao Paulo. The hosts also won their opening game, despite a scare, beating Croatia 3-1 in a hard fought match.

Belo Horizonte – or “Beautiful Horizon” – will be one of the host cities at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. A city renowned for its passion for the beautiful game and the intense rivalry between its two largest football teams, Atlético Mineiro and Cruzeiro, it has a number of sport tourism attractions.

Brazil celebrated the entry of six million foreign tourists during 2013 when, Nadia Panis, an Argentine tourist that broke the record, arrived on Thursday December 5th at Antônio Carlos Jobim (Galeão) International Airport in Rio de Janeiro and was greeted with festivities hosted by the president of Embratur, Flávio Dino. Having achieved this historic milestone, Embratur is now working towards reaching a new goal for the number of foreign tourists visiting Brazil next year.