Brazil is home to a small Albanian community, part of the wider but little-known Albanian presence in South America. This guide covers who they are and how they came to be.
It is part of our Albanians Around the World series.
Quick Facts: Albanians in Brazil
- Population: A small community; South America’s Albanians are concentrated in Argentina, with smaller groups in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.
- Origins: The documented thread is Arbereshe emigration by way of Italy, from the late 19th century to a group of workers who settled in São Paulo in the early 1950s. Later individual arrivals from Kosovo and Albania are known only from news reports.
- Where they live: São Paulo is the one destination documented in scholarship. No census or registry shows where people of Albanian descent live today.
On This Page
How Many Albanians Live in Brazil?
Brazil’s Albanian community is small, and the census does not record ancestry, so there is no official count of people of Albanian descent. It is part of a wider Albanian presence in South America that is centered on Argentina and includes smaller communities in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.
Origins of the Community
As in the rest of South America, the best documented Albanian roots in Brazil lead back to the Arbereshe, the Italo-Albanians of southern Italy who emigrated to the Americas during the great Italian migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Arbereshe emigration to Brazil continued after the Second World War, when a group of workers from Calabria settled in São Paulo in the early 1950s. Direct migration from Albania and Kosovo is documented only through individual stories, and no source shows where people of Albanian descent are concentrated today.
Why Brazil Has No Number for Its Albanians
Any honest account of Albanians in Brazil has to start with what is missing. Brazil’s historical immigration statistics were kept by nationality, and Albanians never appear in them. The tables published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) list Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Japanese, Portuguese, and “Syrians and Turks,” and place everyone else in a single “others” column.
That matters because the Albanians best documented in Brazil did not arrive as Albanians at all. The Arbereshe of southern Italy were Italian citizens who left as part of the wider Calabrian and southern Italian exodus, so in Brazilian records they fall inside the very large Italian totals shown below. No agency in Brazil, Albania or Italy has published a count of Arbereshe arrivals or their descendants, and we have not found a credible estimate either. For that reason this guide gives no population figure.
| Period | Italian immigrants entering Brazil | All immigrants entering Brazil |
|---|---|---|
| 1884 to 1893 | 510,533 | 883,668 |
| 1894 to 1903 | 537,784 | 852,110 |
| 1904 to 1913 | 196,521 | 1,006,617 |
| 1914 to 1923 | 86,320 | 503,981 |
| 1924 to 1933 | 70,177 | 717,223 |
The figures come from IBGE’s statistical appendix to Brasil: 500 anos de povoamento, published in 2000. Added together, they show just over 1.4 million Italians entering Brazil in those fifty years. The Arbereshe were a small thread within that movement, and the statistics cannot separate them out.
What Italian Research Says About the Arbereshe and São Paulo
The clearest scholarly description comes from the anthropologist Mario Bolognari, who has studied the emigration of the Arbereshe of Calabria for decades. In a 2014 study for the journal Rivista Calabrese di Storia del ‘900, he writes that departures for the Americas began at the end of the 19th century, above all for the United States and Argentina, but also for Brazil.
Farm laborers made up most of the early emigrants, but South America also drew the craftsmen of the small hill towns, which thinned out village life as well as the fields. Many people tried North and South America in turn, treating the two halves of the continent as a single destination.
Brazil was never the main choice. Between the two world wars the largest number of Calabrian Arbereshe left for Argentina, and after 1945 family reunification there was intense. Bolognari adds an important detail, though: in some Arbereshe towns, departures for the Americas favored Brazil, and the city those emigrants chose was São Paulo, already known for its Italian and Calabrian presence.
He dates that contingent to the early 1950s and describes it as made up of workers who, as a rule, never returned to their home towns. Women followed, which made the move permanent. IBGE’s postwar table fits that timing: Italian arrivals in Brazil peaked at 59,785 in the years 1950 to 1954, compared with 15,312 in 1945 to 1949 and 31,263 in 1955 to 1959.
The Immigrant Hostel in São Paulo
Families who want to trace an ancestor have one obvious place to begin. The Hospedaria de Imigrantes in the Brás district of São Paulo opened in 1887 as the first lodging for newcomers, who were received there and sent on to jobs. According to the Museu da Imigração, the São Paulo state museum that preserves its history, the hostel sheltered about 3.5 million people of more than 70 nationalities, origins and ethnicities during its 91 years of operation, before it closed in 1978.
The museum does not publish a figure for Albanians or Arbereshe, and we make no claim about how many passed through. Because Arbereshe emigrants traveled as Italians, the family’s village of origin is a more useful search detail than the word Albanian.
How Organized Is the Community Today?
The most direct testimony comes from Buenos Aires rather than Brazil. In an interview with the Kosovo daily Koha, published in July 2021, Alejandro Greco, who led an Albanian Orthodox church serving the diaspora in South America, said his work covered not only Argentina but also small communities in other countries, especially Brazil, and also Uruguay and Chile.
He was candid about the limits of what he knew. People of Albanian origin in Brazil had contacted him, and he believed the more organized groups were in one part of the country, to the south and further north of Rio de Janeiro, but he had not yet managed to reach them. We have not been able to confirm any active Albanian association, church or school in Brazil, so none is named here.
A Newer Path: From Kosovo to Belo Horizonte
Not every Albanian in Brazil has Italian roots. In 2015 the Kosovo news site Bota Sot interviewed Dafina Thaçi, a young woman from Kamenica who had lived in Brazil since late 2008. She arrived through a Kosovo organization that partnered with a Brazilian university in Belo Horizonte, which offered scholarships to young people from poor countries and countries recovering from war, Kosovo among them.
She began with a Portuguese course, went on to complete a journalism degree, and told the paper that Brazilians know very little about Albanians and Albania, and even less about Kosovo. Her story is a single case, not a statistic, but it shows that the link between the two countries did not end with the great Italian migrations.
Albania and Brazil: Diplomatic Relations Since 1961
Official ties are older than many readers expect. Albania’s embassy in Brasília records that the two countries established diplomatic relations on April 4, 1961, and soon signed a Trade and Payments Agreement, which entered into force in 1963.
For decades the relationship was handled from a distance. A report filed with the Brazilian Senate by Brazil’s ambassador in Tirana notes that relations stayed remote until the end of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship in 1985, after which Albania covered Brazil from its embassy in Buenos Aires and Brazil covered Albania from Rome. In 2009 Albania moved its only South American embassy from Buenos Aires to Brasília, and in 2010 Brazil opened a resident embassy in Tirana.
The same report, covering July 2018 to November 2021, says Brazil was then the only government in the Americas besides the United States with a permanent diplomatic mission in Albania. Citizens of both countries can visit the other without a visa, and the Albanian embassy describes Brazil as Albania’s first trade partner in Latin America, taking 98 percent of Albanian exports to the region.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| Late 1800s | Arbereshe emigration from Calabria to the Americas begins, mainly to the United States and Argentina, but also to Brazil |
| 1887 | The Hospedaria de Imigrantes opens in São Paulo |
| Early 1950s | A contingent of Arbereshe workers from Calabria settles in São Paulo |
| 1961 | Albania and Brazil establish diplomatic relations on April 4 |
| 1963 | The Trade and Payments Agreement enters into force |
| 1985 | Albania’s ambassador in Buenos Aires and Brazil’s ambassador in Rome are accredited to the other country |
| 2000 | Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo makes an official visit to Brazil |
| 2009 | Albania moves its South American embassy from Buenos Aires to Brasília; Brazil files a written statement in the Kosovo case at the International Court of Justice |
| 2010 | The first resident ambassadors, Tatiana Gjonaj in Brasília and Rudá Gonzales Seferin in Tirana, present their credentials |
| 2011 and 2015 | Albanian foreign ministers Edmond Haxhinasto and Ditmir Bushati visit Brazil |
| 2012 | Brazil’s agriculture minister, Mendes Ribeiro Filho, visits Tirana |
| 2021 | Brazil becomes Albania’s main supplier of meat |
Brazil and Kosovo
For Albanians from Kosovo, one fact shapes the relationship. Brazil was among the states that took part in the International Court of Justice proceedings on Kosovo’s declaration of independence, filing a written statement on April 17, 2009. The report from Brazil’s embassy in Tirana, covering 2018 to 2021, describes Kosovo as a breakaway Serbian province, wording that reflects Brazil’s position of not recognizing the country.
Dafina Thaçi discussed that non-recognition in her 2015 interview with Bota Sot. She said she had worked voluntarily to raise awareness, kept in contact with Brazilian politicians, and through them obtained a formal meeting at the General Secretariat of the Presidency about opening a recognition process. Our guide to the countries that recognize Kosovo tracks where each state stands today.
The Traffic Runs Both Ways: Brazilians in Albania
There is also a small Brazilian presence in Albania. The embassy report to the Senate estimates the Brazilian community there at about 80 people, most of them pastors and missionaries of various Christian denominations with their families, professional soccer players, and Catholic religious.
It is a reminder of scale. What can be documented about the human ties between the two countries is modest but real: Arbereshe workers who chose São Paulo in the early 1950s, a scholarship student from Kosovo who stayed, and two embassies that have been open since 2009 and 2010.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there Albanians in Brazil?
Yes, though the community is small and has never been counted. The best documented group is of Arbereshe descent, part of the wider Albanian presence in South America centered on Argentina.
How did Albanians come to Brazil?
The documented route is Italian emigration by the Arbereshe of southern Italy, from the late 19th century to a group of workers who settled in São Paulo in the early 1950s. More recent arrivals from Kosovo and Albania are known only from individual stories.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Albanians in South America
- ICSAIC, Rivista Calabrese di Storia del ‘900: Bolognari (2014), Diaspora e cultura della migrazione, Arbëreshë di Calabria dall’esodo al ritorno simbolico
- IBGE, Brasil 500 anos de povoamento: Estatísticas do povoamento, imigração por nacionalidade
- Museu da Imigração do Estado de São Paulo: História
- Embassy of the Republic of Albania in Brazil: Bilateral Relations
- Senado Federal: Embaixada do Brasil em Tirana, Relatório de Gestão (2018 a 2021)
- Koha: “Blood is not water”, true for Arbëresh people in Argentina
- Bota Sot: Dafina Thaçi, shqiptarja që jeton në Brazil
- International Court of Justice: Kosovo advisory proceedings, written proceedings
Related Reading
Author: Val Demiri
Valbona is an editor and writer at ALB Connection, where she covers the people, businesses, and culture shaping the Albanian diaspora. A journalism graduate of the University of Iowa, her work spans community profiles, success stories, and features on Albanian life across the US, Europe, and beyond. She is drawn to stories that celebrate Albanian achievement and keep the community connected across borders.
