On 1 September, Brazil published Decree No. 13,108 of 31 August 2026 in the Diário Oficial da União, regulating ticket sales for events. It does not all take effect at once: Article 26 holds part of it back for twenty days.
What has happened
The official text develops Law No. 8,078 of 1990, the Código de Defesa do Consumidor, as it applies to the sale of tickets. It is signed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and four ministers. It covers box offices, websites, apps and other channels, and excludes sporting events, which are governed by Law No. 14,597 of 2023.
The primary seller must state the total price with fees itemised from the first contact, “de forma clara, destacada e ostensiva” (art. 4, VI); use technological means to prevent bulk, abusive or speculative purchases, including those made with automated systems or scripts (art. 4, I); and offer a free transfer of the ticket to a third party (art. 4, V). The technological part does not bind those who sell only at the box office.
Resale platforms get an article of their own: they must flag when a ticket is above face value, state whether the seller is a private individual or a business, remove listings showing signs of automation, and warn on their homepage, in their advertising and before payment that they are not the official channel. The decree deems duplicate fees, or fees with no service behind them, abusive (art. 6), requires sales data to be kept for two years without personal identification (art. 15), and deems it abusive to obstruct access to the half-price meia-entrada (art. 8).
What is binding now and what waits twenty days
Article 26 splits the calendar. Articles 4 and 5, Article 13 and Articles 15 to 18 take effect twenty days after publication. Everything else has applied since 1 September.
That split decides the work of the coming weeks: the virtual queue and the full refund are not on the deferred list. From now on, a controlled-access system must show the user's position, how many people are ahead of them and roughly how long they have left to wait (art. 14). And in the event of cancellation, postponement or relevant alteration, everything paid must be refunded, fees included, with no penalties or deductions when the cause is not the consumer's, and the buyer chooses between a new date, credit or a refund (arts. 20 to 22).
Why it matters
The decree devotes an entire article to resale platforms, but what changes for anyone selling tickets is the purchase flow. Article 13 requires the ticket to be held for long enough to complete the purchase, with the countdown visible, and prohibits the price and fees from moving during that reservation through a lot change, a change of price band or a “mecanismo de precificação dinâmica”: a restriction on the dynamic pricing engine, not on the secondary market.
The refund, which does not wait, includes ancillary fees: that changes the refund policy and who bears the handling cost. Article 7, §3 also requires the criteria used to set each fee to be kept on record.
The decree sets no penalty amounts: Article 23 refers to the regime of Law No. 8,078 of 1990 itself and empowers the Ministério da Justiça e Segurança Pública to issue supplementary rules. In Spain, the matter has gone down other routes.