Alright, you’ve got your Brazilian student visa and you’re enjoying life in Brazil. Depending on the program that you’ve signed up for, it’s now 6-12 months later and you need to extend your visa if you want to stay longer in Brazil.

The visa extension for a student visa, or prorrogação, doesn’t have to be a painful bureaucratic experience. As long as you have the right documents in order and do everything correctly it will be a straightforward process for you to get your visa extended.

Here is a short list of the documents that you’ll need to gather to request your visa extension. You can find these on the PF’s website in Portuguese.

2 recent color photos with a white background, size 3×4
Authenticated copies of passport pages
Current RNE
Enrollment letter
Declaration from the school you will study at
Certificate/testament that the institution is real
Proof of paid taxes (140090 and 140120, listed below)

Be aware that links that take you to the Polícia Federal (PF) website may require you to adjust security settings on your browser. This is normal.

Let’s take a look now at the documents you need to gather in order to successfully get your Brazilian student visa extended.

Get Your Enrollment Letter

You need to get a new enrollment letter from your school. To get this you’ll have to satisfy whatever requirements your school has and pay any appropriate fees.

Your school will either allow you to pay at their bank with a cash deposit or bank transfer, or they may allow you to pay with credit or debit card if they have an online payment system.

In return, they should give you two documents, the declaration of enrollment and a testament that the school is real.

Get Your Código de Solicitação

First, you need to fill out a web form here that’ll give you a code you need in order to schedule your PF appointment. You’ll have to include a job on this form, so below are two options you may want to use and their codes so that you don’t have to rummage through the list of occupations:

930 – student
990 – unclassified by list

After you submit the form (and don’t worry if the page asks you to resubmit the captcha, it has always asked me twice), the form will load in A4 style with all your details filled out. In the heading you’ll see Código de Solicitação, and that is the code you need to schedule an appointment (see pic below). Print this page because you need to print it to submit at the appointment. If you can’t print, click the print icon and save it as a PDF from the print options page.

Schedule a PF Appointment

The PF in Floripa no longer issues queue numbers by hand. You must make an appointment online through their system, and try to do it well in advance. Some PFs are going to be impacted, and if you wait, there may not be an available appointment before your expiration date.

Now, use the Código de Solicitação here to schedule an appointment. After you get past the first page, your name and location of PF will automatically load, then you just select an available date and time.

If there weren’t any times available before your expiration, take the first available one. You can always check the system for times that open up as people cancel.

The secretary at the PF told me that as long as you make your appointment before your expiration date, your visa is valid until the appointment. You won’t be fined for the days between visa expiry and PF appointment. Keep in mind that such statements are often a reflection of how procedures are carried out at specific offices by certain employees and are not endemic of the system at large.

Pay The Taxes For Your New RNE

Click here for the page that you have to fill out in order to get the A4 print-outs for each tax. You’ll have to fill it out once for each tax code. Use the numbers below in the box labelled Código da Receita STN:

código 140090 (R$110.44)
código 140120 (R$204.77)

Again, if you don’t have the option to print when the document pops up, click on print and save as PDF. You can pay these fees at any Loterica, Correio or Banco do Brasil, as well as whatever bank you use if you have an account. Keep the receipts for payment with the bottom half of the A4 printout to turn in at PF with the other documents.

You may have a small case of deja vu when doing this part. It’s because you have did this exact same thing when you registered with the PF the first time. You have to pay for a new RNE every time.

Copy Passport Pages – All of Them

Yes, even the ones with nothing on them. Don’t make my mistake and think, “Well, they only wanted stamped pages and visas the first time. I’ll just do that.” Maybe you’ll get lucky, but when dealing with bureaucratic processes in Brazil it’s always better to be over-prepared with your documents.

I was told at my second prorrogação that all pages are required even though that wasn’t the case the first time around. He sent me down the street to get the missing pages copied, then watched and waited while I put them in the correct order with the existing copies. You can avoid the possibility of having to spend extra time doing this by being prepared up front for such a possibility.

Side Note – Getting Passport Pages Authenticated

Technically the PF has the right to request that every individual copy of your passport pages be authenticated by a cartório.

If the agent requests that you take the copies to a cartório to authenticate them, you should counter his request by asking for leniency and understanding for your situation. Could he not staple them all together and then only need the authentication for the first page? Use your charm and see if you can’t make some magic happen.

If that doesn’t work, expect to pay between R$3-5 for each authenticated page at your local cartório.

Turning It All In

Do you have all of your documents in order? Great! Now, go submit them to your local PF and get ready for another exciting year in Brazil.

If you’re unsure of where to go, check the Policia Federal’s website here to find a list of all of their branches. Find your state, then look for the branch that mentions immigração, passportes or estrangeiros.

After you’ve succeeded in getting your extension make sure to report back here if any of the above information didn’t match your experience. Nobody knows everything about how Brazil works, but by sharing information amongst the community we can make life easier for everyone.

The advice in this post is based on personal experience and material found on the Internet. No information should be taken as legal advice. All information is factual based on the writer’s experience at the time of publishing. Locations and agents are major variables in this process. Do not expect every location or agent to be the same.