Work in Portugal as a developer,
qualified in Brazil.

Prepare your documents

1. Start at your institution's student portal rather than its counter. Since 1 July 2025, under Portaria MEC nº 70/2025, higher education institutions in the Federal Education System issue graduation diplomas in digital form only: an XML file signed under ICP-Brasil, together with a visual representation of it (RVDD) that may be printed. Each institution has to give you a restricted area to download both, and you need no digital certificate of your own — the validation code or the QR code on the visual representation is what opens it.Three things to check before assuming your diploma is a file. Paper diplomas issued up to 30 June 2025 remain valid. The digital diploma is only compulsory in the Federal Education System, so for an institution in a state or military system it is optional. And the rule covers graduation diplomas: for a stricto sensu postgraduate diploma the deadline was rewritten in December 2025 into a relative one — up to 180 days from a technical update to the annexes of IN SESU nº 1/2020 that the ministry's own index of norms did not yet list — so a master's or doctoral diploma may still arrive on paper.
2. Ask the same institution for your full academic transcript. The digital diploma covers the qualification itself and nothing else, and most destinations assess the transcript alongside it.
3. Whoever receives a digital diploma has two checks available, and they answer different questions. The ministry's verifier tests whether the XML matches the MEC standard and says in as many words that it does not validate the contents; the contents are confirmed by opening the diploma through the link your institution publishes, using the validation code or the QR code.
4. The Apostille Convention has been in force for Brazil since 14 August 2016, promulgated by Decree No. 8.660/2016. The authority that issues the apostille is not a ministry: it is a notary office (cartório) authorised for the service. The National Council of Justice coordinates and regulates the scheme and publishes the list of authorised offices by state and city, so start from that list rather than from the office nearest to you.
5. Not every authorised office can apostille your document. In the CNJ's own comparison, apostilling works like a signature recognition, so only an office that holds the signature, seal or stamp of whoever issued the document is able to do it. Integrated systems now let one signature be recognised across the offices that belong to them, which widens the choice without making it universal.This is the question to ask by phone before travelling to a counter, especially when the document was issued in a different state from the one you live in.
6. If your diploma exists only as a signed file, ask about that before printing anything. The CNJ states that a document signed only digitally can be apostilled where the notary is able to confirm it is authentic, and that since Provimento nº 119/2021 the apostille may be issued without any printing at all: the document goes into the CNJ system as an electronically signed file and comes back as a single file, delivered on media or to the email address you give.That is what the rules allow, not a service every office runs. Confirm the office you picked does it before you count on receiving a file rather than a sheet of security paper.
7. Budget one apostille per document: each document with its own set of signatures gets its own. An apostille does not expire, but it does not extend anything either — a certificate with a validity period still runs out on schedule, apostilled or not. Whoever receives it can confirm it is genuine on the CNJ's validation page.
8. Your destination decides which language your file has to arrive in, and where you have the translation made changes what has to be apostilled. A translation made in Brazil carries public faith only when a sworn public translator (tradutor e intérprete público) registered with a junta comercial makes it, and since Law No. 14.195/2021 that registration lets them work throughout the country from a single state.Ask the authority that will receive your file which arrangement it wants before paying for either. The Netherlands, to take one published example, apostilles a Brazilian translation together with the original, but asks for no legalisation at all when the translation is made by a translator accredited in the Netherlands.
9. Under Article 5 of the Convention, an apostille certifies the signature, the capacity of the person who signed and the seal on the document. In the CNJ's wording it certifies the origin of the public document and not the document itself: it says nothing about the content, and nothing about what your qualification is worth abroad.