Rio Carnival 2027 Tickets: Dates, Prices, and How to Buy

Written by Gui · Reviewed by Gio · Up to date as of October 2026

Rio Carnival 2027 tickets went back on sale on September 10, 2026, and sold out in about an hour. LIESA, the league that runs the Grupo Especial parades, opened the season's fifth sales phase at 6pm Brasília time on Ticketmaster Brazil: special grandstands, individual chairs in sector 12, and the track-level frisas.

If you missed it, the all-inclusive camarotes along the avenue are still on sale, starting at about ten times what a grandstand seat cost. LIESA has also promised another release, the popular grandstands in sectors 12 and 13, without saying when.

When Do Rio Carnival 2027 Tickets Go on Sale?

The latest sale opened at 6pm Brasília time on Thursday, September 10, 2026, on Ticketmaster Brazil, and sold out in about an hour. Every grandstand, chair, and frisa listing on Ticketmaster's Rio Carnaval page is now marked sold out, along with the Passaporte and Ingresso Sambista from earlier in the year.

That leaves camarotes as the only Grupo Especial tickets on sale there. The next release LIESA has promised is the popular grandstands in sectors 12 and 13, and it has not given a date. It announced the September round only the day before it opened, so the next one could come with as little warning.

What Was in the September Round, and What Did It Cost?

Three categories were on sale:

• Arquibancadas especiais (special grandstands) in sectors 2 through 11, with the exception of sector 9, on both sides of the avenue. These are bench seating, and you will be standing for a good part of the night.
• Cadeiras individuais numeradas (individual numbered chairs) in sector 12.
• Frisas, the low boxes right at track level, new to this round. Each one holds six people for one night.

Grandstands and chairs are R$250 (about US$50) per parade night at full price. A frisa is sold as a whole box rather than per person, from R$1,835–R$10,200 (about US$370–2,000) depending on how close it sits to the track. The cheaper meia-entrada tier is Brazil's legally mandated half-price discount for students, people with disabilities, people over 60, and low-income young people who can document it, so most visitors coming from abroad should budget for the full price.

Where these grandstand tickets came from is worth knowing before you sit refreshing the page hoping for more. LIESA says they were orders from the earlier rounds that buyers backed out of, that hit payment problems, or that the anti-fraud system cancelled: Ticketmaster checks orders after each phase and puts the freed-up tickets back on sale. So more can come back, but LIESA has not announced another batch.

The Desfile das Campeãs, the Saturday parade where the six best-placed schools go again, was included. LIESA counted it as a parade night for the two-ticket limit, so it sold alongside the competitive nights.

Two things worth knowing about the sectors. Our own Carnival in Rio guide rates sectors 4 to 11 as the best visibility in the Sambódromo. And sectors 12 and 13, home to the popular grandstands, sit near the end of the runway, where the schools have already given their best.

This is roughly how the sectors sit along the avenue, with the parade running from the start towards the Praça da Apoteose at the far end:

The sector number also decides your commute, which is easy to miss when you are picking a seat months ahead. Odd and even sectors sit on opposite sides of the avenue, and each side has its own metro station:

• Even sectors (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12): Praça Onze station, which comes out close to the entrances.
• Odd sectors (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13): Central do Brasil station, with a walk of around 700 metres to the entrance.

If you have no strong reason to prefer one side, pick an even sector. Praça Onze puts you near your gate; the odd side means that 700 metre walk from Central do Brasil at both ends of the night, in a crowd, in February heat, in whatever you decided to wear. It sounds trivial when you are booking months ahead. It is not trivial at 4am when the parade ends and everyone leaves at once.

One more thing: the two sides do not connect once you are inside, and you cannot cross the parade track after the gates close. Everyone in your group needs tickets on the same side. Buy sector 4 while your friend buys sector 5 and you will spend the night waving at each other across the avenue.

If you are still deciding whether the parade at the ⁠Sambódromo Marquês de Sapucaí is the right Carnival experience for you at all, that same guide explains what the parade actually feels like and what kind of planning it takes. And if you are not sure Rio is your city yet, our comparison of where to spend Carnival in Brazil walks through Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Recife and Olinda, and São Paulo too. We also have deeper guides to Carnival in Salvador and Carnival in Belo Horizonte if either of those is on your shortlist.

How Do You Get Ready Before the Sale Opens?

High-demand sales on Ticketmaster Brazil run through a virtual queue, and the people who lose their place are almost always the ones still filling in forms when their turn arrives. Everything below can be done days in advance, and Ticketmaster publishes most of it as its own guidance:

• Create your account now, not five minutes before the sale. Sign-up needs an emailed confirmation code, so it is not a two-minute job on the night. If you already have an account, check that your email, phone, and password still work, and reset the password ahead of time if you are unsure. No CPF? See below.
• Be logged in before the sale opens. Log in early and stay logged in.
• The waiting room is not the queue. Ticketmaster opens a virtual waiting room ahead of the sale, and LIESA is explicit that getting into it reserves you nothing: the queue only forms once sales open.
• Have a credit card ready, ideally Visa or Mastercard. Ticketmaster Brazil accepts credit cards (prepaid ones included) and Pix, but not debit cards, boleto, or bank transfer. Pix needs a Brazilian bank account, so if you are coming from abroad, a credit card is realistically your only route. Ticketmaster does not publish which card brands it takes, and American Express is accepted unevenly in Brazil next to Visa and Mastercard, so lead with one of those if you have it rather than finding out at checkout. More on that in our guide to paying and tipping in Brazil. Check the limit covers the full order before the sale, and warn your bank you are about to make a Brazilian charge so it does not get blocked as fraud.
• Turn off your VPN. Ticketmaster explicitly asks you to disable VPNs and anything else that masks your IP address. This one catches a lot of travelers who leave a VPN running by default.
• One device, one browser, one tab. Queueing in several tabs does not improve your odds, and joining from a second device on the same account throws an error.
• Do not refresh. Ticketmaster asks you not to refresh or close your browser while you wait in the queue, and refreshing after you have picked your tickets can release them back into the pool.
• Decide your day and sector beforehand. Tickets are sold per parade night, and the running order was drawn back in April 2026, so you can already see which schools go on which night. Our Carnival in Rio guide breaks down what each ticket category is actually like and which sectors have the best view.
• Use a stable connection. A wired or reliable home connection beats public wifi.

Are Camarotes Still Available?

Yes. Camarotes, the premium all-inclusive lounges, are now the only Grupo Especial tickets left on Ticketmaster, and all 13 listed there still had tickets for every Grupo Especial night and the Desfile das Campeãs in early October 2026.

This is not a category to treat casually. A Grupo Especial night costs R$2,500–R$4,890 (about US$500–970) per person as of October 2026, in a completely different league from a R$250 (about US$50) grandstand seat. Most of the 13 are already on a second or third lote, or price batch, for at least one night. If a premium Carnival night is what you are after, acting early is genuinely worth it here.

If you are mainly trying to get into the Sambadrome at a sensible price, though, the popular grandstands below are your best shot, not a panic-bought camarote.

What Still Has No Date?

One window is still unscheduled: the popular grandstands in sectors 12 and 13, up at the Praça da Apoteose end of the runway. Dates and prices are still to be announced, and LIESA says only that the sale is coming soon.

That is the honest state of it: the organizers have committed to another round without saying when, and Carnival calendars do slip. If a camarote does not work for you, this is the release to watch, and it is usually the cheapest way into the Sambadrome.

If you are planning the whole trip already, this is also the right moment to think about where you will sleep. Our guide to where to stay in Rio for Carnival covers the neighborhoods and the multi-night packages most hotels sell that week.

How to Buy Safely

For Sambadrome tickets, stay inside the official channels:

• the official Rio Carnaval ticket page on Ticketmaster Brazil
• LIESA's news page, where the league announces each release
• the official Rio Carnaval information page, with the Sambadrome map and a visitor FAQ

Be careful with:

• links sent by DM or WhatsApp
• "agents" who say they have guaranteed inventory
• social media profiles offering instant payment deals
• anyone trying to sell you a personal, non-transferable ticket

That last one is worth spelling out, because it is the classic Carnival resale trap. LIESA states that the Passaporte is personal and non-transferable. A resold one is not a bargain, it is a problem waiting at the gate.

If you do not have a CPF

Ticketmaster Brazil asks for a CPF, the Brazilian taxpayer number, when you register, and counts the purchase limits per CPF. That stops a lot of people from abroad before they start, but it is not actually a wall: Ticketmaster's own sign-up form asks for "CPF ou Documento de identificação (para estrangeiros)", so put your passport number in that field.

Two things to get right, because the form is unforgiving:

• The document cannot be changed later. Ticketmaster states the number is permanent and the account details must belong to the person named on the document, so type it carefully and make sure the name matches your passport exactly.
• Never invent a CPF. Generated numbers circulate on travel forums, and Ticketmaster's own sign-up rules point at Brazil's falsidade ideológica statute for false registration data. It is also a good way to lose tickets you have paid for.

Register a few days ahead either way. Sign-up needs an emailed confirmation code before the account works, and Ticketmaster warns that corporate and student email providers often block those messages, so use a personal address.

This is one of those situations where the pressure to be fast is exactly what makes people easy to scam. Better to be slightly slower and stay in the official flow.

How to Get Updates First

We will update this page when the popular grandstand dates are announced, or if anything else goes back on sale.

If you want the easy version, subscribe to our newsletter below. We will send an email when the next ticket dates go live, so you do not have to keep checking the official pages yourself.