Brazil is the largest country in South America and the fifth-largest in the world, with more than 200 million inhabitants. Its scale is such that there is no single “Brazil”: it contains ecosystems and regions that, elsewhere in the world, would each constitute entire countries on their own. The Amazon rainforest covers much of the north; the Pantanal, in the west, is the largest wetland on the planet; and Iguazu Falls, shared with Argentina, ranks among the most spectacular in the world. To the northeast stretch hundreds of kilometers of Atlantic coastline and cities of colonial origin like Salvador and Recife; to the southeast, the scale shifts entirely with metropolises like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Further south, in states like Rio Grande do Sul, the climate turns cooler, European influence is more pronounced, and the historical and geographic proximity to the RÃo de la Plata countries gives that region a character of its own, distinct from the rest of the country.
That same scale is reflected in its makeup: on top of the original Indigenous peoples came successive waves of European immigration — Portuguese, but also German, Italian, and other origins — communities of African descent, and more recently Asian immigration. Each settled with different intensity depending on the region, so the food, music, and customs change markedly from one end of the country to the other.
Pickleball arrived in Brazil in 2021, when José Eduardo Guilger, a Brazilian who had discovered the sport in the United States, began playing it in the country. Over the following years, a national confederation emerged, the Confederação Brasileira de Pickleball, in charge of organizing competitive activity.
