With a promise to make driving cheaper cheaper, the federal government's program overcomes legal barriers and concentrates 97% of new driver's license applications.
In just over a month of effect, the CNH do Brasil program — which made obtaining a driver’s license more flexible — registered almost 2 million Brazilians who started the license process exclusively through the federal government’s application.
The data, released this Friday (2) by the Ministry of Transport, show the emptying of physical counters: while the app concentrated 1.8 million applications, the Detrans added only 57 thousand requests in the same period.
The state of São Paulo leads the ranking of requests, with more than 320 thousand open processes, followed by Minas Gerais (193 thousand) and Rio de Janeiro (168 thousand). The digitalization of the service, one of the main flags of the ministry’s management, seeks to reduce costs for citizens — which in some states reached R$ 5 thousand — and reduce bureaucracy in access to the document.
Another pillar of the program, the figure of the autonomous instructor, also gains traction: according to the ministry, 47,658 professionals have already obtained certification to teach practical classes without a mandatory link with traditional driving schools. The measure aims to replicate models adopted in the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on the final evaluation to the detriment of the workload taken in training centers.
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The stability of the system was guaranteed after a legal battle at the end of 2025. In a decision handed down in December, the Federal Court upheld the validity of the CNH do Brasil program throughout the national territory, rejecting lawsuits that questioned the legality of the new rules and the suppression of mandatory face-to-face steps in Driver Training Centers (CFCs).
For the government, the high demand confirms the diagnosis that the previous model, focused on making driving schools mandatory, was exhausted and excluded the low-income population. The expectation is that the competition brought by independent instructors will put downward pressure on market prices throughout 2026.
