Record numbers for Rio: The Guide

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Critical Divide

The Insider’s Guide to Rio, since 2014 in the form of www.riotheguide.com, continues to inform readers about travelling to-and-visiting Rio de Janeiro and Brazil, with a lot of people using it to learn about Rio’s carnival.

Despite zero support from any tourist board in Brazil, the independent site continues to grow with a record 37,500 views in 2024. The site, as of 10 March, has been viewed 11,000 times so far in 2025, with over 4,000 of these visitors using it to get their information about Rio’s recent carnival.

Thank you for being one of the growing number of readers of Rio: The Guide.

Acadêmicos de Niterói promoted to the Grupo Especial in 2026

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Critical Divide

Acadêmicos de Niterói, which won Série Ouro, is promoted to the Grupo Especial in 2026 after bringing an off-season festa junina to Rio.

With the storyline ‘Vixe Maria’, the school took us to Maracanaú in Ceará, for a story about one of the biggest São João festivals in the world.

Acadêmicos de Niterói scored to 269.5, keeping it just ahead of Estácio de Sá with 269.3 and Porto da Pedra with 269.1. It will be the first time the school has paraded in the elite Grupo Especial of twelve, becoming the 32nd different school to do so. Like Viradouro it is located in Niterói.

Relegated from Grupo Especial to Série Ouro is Unidos de Padre Miguel.

Beija-Flor: Rio Carnival Champions 2025

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Critical Divide

Beija-Flor – caught by the team of RioTur photographers – scored a perfect 270 points to wins its 15th Rio carnival title, and its first since 2018, with the samba ‘Laíla de Todos os Santos, Laíla de todos os sambas’, that celebrated its late carnival director, Luiz Fernando Ribeiro do Carmo, Laíla, who died in June 2021 from complications of Covid-19.

Laíla was responsible for a sequence of the school’s carnival championships between 1998 and 2018, winning in 1998, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2015 and 2018.

Running Beija-Flor close were Grande Rio in second with 269.9 points and Imperatriz, winner of Globo’s Estandarte de Ouro, with 269.8 points. The relegated school is Unidos de Padre Miguel with 266.8 points.