Last checked: August 13, 2026. Brazil’s Certidão Nacional Criminal is changing how people obtain and use Brazilian criminal-record certificates. The reform is intended to replace a fragmented collection of Federal Police, state-police and court certificates with one national document. The practical difficulty is that legal creation, technical availability, state data migration and acceptance by a foreign authority are four separate milestones.
Who this guide is for
This Brazil-wide guide is for Brazilian citizens, foreign residents and former residents of Brazil who need a Brazilian criminal-record certificate for immigration, citizenship, employment, professional licensing, study or another overseas submission. It is particularly useful if you already hold a Polícia Federal, Polícia Civil or court-issued certificate and do not know whether the new CNC replaces it.
Typical packets include the CNC or a legacy certificate, its validation code, a passport or Brazilian identity document, any name-change record, an apostille when required, and a translation. Outbound language pairs commonly encountered by international applicants include Portuguese to English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, although no official national statistics rank demand by language.
The most difficult cases involve a foreign checklist that still names the Federal Police certificate, a state whose records may still be migrating, a common-name match, an outdated proceeding, or a certificate that may expire while authentication and translation are being arranged.
What the Certidão Nacional Criminal changes
The Conselho Nacional de Justiça created the CNC through Resolução CNJ nº 665/2025. The resolution makes the Sistema Nacional de Informações Criminais, managed by the Polícia Federal, the central source for the CNC and the restricted Folha de Antecedentes Criminais.
The planned result is a public, standardized certificate covering integrated criminal information nationally. This is significant because applicants have traditionally encountered separate documents from the Federal Police, state police, state courts and federal courts. Even the difference between a police nada consta and a court distribution certificate can determine whether a submission is accepted.
The CNC combines two functions:
- It classifies the result as Negativa or Positiva under national rules.
- It acts as a criminal-distribution certificate and may list qualifying proceedings by number, authority and state.
The separate Folha de Antecedentes Criminais, or FAC, contains a broader restricted history for criminal-justice and public-security bodies. It is not a document that an ordinary applicant should substitute for the public CNC. The CNC is also not currently intended for electoral purposes; Resolução 665 preserves separate electoral certificates for those uses.
The rollout is conditional, not an overnight replacement
Resolução 665 took effect on December 19, 2025 and gave the CNJ and Polícia Federal 180 days to take the necessary migration and integration measures. The resolution also permits that implementation period to be extended by a joint act.
More importantly for applicants, the resolution establishes a conditional transition:
- Courts, state police and identification institutes migrate their relevant data to SINIC.
- The participating bodies formally report completion to the CNJ and Polícia Federal.
- The old issuing systems are discontinued and their websites redirect users to the CNC.
- The CNC identifies which states are already integrated.
- Only then may the corresponding state certificate no longer be required under the replacement rule.
Until migration is complete, courts are required to preserve access to their state criminal-certificate systems. An applicant should therefore not assume that the resolution’s publication date made every Polícia Civil or Tribunal de Justiça certificate obsolete.
The continuing transition is also visible on the current Polícia Federal CAC service page. That page warns that its existing certificate does not contain 100% of the information held by other state and judicial bodies and currently directs users to obtain certificates from the relevant bodies when state-level information is needed. This warning describes the legacy PF service, not the final coverage promised for a fully integrated CNC.
A centrally published, reliable state-by-state migration-completion list was not available on the principal CNJ and PF public pages at the time of this review. That gap directly affects document selection. Check the states identified on the CNC, review the relevant state court’s current certificate page and ask the receiving authority which document it will accept before spending money on downstream preparation.
Certidão Nacional Criminal versus legacy certificates
| Document | Main function | Coverage during transition | Stated validity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certidão Nacional Criminal | National conviction-status and criminal-distribution certificate | Integrated information shown through the CNC/SINIC framework | 30 calendar days |
| Polícia Federal CAC | Existing Federal Police civil-purpose certificate, generally returning Nada Consta online | PF data plus information other bodies have supplied; the current service warns that this is not 100% of state information | 90 days on the current PF service page |
| State police certificate | State police-record certificate | State-specific; may remain available while migration continues | Depends on the issuing system |
| State or federal court certificate | Criminal case-distribution information | Jurisdiction-specific; legacy access may continue during migration | Depends on the court and requested purpose |
The CNC’s 30-day period comes directly from Resolução 665. By contrast, the current Polícia Federal CAC service states that its certificate is free and valid for 90 days. This discrepancy is evidence of two certificate frameworks during a transition, not permission to treat the documents as interchangeable.
A receiving authority may also impose its own freshness requirement. A document can therefore remain valid under Brazilian rules but be too old for a particular visa, licensing or employment process.
Why a Negativa CNC may still show a proceeding
This is the most counterintuitive feature of the new system. A CNC is Negativa when SINIC does not show a final criminal conviction whose sentence remains unserved, unextinguished or unaffected by rehabilitation. It may nevertheless list proceedings that meet the separate distribution criteria, including a formal indictment, the filing or judicial acceptance of a criminal charge, a non-confidential arrest warrant, or a proceeding connected to a completed sentence where rehabilitation has not removed it from the distribution list.
Conversely, the resolution excludes several categories from the public list, including investigations without formal indictment or charge, final acquittals, police occurrence reports, specified non-prosecution arrangements and proceedings covered by a rehabilitation decision.
The listed information is limited to the identifying number, the responsible authority and the state. A person who needs details must request them from the competent court. If a completed sentence, extinction decision or rehabilitation has not been entered in SINIC, the resolution directs the person to ask that court to update the record.
Do not edit, conceal or omit a listed entry from a translation. The translation must preserve both the Negativa classification and the distribution information so the recipient can understand the document’s two functions.
From certificate request to overseas submission
1. Start with the receiving authority’s wording
Copy the exact document name, issuing authority, geographic coverage, maximum age and translation requirement from the checklist. If it still says Federal Police certificate, state court certificate or certidão da Justiça Estadual, ask whether the CNC is accepted instead. Keep the written response.
2. Check whether the CNC covers the required states
Review the integrated-state information on the CNC and the current certificate pages of every relevant state court or police authority. If coverage is unclear, do not infer that a national title means every legacy source has completed migration.
3. Obtain and validate the source document
Resolução 665 provides for preferential electronic, automatic and public issuance through Gov.br without applicant authentication. It also requires a validation code that any interested party can check through the PF website. The existing Federal Police validation service explains how to report a system error and directs urgent cases to the nearest decentralized PF unit.
Save the original PDF rather than relying only on a screenshot. Confirm the name, CPF or identity details, issue date, result, listed proceedings, issuing authority and validation text before ordering further services.
4. Resolve a system failure or homonym before translation
A failed automatic issue does not by itself prove that the person has a criminal record. Under Resolução 665, an unresolved homonym may be handled at a Polícia Federal unit, at the local comarca forum where there is no PF unit, or through the PF virtual counter when available.
The current PF CAC service also identifies common-name matches and differences between CPF information and Receita Federal data as reasons some users cannot obtain a certificate online. For that legacy service, the system generates a protocol that the applicant or a representative can take to a decentralized PF unit with the relevant original identity documents. The page states that the certificate can then take up to 15 days.
For a technical inconsistency, the PF service instructs users to email [email protected] with a description, a screenshot where possible, personal details and a contact telephone number. Do not send sensitive records to an unrelated commercial website.
5. Determine whether authentication is required
An apostille and a translation perform different jobs. An apostille authenticates the origin of a public document for use in another Hague Convention country; a translation makes its content usable in the destination language. Neither automatically replaces the other.
The required sequence varies by destination and document format. For the broader Brazilian workflow, use the guide to Brazilian police-certificate translation and apostille requirements. The separate comparison of translation, notarization and apostille explains the general distinctions without expanding them here.
6. Order the correct type of translation
Certified translation is a bridge term for outbound use, not the name of the Brazilian certificate. The destination may instead require an official, sworn or accredited translation. If the document is being submitted inside Brazil, the relevant local term is normally tradução pública or tradução juramentada, prepared by a registered Tradutor Público e Intérprete Comercial.
The translation should include the certificate title, result, issue and validity dates, authority names, state names, proceeding numbers, validation instructions, stamps and any attached apostille. For additional preparation details, see the guide to certified translation of a police-clearance certificate.
7. Submit while the document is fresh
Do not order the CNC months before the rest of the application is ready. With a 30-day statutory period, a safer sequence is to settle the receiving authority’s requirements, prepare identity and supporting documents, obtain the final certificate, complete any required apostille and translation, and submit promptly.
Electronic delivery can reduce mailing time, but it does not change the recipient’s rules. The guide to electronic versus paper police certificates covers PDF, upload and original-document issues.
Practical failure points
The main operational problems concern document identity and coverage, not merely translation quality. Applicants may confuse a police certificate with a court-distribution certificate, assume that Negativa means the page must contain no proceedings, or discover that an overseas checklist still uses a legacy name.
Two recurring questions in public discussions illustrate the confusion, although they are anecdotal rather than official guidance. A Brazilian Reddit discussion about the PF certificate asks whether the recipient must separately validate the code and which identity document accompanies the certificate. An independent Portuguese-citizenship forum discussion documents confusion after the PF changed its certificate and validation presentation. Both signals support a simple practice: retain the original PDF and give the recipient the official validation information, but rely on PF and CNJ instructions rather than forum answers for the governing rule.
Costs, timing and fraud risks
- CNC issuance: free under Article 13 of Resolução 665.
- Normal electronic issuance: designed to be automatic; no universal wait-time guarantee applies when identity review or migration issues arise.
- Manual legacy CAC route: the current PF service states that a certificate requiring in-person protocol handling can take up to 15 days.
- Apostille, translation and document-agent fees: separate service costs, not a CNC government fee.
A website charging for an official CNC is not the free government issuance channel. A legitimate commercial provider should identify what its fee covers—translation, apostille handling, document retrieval or courier service—rather than describing it as a government certificate charge. No private provider can guarantee faster SINIC correction or erase a listed proceeding.
Commercial document-service options
| Provider type | Appropriate use | Important boundary |
|---|---|---|
| CertOf | Remote certified translation of the final certificate, validation text, stamps and an attached apostille; digital delivery and revision support | Does not issue the CNC, act as an apostille authority, access SINIC or correct court records |
| Destination-country sworn or accredited translator | When the receiving authority expressly requires a translator from its own official register | There is no single worldwide credential; verify the destination’s register before ordering |
| Brazilian registered public translator | Primarily for foreign-language documents submitted in Brazil, or an outbound case that expressly demands Brazilian sworn translation | Not automatically required merely because the source document is Brazilian |
| Document agent or despachante | Special cases involving legacy certificate retrieval, local representation or apostille logistics | Cannot accelerate government record review or turn a paid service into official CNC issuance |
A national guide should not rank city-based translation shops as if proximity determined legal acceptability. Provider selection depends more on the destination authority, language pair, required credential, complete-document policy and revision procedure. CertOf’s online upload and ordering guide explains the remote workflow, while its delivery and revision framework describes the commercial service boundaries.
Official support and complaint routes
| Resource | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Polícia Federal SINIC support | Certificate issuance or validation errors; include the error description and a screenshot where possible | Changing the judicial outcome of a real proceeding |
| Competent court | Updating an omitted acquittal, archive, sentence completion, extinction or rehabilitation decision in the source record | General translation questions |
| State court ouvidoria or corregedoria | Service failure or delay involving the responsible court | Replacing a formal request to the judge or court unit that controls the record |
| Fala.BR | Complaints, requests, suggestions or service issues involving a federal body such as the PF | An appeal against a foreign authority’s document decision |
| Receiving authority | Confirming whether it accepts the CNC, needs a legacy certificate, requires an apostille or specifies a translator credential | Correcting SINIC data |
Frequently asked questions
Has the CNC replaced every Brazilian police and court certificate?
No. Replacement is tied to completed migration and formal transition by the relevant courts, police and identification bodies. During incomplete migration, state certificate systems must remain accessible.
How long is the Certidão Nacional Criminal valid?
It is valid for 30 calendar days from issuance. The receiving authority can impose its own, possibly shorter, freshness requirement.
Why does the older Polícia Federal certificate say 90 days?
The existing PF CAC service continues to state a 90-day validity period, while Resolução 665 gives the CNC 30 days. They are different certificate frameworks during a transition and should not be treated as the same document.
Can a Negativa CNC list a proceeding?
Yes. Negativa addresses qualifying final convictions, while the CNC also serves as a distribution certificate. A listed proceeding does not automatically turn the result into Positiva.
What should I do if an outdated proceeding appears?
Identify the competent court and request that it enter the relevant archive, acquittal, sentence-completion, extinction or rehabilitation information. A translator cannot correct the official source record.
What if a common name prevents automatic issuance?
Resolução 665 provides for identity disambiguation through a PF unit, a comarca forum where no PF unit exists, or the PF virtual counter when available. Save the error message and prepare your identity documents.
Is the CNC free?
Yes. Translation, apostille, agency and courier charges are separate commercial services. No third party should present those charges as an official CNC issuance fee.
Does the CNC need an apostille and certified translation?
Only if the destination or receiving authority requires them. Confirm the country, purpose, accepted certificate and translator credential first. Requirements for a US immigration filing can differ from those of a European municipality or professional regulator.
Can I translate the CNC myself?
That depends on the receiving authority. Some authorities accept a translation certified by a competent translator, while others restrict interested-party translations or require an official register. Review the limits of self-translating police certificates, then confirm the destination’s current rule.
What if a foreign checklist still requests a Federal Police certificate?
Ask the authority in writing whether the CNC is accepted and retain its response. If the deadline is close and the relevant legacy certificate remains available, clarify whether both documents should be submitted rather than assuming one replaces the other.
Prepare the translation after the certificate is settled
Once you have confirmed the correct Brazilian certificate, its state coverage and the destination’s translation rules, submit the complete PDF to CertOf for a certified translation quote. Include every page, the validation text and any apostille that must be translated.
CertOf provides document translation, certification wording, formatting support, digital delivery and revision support. It does not issue the CNC, represent applicants before the Polícia Federal or courts, correct SINIC records, or guarantee acceptance by a government authority.
Disclaimer: This guide provides general document-preparation information and is not legal advice. Criminal-record rules, migration status and receiving-authority requirements can change. Verify the current official certificate, state integration and destination requirements before submission.