Brazil had the most murders of trans people globally in 2025
Brazil has the most transgender murders in the world (Tata Barreto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images | Wikimedia Commons)
According to the global Trans Murder Monitoring 2025 report, the deaths of 281 trans and gender diverse people were recorded around the world between October 2024 and September 2025.
In Brazil in 2025, the Trans Murder Monitoring report recorded 77 trans women or female-presenting victims, and three trans men or transmasculine victims.
The figures come from the latest edition of a dossier produced by the country’s National Association of Transvestites and Transgender People (ANTRA), released this week.
READ MORE: Homophobic slurs now punishable with prison sentences in Brazil, High Court rules
Eighty-eight percent of the victims were Black or mixed race, and 14 percent were involved in some form of activism.
The result represents a drop of 34 percent from the previous year’s 122 murders – but does not remove Brazil from the top of the ranking, a position it has held since the monitoring project began in 2008.
Brazil has some of the world’s most progressive legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals, driven largely by Supreme Court rulings.
Rights include legal same-sex marriage, granted in 2013, adoption rights, and the ability for transgender people to change their legal name and gender without surgery.
Homophobia and transphobia are criminalised in Brazil as forms of racism.
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