President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva argued that promoting culture should be a state policy. “If it’s just a government policy, anyone who comes in can take it away. Because taking things away is very easy; fixing things is what’s difficult,” the president said on Saturday (May 30) in Rio de Janeiro during the launch of the Tela Brasil platform, a free public streaming service for Brazilian audiovisual content.

“Culture educates, it opens minds, broadens horizons, and helps us see a little further - things that were previously invisible to us,” he said.

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Lula highlighted that Brazil has reached the milestone of 16,000 Culture Points, projects funded by the Ministry of Culture and implemented by public and non-governmental organizations.

Cooperation

Marking Africa Day, celebrated on May 25, President Lula also outlined recent academic exchanges between Brazilian federal universities and African countries.

In addition, he announced that in June he will inaugurate the new facilities of the Federal University of Latin American Integration (Unila) in Foz do Iguaçu, in southern Brazil.

Lula advocated agreements with Latin American countries and online courses to share knowledge.

The president concluded by inviting the community to participate in a structural transformation:

“Help this country carry out the revolution it never had. The cultural revolution so that this country can finally be in charge of its own destiny, its own history, and its own affairs.”

The Brazilian economy grew 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the last quarter of 2025. Over the past 12 months, there was a two percent expansion.

The gross domestic product (GDP) was announced Friday morning (May 29) by the statistics bureau IBGE.

Compared to the same period last year, GDP growth stands at 1.8 percent.

In current values, Brazil’s GDP reached BRL 3.3 trillion in the first quarter, approximately USD 646 billion.

Sectors

Comparing the two consecutive quarters, the three sectors surveyed showed growth – agriculture (2%), industry (1%), and services (0.5%).

Industry accounted for 23 percent of GDP in the first quarter. Within the sector, the activities that most drove growth were mineral extraction (3.6%) and construction (2.9%).

The services sector, which accounts for 70 percent of the Brazilian economy, was driven by growth in information and communication (2.4%), real estate (1.2%), other service activities (0.8%), and trade (0.6%).

Household consumption expenditure (1%) and gross fixed capital formation (3.5%), which measures the level of investment, were also on the rise. Government consumption rose 0.4 percent.

Exports fell by 1.7 percent, while imports went up 4.4 percent.