For decades, corporations functioned under a recurring and rarely questioned cost: the obligation to publish their corporate acts in the Official Gazette and in a major newspaper. Notices of call, minutes of shareholders’ meetings, and financial statements passed through this dual channel, generating expenses that accumulated each fiscal year.

Law No. 13,818/19 altered this rationale. By amending Article 289 of the Brazilian Corporation Law (Law No. 6,404/76), the legislation redesigned how corporations disclose their acts, focusing on cost reduction and streamlining a historically burdensome procedure.

A few years after the entry into force of the new rules, and following key decisions by the Supreme Federal Court and opinions issued by the Office of the Attorney General of the Union, it is worth revisiting the topic in light of the now consolidated landscape.

The End of Mandatory Publication in the Official Gazette

The most impactful change brought by Law No. 13,818/19 was ending the requirement to publish corporate acts in the official press publications of the Federal Government, the states, or the Federal District. Under the previous system, corporations were required to publish their acts both in the Official Gazette and in a major newspaper, which increased costs without a proportional gain in transparency.

The framework that came into effect is a hybrid model. On one hand, a summary publication in the print edition of a major newspaper published in the locale of the corporation’s headquarters. On the other hand, the simultaneous full disclosure of the documents on that same newspaper’s website. The new rules apply to mandatory publications carried out on or after January 1, 2022, regardless of the fiscal year or period to which they refer.

Digital Certification: Guaranteeing Authenticity

The migration of a significant portion of statutory publicity to electronic media required a mechanism to ensure the integrity of documents made available online.

For this reason, the full version published on the newspaper’s website must feature digital certification attesting to its authenticity, issued by a certification authority accredited under the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure (ICP-Brasil). In practice, it is this certification that grants electronic publications the same legal authenticity previously attributed to paper documents.

The Special Regime by Size: Where Gross Revenue Comes into Play

This is one of the most sensitive and frequently misunderstood aspects of the topic, particularly because the rule changed after Law No. 13,818/19 itself. In its original wording, it still relied on net equity and shareholder count criteria to exempt certain corporations from publication requirements. However, the Legal Framework for Startups (Complementary Law No. 182/21) amended Article 294 of the Brazilian Corporation Law and replaced that standard. Today, the controlling criterion is annual gross revenue:

• Closely held corporations in general: summary publication in a major newspaper, with the full text on the newspaper’s own website.
• Smaller closely held corporations (annual gross revenue up to BRL 78 million): exempt from print publication, permitted to disclose their acts exclusively in electronic format on the company’s own website and on the SPED Central Balance Sheet repository, pursuant to Ministry of Economy Ordinance No. 12,071/21.
• Publicly held corporations in general: same rule as closely held corporations in general, with a summary in print and the full text on the newspaper’s website.
• Smaller publicly held corporations (annual gross revenue up to BRL 500 million): may eventually be exempted from certain formalities, subject to specific regulation by the CVM.

This is precisely where many corporations misclassify their status. Correctly determining which regime applies to the corporation and assembling the documentation proving its gross revenue before the commercial registry is a step that requires careful analysis and frequently leads to registration requisitions when handled without technical precision.

What Should Condensed Financial Statements Contain?

For financial statements, summary publication is not discretionary. There is a mandatory minimum content to observe. The text must present, in comparison with the previous fiscal year, global values by account group and extracts of relevant information from the explanatory notes and from the reports of the independent auditors and the fiscal council, where applicable.

The CVM detailed these requirements in CVM Guidance Opinion No. 39/2021, which also requires prominent notices alerting the reader that the document is a condensed version and indicating where to find the complete audited financial statements. For other acts, such as minutes of shareholders’ meetings, there is no statutory standard for summarization, which transfers to the corporation the responsibility of prudently determining the appropriate level of summary.

STF and AGU: What Was Decided Regarding Print Newspapers?

A common misconception is assuming that Law No. 13,818/19 eliminated paper publication entirely. That was not the case, and the legal understanding is now consolidated on two distinct levels.

At the constitutional level, the Supreme Federal Court ruled on ADI 7,194, declaring the current wording of Article 289 constitutional and establishing the interpretation that the model is hybrid: a summary in the physical version of the newspaper and the full text on the same outlet’s electronic portal. Therefore, print publication was not abolished, but rather simplified.

With this validity affirmed by the STF, a practical application question arose, raised by DREI itself and the Commercial Registry of the State of São Paulo: could the Official Gazette, now entirely digital, be accepted as a major newspaper to fulfill the requirement? The Supreme Court did not address this specific point. It fell to AGU Opinion No. 00074/2025 to answer it, advising commercial registries that the Official Gazette cannot be equated to the major newspaper required by the Brazilian Corporation Law.

A Concrete Advance that Still Demands Careful Execution

Law No. 13,818/19 represented an important step in modernizing and reducing the costs of legal publications, but the reading that “everything is now digital and simple” does not reflect what the legislation actually establishes. Size classification, the minimum content of condensed financial statements, the need for prospective amendments to the bylaws when they still provide for publication in the official press, and proof of gross revenue before the commercial registry are details that, although seemingly operational, determine whether the corporate act will be registered smoothly or will trigger requisitions and rework.

PLBrasil Paralegal assists in managing legal publications and filing corporate acts for corporations, assessing the regime applicable to each company, structuring publications according to current requirements, and ensuring that disclosure and registration proceed with predictability and technical compliance.