A groundbreaking date of Jan. 24, 2026, has been announced for the João Pessoa Brazil Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Presiding over the ceremony will be Brazil native Elder Joni L. Koch, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s Brazil Area.
That Saturday’s groundbreaking will be held the same day as the groundbreaking of the Jacksonville Florida Temple.
Information about the João Pessoa temple groundbreaking was announced by the First Presidency, according to a Dec. 8 news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Once built and dedicated, the João Pessoa temple will become the first house of the Lord in the Brazilian state of Paraíba in northeastern Brazil. Its location — just half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean — will make it the easternmost temple in the Americas.
As previously announced, João Pessoa’s temple will have an area of approximately 18,850 square feet. It will be built on a 3.9-acre site at Rua Paulino Pinto and Avenida Ministro José Américo de Almeida, in the Cabo Branco neighborhood of João Pessoa.
About this temple and the Church in Brazil
On Oct. 1, 2023, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for João Pessoa, Brazil. It was among 20 temple locations he identified in that general conference, including one more for Brazil, in Goiânia.
Latter-day Saint missionaries began preaching in southern Brazil in 1928. By the time the São Paulo Brazil Temple — the first in South America — was dedicated in 1978, membership in the country had reached 54,000.
Home to more than 1.5 million Latter-day Saints in around 2,100 congregations, Brazil has 24 temples in various stages of operation, construction and planning.
The country’s 11 operating temples include the São Paulo (dedicated in 1978), Recife (2000), Porto Alegre (2000), Campinas (2002), Curitiba (2008), Manaus (2012), Fortaleza (2019), Rio de Janeiro (2022), Belém (2022), Brasília (2023) and Salvador (2024) temples.
An additional four houses of the Lord are under construction in Brazil, being the Belo Horizonte (since 2023), Ribeirão Preto (2024), Londrina (2024) and Natal (2025) temples.
That leaves nine temples in planning and design stages, for São Paulo East (announced 2020), Vitória (2021), Maceió (2022), Santos (2022), Teresina (2023), Goiânia (2023), João Pessoa (2023), Florianópolis (2024) and Campo Grande (2025).
A temple has been announced for or dedicated in Brazil every year since 2016.
