The Argentines (and South Americans) who choose Florianópolis: why, what they look for and how they buy

A seventy-year relationship

The bond between Argentina and Florianópolis is nothing new: Argentine tourism to the island dates back to the 1950s, when the Catarinense airline TAC was promoting the region on the far side of the Río de la Plata. Three reasons have sustained it to this day: proximity (a flight of about two hours), the warm, calm beaches of the north of the island, and a historically favorable exchange rate. Canasvieiras — alongside Jurerê and Ingleses — became the most Argentine stretch of the Catarinense coast.

The number-one foreign market

The tourism figures confirm it. In January 2026, Argentines accounted for around 81% of all foreign visitors to Santa Catarina, according to Fecomércio-SC, even though their share fell compared with the previous summer (in Florianópolis, from 39% to 24% of visitors). Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were the three leading sources of the state's international tourism in 2025. And connectivity keeps pace: the Florianópolis airport topped one million international passengers for the first time in 2025, with Santiago de Chile (around 443,000) and Buenos Aires (around 338,000) as the leading routes. The foreign flow is now pan-American, not just Argentine.

From the summer rental to the investment

That long-running tourism matured into buying. The most talked-about route is the studio off-plan (na planta): compact units, purchased as an investment to resell once construction is finished, on beaches such as Canasvieiras, Ingleses, Jurerê and, increasingly, Praia do Rosa. An important clarification is in order: there is no official statistic on buyers by nationality. When an agency reports, for example, that most of its off-plan sales went to Argentines, that is a snapshot of its own portfolio, not of the entire market. And because many of those studios cost less than the one million reais required for investment residency (the CNIg rule), most buy to invest, not to settle.

Argentines and Russians: two waves, opposite motives

It is useful to contrast them with the other visible wave, the Russian one. The Argentines are an old, large and cyclical current — moving with the peso and the real — that buys to rent out and resell. The Russians are a new and far smaller current in absolute numbers (around a thousand visas since 2021, concentrated in Ingleses) but one that buys to live and secure mobility. Both feed the same off-plan-studio circuit, for opposite reasons: yield versus relocation.

Sources

• Fecomércio-SC — share and spending of Argentine tourism (summer 2025 and 2026).
• Government of SC / Floripa Airport — record international passengers 2025 (Santiago, Buenos Aires).
• IBGE — 2010 Census (Argentines, the largest foreign group resident in Florianópolis).
• CNIg — residency by real-estate investment (R$ 1 million); press (CartaCapital, SpaceMoney) for the buyer profile.
• OBMigra — Russian community in Florianópolis (comparative context).