CNPJ openings in the 503 franchise networks measured change by -19.1% in the 12 months through September 2026, and deregistrations, by +4.9%

The CNPJ (Brazilian company registry) records the opening date and the deregistration date of each establishment, which makes it possible to follow the flow of franchise networks month by month. The indicator adds up this flow in the 503 networks measured by the observatory and compares the most recent 12 months with the previous 12, after measuring how much the registration of recent months still changes.

From October 2025 to September 2026, the networks opened 6,244 CNPJs and deregistered 3,690, compared with 7,715 and 3,518 from October 2024 to September 2025. Openings fall by 19.1% and deregistrations rise by 4.9%, so that the ratio went from 2.19 to 1.69 openings per deregistration. Openings were below the same month of the previous year in 11 of the 12 months, and 303 networks opened fewer than in the previous period, compared with 153 that opened more.

The decline does not result from registration delay. The registry snapshot of October 2025 already showed 99.3% of the openings and 100.0% of the deregistrations of the month before it, and 99.4% of the openings of the preceding 12 months. Read with this same lag, the change is -18.6%. Two effects of the subset weigh on the figure. The panel requires 30 CNPJs active today, which leaves out a new network still below the floor, and, across the 2,008 networks of the universe with at least one CNPJ assigned, the change is -16.0%. The count requires a trade name, and the drop in the share of records with this field filled in the same activities, from 68.2% to 65.1%, would by itself reduce the count by about 4.5%, which would bring the networks' change to about -15.2%. Among other establishments with a trade name in the same activities, openings changed by +5.0% and deregistrations by +3.2%. Outside the deregistration count, inapt-status cases and suspensions dated in the 12 months total 2,959, compared with 195 in the equivalent reading a year earlier, due to administrative acts of Receita Federal (the federal tax authority) concentrated from May onward.

How we calculate

In the open CNPJ data of Receita Federal (the federal tax authority), reference month October 2026, we read the establishments that the observatory's census attributes to the 503 measured networks, by the trade name expression and the CNAE (national classification of economic activities) subclasses of the network profile. An opening is a CNPJ with start of activity in the month, in any current registration status, and a deregistration is a CNPJ with deregistered status whose status date falls in the month, the same criterion as the observatory's annual series. The base has an effective cutoff on October 8, 2026, and October is left out because it is incomplete.

The lag was measured against the snapshot of the same base in October 2025, with the same expression and the same CNAE codes. For each month before the snapshot, we compared the count at that time with today's. The column of inapt-status cases and suspensions records the current status, with the status date, and does not enter the net balance. The comparison brings together the other establishments with a trade name in the same subclasses, outside the CNPJ roots of the networks and without the MEI (individual microentrepreneur regime) option, weighted by the networks' mix of activities in the previous window. In a segment where one network accounts for more than half of a cell, the cell is omitted.

Calculated on November 8, 2026. Method version 1.0. Sample: 503 measured networks, 13,959 CNPJ openings in 24 months. Corrected on November 8, 2026 (in Portuguese).

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