Ana Carolina

Juiz de Fora, the bar circuit, and a platinum debut

Ana Carolina de Souza was born on 9 September 1974 in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, into a family where music was already a habit rather than an ambition: a grandmother who sang on the radio, a great-aunt and uncle who played percussion, piano, cello and violin. She has cited Chico Buarque and Maria Bethânia alongside Nina Simone and Björk as the poles she worked between.

She began performing in local bars at eighteen, building a repertoire out of the classical Brazilian songwriters before moving to Rio de Janeiro. She signed to BMG in 1998 and released the self-titled Ana Carolina in 1999. The album went platinum on the strength of 'Garganta', a song that has stayed in the set ever since and that still opens the current show, folded into a medley in the first two minutes.

The records people still shout back

The commercial run that followed was fast. Ana Rita Joana Iracema e Carolina (2001) produced 'Quem de Nós Dois', the most-played song on Brazilian radio that year and still the loudest singalong in the room. Estampado (2003) pushed harder into rock and sold more than 600,000 copies. The Perfil compilation of 2005 was Brazil's best-selling album of the year at around 700,000 copies and went on to diamond certification.

Two releases from the mid-2000s defined how she is heard outside Brazil. Ana & Jorge (2005), an acoustic live record made with Seu Jorge, produced 'É Isso Aí' — a Portuguese reading of Damien Rice's 'The Blower's Daughter' that went to number one. Dois Quartos (2006), a double album, carried 'Rosas' and won her the Prêmio Multishow for best female artist.

After that came N9ve (2009), a tenth-anniversary record built around international guests, and #AC (2013). Fogueira em Alto Mar in 2019 was her last full studio album before the current phase. The tally her own promoters use is thirteen albums between studio and live, eight DVDs or audiovisual records, more than five million copies sold, eight Prêmio Multishow wins, three Troféu Imprensa and two Latin Grammy nominations.

Ainda Já: writing again after six years

The 2020s began with Ana Carolina working mostly inside someone else's catalogue. Ana Canta Cássia, her staged tribute to Cássia Eller, toured through 2024 and was well received — it is also the production that introduced her to Jorge Farjalla, the director who now runs her own show.

On 15 July 2025 she released Ainda Já – Vol. 1 through Sony Music: five songs, all original, her first set of new material in six years. The tracks are 'Quem Dera Eu Seu Zé', 'Compasso da Contradição', 'Crime Perfeito', 'Ex' and 'Mãe'. She produced it herself with Iuri Rio Branco and wrote alongside a deliberately mixed bench — Umberto Tavares, Jefferson Júnior, Ariel Donato, Carol Marcílio, Pedro Breder, Tiê Castro and Juliano Valle on one side, long-standing partners Bruno Caliman, Antonio Villeroy and Edu Krieger on the other.

Her own framing of the EP was that it came from wanting new routes while keeping her feet in her roots, and that the record is the bridge between what she has been and what she chooses to be from here. The 'Vol. 1' in the title was not decoration: further original songs were promised in the months after, and the EP is still being promoted alongside the tour a year later.

Five acts, LED walls, and a life told out of order

The 25 Anas tour opened at Qualistage in Rio de Janeiro on 12 July 2025, three days before the EP landed. Farjalla directs and Global Music produces. Rather than running chronologically, the show is built as five acts — A História, A Paixão, A Memória, O Reencontro and A Celebração — with the shape drawn from the symbolism of two of her own songs.

Staging is scenic elements plus LED projection, used to move between the eras of the catalogue in something closer to film editing than to a standard hits set. The practical effect is that the five new songs sit inside the structure rather than being announced as the new-material section: 'Quem Dera Eu Seu Zé', 'Ex' and 'Mãe' all appear early in the running order, between 'Rosas' and 'Vestido Estampado'.

Where the tour stands now

Fifteen months in, 25 Anas is still expanding rather than winding down. Setlist.fm has logged 31 shows on the tour. The autumn 2026 run takes in Petrolina's Concha Acústica on 26 September, La Trastienda in Buenos Aires on 2 October, a return to Qualistage in Rio on 17 October and Espaço Unimed in São Paulo on 24 October.

November brings Cine Lido in Curitiba on the 6th, Arena Hall in Belo Horizonte on the 7th — a 9pm start, tickets from R$150 — Theresina Hall in Teresina on the 14th and the Auditório Araújo Vianna in Porto Alegre on the 28th. The Centro de Convenções in Macaé follows on 11 December.

Two bookings show where the tour is heading next. On 5 January 2027 she plays the Laura Pausini cruise sailing from Santos, and in March 2027 the show crosses to Portugal: the Coliseu de Lisboa on the 12th and Coliseu Porto Ageas on the 13th. Those are her first European dates of this cycle, and they are on sale now.

What the room sounds like

Reviews of the 2026 leg have been consistent about the singing and less consistent about the running time. A notice of the 30 May 2026 show at Arena Opus in São José, Santa Catarina, called her delivery intense and her voice potent across both the quiet and the loud passages, and noted the audience carrying whole choruses on the older material.

The same review flagged the trade-off openly: at roughly 90 minutes the Santa Catarina set was shorter than the Curitiba version, with 'Mãe', 'Encostar na Tua' and 'Hoje Eu Tô Sozinha' dropped, and the writer thought the cuts cost the show something. The new songs are not treated as a tolerance test by the crowd — 'Canção de Trás pra Frente', an unreleased track, drew one of the warmer reactions of the night.