Brazil’s pet market in 2026: where pet owners buy and how to orchestrate the channels
The Brazilian pet market is expected to reach R$ 81.35 billion in revenue in 2026, up 4.35% from 2025, according to Abempet’s study Faturamento e População Pet no Mundo 2026 (Cães&Gatos). Pet food, more than half of that total, is the slowest-growing segment: R$ 42.9 billion, 3.6% above the previous year. When a market grows little in volume, the companies that sell more are the ones that best coordinate the channels where pet owners already buy.
Commercial orchestration is that coordination. It means deciding what role each channel plays (neighborhood pet shop, vet clinic, megastore, supermarket, e-commerce, subscription), who influences the purchase in each one, and how price, inventory and data connect across them. Without it, the channels compete for the same sale and margin disappears into discounts.
This article combines the sector’s 2026 figures, the quarterly results of the country’s largest chain, household spending potential by region and surveys of pet owners carried out this year. The goal is to show where purchases happen in 2026, what moves pet owners from one channel to another, and what a brand, a manufacturer or a pet shop can do with that.
How we researched
We used the same method as our article on ICP research with AI: turn the topic into questions and accept only answers backed by a source. There were four questions:
- How much revenue does the market generate in 2026, and in which segments is the money growing?
- Which channels does revenue flow through, and in which regions are the animals and the money?
- How much do pet owners spend, and on what?
- Which habits show up in sellers’ numbers: repeat purchases, subscriptions, brand switching?
We used only data published in 2026: Abempet’s study Faturamento e População Pet no Mundo 2026, Grupo Petz Cobasi’s first- and second-quarter results, IPC Maps 2026, which estimates household spending by region, and the pet owner surveys by CVA Solutions and Opinion Box. Figures from 2025 appear only for comparison.
Then we cross-checked the answers: growth by segment against share by channel, animal population against available money in each region, and repeat-purchase habits against each channel’s business model.
The market in numbers
Pet food should account for 52.8% of 2026 revenue. The other segments grow faster: general services such as bathing, grooming and boarding, 6.01%; veterinary products, 5.11%; veterinary services, 4.67%; animal sales, 4.45%. Pet food grows 3.6% (CNN Brasil).
The pet population reaches 166.8 million in 2026: 62.5 million dogs, 44.3 million birds, 33.3 million cats and 23.6 million fish (Abempet, via CNN Brasil). The demographic side of this shift is covered in our article on 160.9 million pets and 39 million children.
The picture is of a large market that is mature in its main category. Pet food is a recurring, predictable purchase, but it grows less than everything else. The competition is now over who keeps that recurring purchase and who sells the service that comes with it.
Where pet owners buy
| Channel | 2026 | 2025 (comparison) |
|---|---|---|
| Small and medium-sized pet shops | 48.0% | 48.1% |
| Veterinary clinics and hospitals | 17.3% | 17.5% |
| Pet megastores | 9.6% | 9.6% |
| Grocery retail (supermarkets and hypermarkets) | 8.7% | 8.2% |
| E-commerce | 8.7% | 8.1% |
| Farm supply stores and others | 7.7% | 8.5% |
Sources: Abempet, Faturamento e População Pet no Mundo 2026; for 2025, projection by Abinpet and Instituto Pet Brasil based on the third quarter.
Almost half the money goes through small and medium-sized pet shops (mostly independent neighborhood stores). This channel is fragmented, and no chain, manufacturer or distributor talks to all of them the same way. The split between channels changed little from one year to the next. E-commerce and supermarkets were the channels that gained share (2025: Abinpet and Instituto Pet Brasil).
Pet e-commerce should reach R$ 7.11 billion in 2026. Of those sales, 32.0% come from megastores and 19.5% from small and medium-sized pet shops (Abempet).
In other words, 51.5% of pet e-commerce is sold by retailers that also have physical stores. Online-only sellers hold 38.5%, compared with 37.1% in 2025.
The largest chain shows the trend from the inside. Grupo Petz Cobasi ended June 2026 with 520 stores (Q2 2026 release). In the first quarter, digital accounted for 41.4% of gross revenue, and 96% of those orders were shipped from or picked up at a physical store (Q1 2026 release). In this chain, the website runs on the store, which serves as inventory and delivery point.
Where the animals are and where the money is
The Northeast has 23% of Brazil’s pets and 17.5% of household consumption.
Color shows the gap between each region’s share of household consumption and its share of the pet population. Dark tones: more pets than money. Yellow tones: more money than pets.
| Region | Pets 2026 | Share of pets | Household consumption 2026 | Consumption 2025 (comparison) | Consumption minus pets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southeast | 80.4 M | 48.2% | 49.0% | 48.1% | +0.8 p.p. |
| Northeast | 38.4 M | 23.0% | 17.5% | 18.6% | −5.5 p.p. |
| South | 29.7 M | 17.8% | 18.48% | 18.5% | +0.7 p.p. |
| Center-West | 12.0 M | 7.2% | 9.1% | 8.8% | +1.9 p.p. |
| North | 6.3 M | 3.8% | ~5.9% | ~6.0% | +2.1 p.p. |
| Brazil | 166.8 M | 100% | R$ 8.6 tn |
The Southeast holds 48.2% of pets (Abempet) and 49% of household spending in 2026 (IPC Maps 2026). In the other regions, the two shares move apart.
The Northeast has 23% of the country’s pets and 17.5% of household spending, a gap of 5.5 points. The gap has widened: in 2025, the region had 18.6% of spending (IPC Maps 2025). According to IPC Maps, household debt and a drop in domestic tourism weighed on the result.
In the South and the Center-West, the relationship reverses. The South has 17.8% of pets and 18.48% of spending; the Center-West, 7.2% of pets and 9.1% of spending.
For channel planners, this changes the math by region. In the South, Southeast and Center-West, the competition is for pet owners who already buy food and services, and the winner is whoever keeps the repeat purchase. In the Northeast, there are more animals than money to spend on them, so price, packaging and distribution matter more than services.
Six buying behavior signals
1. Recurring purchases have become contracts. Grupo Petz Cobasi reached 965,000 subscribers in March 2026, 9.8% more than a year earlier (Q1 2026 release). A subscription turns a purchase the pet owner would repeat anyway into predictable revenue and takes that purchase out of the monthly price fight.
2. Pets already take up 8% of the budget. The CVA Pet 2026 survey by CVA Solutions, with 4,000 pet owners, puts average monthly spending at R$ 690 for dogs and R$ 574 for cats, about 8% of household income (Xataka).
3. Food is the largest item, with services close behind. In the same survey, food costs an average of R$ 202 a month for dog owners and R$ 158 for cat owners. Dog bathing and grooming comes next at R$ 174, and health plans cost R$ 135 for dogs and R$ 125 for cats.
4. There is pent-up demand for recurring health care. About 25% of pet owners have a health plan for their animal. Among those who don’t, 67% would sign up for a plan costing about R$ 20 a month (CVA Pet 2026).
5. Pet owners are willing to switch brands. Private labels reached 14.4% of Petz sales and 9.5% of Cobasi sales in the second quarter of 2026. At Cobasi, those sales grew 59.9% in one year (Q2 2026 release). When retailers sell their own brand in place of the manufacturer’s, the loyalty that counts becomes loyalty to the store.
6. Specialty stores remain the reference, and services grow faster than products. In an Opinion Box survey of 1,078 pet owners in February 2026, 46% said they buy food at specialty stores and 27% at online stores (Opinion Box). At Grupo Petz Cobasi, service revenue grew 29% in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 7.7% for consumer sales.
What the data shows together
Read separately, the numbers tell familiar stories: the market grows slowly, e-commerce gains share, the big chains have merged. Combined, they show how purchasing is being reorganized.
The category with the most revenue is the one that grows least, and it is bought on a recurring basis. Whoever secures that recurrence, through subscriptions, loyalty programs or proximity, gets the most predictable revenue in the sector. The largest chain already does this, with almost a million subscribers, and uses its stores as the base for digital.
At the same time, almost half of sales go through small and medium-sized pet shops. With the big chains consolidating, this channel matters more to manufacturers, because it is where they still negotiate without a concentrated buyer on the other side.
In the second quarter of 2026, Grupo Petz Cobasi finished unifying most of its supplier negotiations, and the chain’s sales to other pet shops and supermarkets fell 10.5% in the quarter.
As a result, no single channel solves the problem. Manufacturers need megastores for volume and neighborhood pet shops for distribution and recommendation. Neighborhood pet shops need some form of recurrence so they don’t lose food sales to the chains’ subscriptions. And health care, where two in three pet owners without a plan would pay a monthly fee, still has no clear owner.
How to orchestrate the channels
To orchestrate means giving each channel a function and measuring whether it delivers. Five decisions organize the work:
| Decision | Question | What the 2026 data points to |
|---|---|---|
| Role of each channel | Which category and which buying moment does each channel serve? | Recurring food through subscriptions and stores; services in stores and clinics; discovery in digital |
| Price across channels | Does the online price undercut the partner pet shop’s price? | Online-only sellers hold 38.5% of R$ 7.11 billion in sales; without a pricing policy, the cheapest channel cannibalizes the others |
| Who influences | Do store staff and vets know why to recommend the product? | Bathing, grooming and vet visits bring pet owners to the store every month; that is where recommendation happens |
| Owner of recurrence | Who holds the data on the pet owner’s next purchase? | 965,000 subscribers at the largest chain; 67% of pet owners without a health plan would accept a monthly fee |
| Weight of each region | Where should you invest in services, and where in price and distribution? | Northeast with 23% of pets and 17.5% of spending; Center-West with 7.2% of pets and 9.1% of spending |
For each link in the chain, this translates into different actions:
- Manufacturers: split the portfolio by channel (a prescription line in clinics, a high-turnover line in pet shops, larger packs and kits in digital), adapt price and packaging by region, train counter staff, and agree on a pricing policy with marketplaces before price settles on its own.
- Megastores and chains: use the store as a delivery and service hub, which already supports 96% of the largest chain’s digital sales, and use subscription data to plan inventory and service capacity.
- Independent pet shops: secure repeat purchases from existing customers with reminders, local delivery and a repurchase program, and sell the services that bring pet owners back. Food sold with no customer relationship is the first purchase the big chains’ subscriptions take away.
The same reasoning applies to measurement. The indicator that shows whether orchestration works is the repeat-purchase rate of the same pet owner and the cost of bringing them back, the logic of pipeline health applied to retail. A channel’s total sales, viewed alone, hide when it is taking customers from another channel. This is the kind of analysis we do in Growth Science projects: measure the system before investing in a channel.
Data limitations
The 2026 revenue and population figures are Abempet projections, reported by news outlets from the study, which is available only to members. The comparison with 2025 uses the Abinpet and Instituto Pet Brasil projection based on that year’s third quarter, so it shows direction rather than exact change.
IPC Maps 2026 publishes the exact share for four regions. The North appears as “below 6%”, and we estimated about 5.9% by subtraction. Estimates of the North’s pet population also vary widely between sources, so this region is the least reliable reading on the map.
The behavior data comes from sources with different methods. CVA Pet 2026 and Opinion Box are surveys of pet owners, and Grupo Petz Cobasi’s numbers describe only the chain’s own customers. None of them alone represents the Brazilian pet owner. The reading is strong where they agree on direction.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between commercial orchestration and omnichannel?
Omnichannel means being present in several channels and letting customers move from one to another, such as buying online and picking up in store. Commercial orchestration is the decision about each channel’s role: which category sells in which channel, at what price, who influences the purchase and who keeps the repeat-purchase data. A company can be omnichannel without orchestrating, and in that case the channels compete for the same sale.
Can you orchestrate channels without your own e-commerce?
Yes. An independent pet shop orchestrates when it decides what it sells at the counter, what it delivers through messaging apps or marketplaces, and how it secures repeat food purchases. A manufacturer orchestrates through its partners: it defines a line per channel, trains store staff and agrees on pricing policy with distributors and marketplaces. Your own e-commerce is just one of the possible channels.
How much revenue will Brazil’s pet market generate in 2026?
Abempet’s projection for 2026 is R$ 81.35 billion, up 4.35% from R$ 77.96 billion in 2025. Pet food accounts for 52.8% of the total, at R$ 42.9 billion.
Which channel sells the most in the pet market?
Small and medium-sized pet shops, with 48% of revenue in 2026, followed by veterinary clinics and hospitals (17.3%) and megastores (9.6%). E-commerce has 8.7%, or R$ 7.11 billion.
How much does a pet owner spend per month on a pet in 2026?
According to the CVA Pet 2026 survey of 4,000 pet owners, average spending is R$ 690 a month for dogs and R$ 574 for cats, about 8% of household income. Food is the largest item, at R$ 202 for dogs and R$ 158 for cats.
Which region of Brazil has the most pets and spending?
The Southeast has 48.2% of pets and 49% of household spending in 2026. The Northeast has 23% of pets and 17.5% of spending, the largest gap between regions. The South and Center-West have a larger share of spending than of pets.
Sources
All figures were checked against the sources below on October 6, 2026. Figures from 2025 appear only as a comparison.
- Abempet, Faturamento e População Pet no Mundo 2026 study, as reported by Cães&Gatos (Sept 25, 2026) and CNN Brasil (Sept 23, 2026), in Portuguese.
- Grupo Petz Cobasi, Q1 2026 earnings release and Q2 2026 earnings release, in Portuguese.
- IPC Marketing Editora, IPC Maps 2026, per the official release and Sala da Notícia (June 24, 2026); IPC Maps 2025 release for comparison. In Portuguese.
- CVA Solutions, CVA Pet 2026 survey of 4,000 pet owners, as reported by Xataka, in Portuguese.
- Opinion Box, pet market survey, February 2026, 1,078 pet owners, in Portuguese.
- Comparison with 2025: Abinpet and Instituto Pet Brasil, pet sector market data, 2025 projection based on Q3, Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture sector chamber, in Portuguese.
