Paving Expo 2026 Arrives as Brazil Accelerates Highway Investment
Brazil enters Paving Expo 2026 with a rather different road infrastructure market from the one exhibitors were addressing only a few years ago. The federal highway concession portfolio regulated by the National Land Transport Agency, ANTT, has reached R$306 billion in planned investment, alongside R$219 billion allocated to operation, maintenance and services. Across 36 contracts, including one approaching final formalisation, the portfolio covers 18,100 km of federal roads.
Those numbers are now beginning to translate into real contracts. Three projects auctioned between March and July 2026 cover around 1,620 km and carry almost R$33 billion of investment commitments. Behind the national totals are individual programmes such as the RΓ©gis Bittencourt concession, covering 383 km of the BR-116 between SΓ£o Paulo and ParanΓ‘. Around R$7.2 billion of investment is planned for infrastructure rehabilitation, capacity expansion, maintenance, monitoring and road safety.
Now in its ninth edition, Paving Expo 2026 will take place at Distrito Anhembi in SΓ£o Paulo from 22 to 24 September alongside the Paving Conference and, for the first time, Paving Arena.Β The timing gives the technical programme particular relevance. Brazil has moved beyond discussing whether private capital can be attracted to highways at scale. A growing proportion of the work now concerns how those commitments are designed, constructed, monitored and maintained over concession periods measured in decades. Pavement engineering, drainage, asset data, road safety and lifecycle maintenance sit increasingly close to the commercial heart of the market.
Briefing
- Paving Expo 2026 takes place from 22 to 24 September at Distrito Anhembi in SΓ£o Paulo.
- ANTT’s federal highway concession portfolio represents R$306 billion in planned investment and R$219 billion in operation, maintenance and services.
- The portfolio encompasses 18,100 km across 36 contracts, including one approaching final formalisation.
- The Paving Conference programme includes MeDiNa 2.0, BIM drainage, road safety, AI-assisted asset management and sustainable pavement engineering.
- The 2026 edition introduces Paving Arena, an open-access area for technology demonstrations, product launches and case studies.
From Concession Auctions to Delivery
Brazil’s road concession programme has accumulated considerable momentum, with projects stretching from major agricultural export corridors to heavily trafficked routes around the country’s industrial centres. The geographical spread brings very different engineering demands, covering high-volume freight routes, mountainous terrain and regions exposed to intense rainfall and high temperatures.
Concession contracts can require capacity expansion alongside rehabilitation, maintenance, monitoring and road safety improvements, creating work across almost every part of the road construction supply chain. But winning a concession and delivering its required performance are very different disciplines. Design assumptions, pavement materials, construction quality and maintenance interventions made during the early years can influence expenditure throughout a contract lasting several decades.
Lifecycle engineering consequently becomes difficult to separate from financial performance. A pavement designed around the lowest initial construction cost can become an expensive proposition if deterioration requires repeated intervention throughout the concession period.
Pavement Design and MeDiNa 2.0
One of the more technically interesting subjects at the Paving Conference will be MeDiNa 2.0, the latest generation of Brazil’s mechanistic-empirical asphalt pavement design system.
Developed through DNIT’s Institute of Road Research, with work involving COPPE at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras research centre CENPES and Brazilian universities, MeDiNa evaluates and designs asphalt pavement structures using mechanistic-empirical methods. Its AEMC routine is based on multilayer elastic analysis, allowing pavement structures to be assessed against loading and material behaviour rather than relying exclusively on more traditional empirical approaches.
DNIT released the updated MeDiNa 2.0 in October 2025 for designing new roads and strengthening existing pavements. The Paving Expo programme will include a session from Ramon Knabben of Rodobot Tecnologia examining the latest changes and their implications for flexible pavement design.
Concessionaires taking responsibility for highways over long operating periods have an obvious interest in understanding how pavement structures will deteriorate under actual traffic and environmental conditions. Better modelling cannot eliminate uncertainty, but it can improve the basis on which pavement thicknesses, materials and future interventions are selected.
For contractors and materials producers, increasingly sophisticated pavement design also places greater emphasis on the quality of the data entering the model. Laboratory characterisation, traffic loading, layer properties and construction quality all affect whether predicted pavement performance survives contact with the road itself.
Drainage Moves Into the Digital Model
Drainage provides another example of conventional highway engineering acquiring a stronger digital component. Luiz AraΓΊjo of ACO is scheduled to examine the use of Building Information Modelling for road drainage, including the ability to integrate different stages of design, identify potential failures and improve the resilience of infrastructure exposed to extreme weather.
Road drainage has never been peripheral to pavement performance. Water entering pavement layers can reduce bearing capacity, accelerate deterioration and contribute to failures that become expensive to correct once a road is operational. Poorly designed surface drainage can also create safety problems and damage adjacent structures and earthworks.
Bringing drainage into a coordinated digital model gives designers a means of examining its relationship with the wider road before construction begins. Culverts, channels, terrain, pavement geometry and other assets can be considered within the same project environment. Where BIM processes continue from design into operation, the same information can support inspection and maintenance records throughout the life of the road.
Data and AI in Pavement Maintenance
Pavesys will bring artificial intelligence, structural assessment and data analytics into the conference programme, with an emphasis on predicting maintenance interventions, directing infrastructure investment and extending road asset life.
Road authorities and concessionaires have accumulated growing quantities of pavement information through deflection testing, surface condition surveys, vehicle-mounted sensors, imaging and other inspection technologies. The difficulty is increasingly one of turning those observations into reliable maintenance decisions.
Predictive systems can combine condition data with deterioration models and intervention histories to help identify which sections of road require attention and when. Their usefulness depends heavily on the quality and consistency of the underlying information. An algorithm operating on incomplete condition data cannot compensate for a poor understanding of the asset.
Resurfacing a sound section too early consumes capital unnecessarily, while delaying treatment on a deteriorating pavement can allow a relatively modest maintenance requirement to develop into structural rehabilitation. Across thousands of kilometres and several decades of operation, relatively small improvements in the timing of interventions can accumulate into substantial savings.
Engineering Road Safety
Paving Expo 2026 coincides with Brazil’s National Traffic Week, giving road safety a prominent position in the programme. The Engineering That Saves Lives panel, featuring Henrique Faria and Renata Mobilia of Marvitec, will examine vehicle restraint systems and the specification, installation and maintenance practices that determine their performance.
Highway safety depends on the interaction between road geometry, markings, signage, pavement condition, drainage, roadside structures, speed management and vehicle restraint. Increasingly performance-based concession contracts give operators responsibility for many of those elements throughout the operating period.
Barriers and terminals are damaged, markings deteriorate, signs require replacement, surfaces lose skid resistance and traffic patterns change. The operating road therefore remains an engineering programme long after the major construction work has finished.
Paving Conference and Arena
The Paving Conference attracted more than 4,000 participants in 2025, according to material supplied by the organisers. For 2026, its Knowledge Routes divide the programme into flexible pavements, concrete pavements, geotechnical engineering, road signage and safety, machinery and equipment, innovation and technology, and ESG in infrastructure.
The new Paving Arena extends the technical programme onto the exhibition floor. Open to registered visitors, it is intended for technology demonstrations, product launches, case studies and presentations throughout the three-day event.
Together, the conference programme reflects the increasingly broad technical responsibilities associated with Brazil’s highway concessions. Asphalt production and paving remain fundamental, but pavement testing, drainage, digital design, condition monitoring, road safety and asset management continue throughout the operating life of the infrastructure.
Brazil’s Highway Delivery Programme
The engineering workload will extend well beyond the capital expenditure attached to the current concession programme. Every kilometre entering a long-term concession creates recurring requirements for inspection, pavement management, vegetation control, drainage maintenance, safety equipment, resurfacing, structural repairs, traffic monitoring and increasingly digital asset management.
It also changes the relationship between road operators and suppliers. Equipment productivity and initial construction costs remain important, but whole-life performance becomes harder to ignore when the organisation procuring the work may still be responsible for the same road decades later.
Paving Expo arrives at an unusually relevant point in Brazil’s infrastructure cycle. The country has assembled a very large highway concession portfolio, auctions are converting projects into contractual commitments, and attention is progressively moving towards execution.
From MeDiNa 2.0 and pavement analytics to drainage modelling, road safety and maintenance technology, much of the 2026 programme deals with the engineering decisions that determine whether those investments ultimately produce durable roads. For a concession market measured in hundreds of billions of reais and tens of thousands of kilometres, those decisions will be repeated on a very large scale.
Key Industry Questions
- When and where is Paving Expo 2026?Β Paving Expo 2026 will run from 22 to 24 September at Distrito Anhembi in SΓ£o Paulo, Brazil.
- How large is Brazil’s federal highway concession portfolio?Β ANTT says the portfolio represents R$306 billion in planned investment and R$219 billion in operation, maintenance and services, covering 18,100 km through 36 contracts including one approaching final formalisation.
- What is MeDiNa 2.0?Β MeDiNa 2.0 is DNIT’s updated mechanistic-empirical system for designing new asphalt pavements and evaluating or designing strengthening for existing pavements. It uses multilayer elastic analysis as part of its pavement assessment methodology.
- Why are lifecycle costs important to highway concessionaires?Β A concessionaire may remain responsible for a road for decades. Decisions affecting pavement durability, drainage, inspection and maintenance can influence expenditure long after initial construction has finished.
- How can BIM be used for highway drainage?Β BIM can integrate drainage with other elements of highway design, allowing designers to coordinate assets and identify potential problems before construction. The Paving Conference will include a dedicated presentation on BIM for road drainage.
- Where can AI be applied in pavement management?Β AI and data analytics can help analyse condition information, model deterioration and support decisions about where and when maintenance should take place.
- What is Paving Arena?Β Paving Arena is a new open-access area at the 2026 event for technology demonstrations, product launches, case studies and presentations.
- Which sectors are likely to benefit from Brazil’s highway investment programme?Β The programme creates opportunities across road construction machinery, asphalt and concrete, pavement engineering, geotechnics, drainage, road safety, surveying, digital design, testing, inspection and long-term asset management.
Strategic Takeaways
- Brazil’s highway concession market is moving from auctions towards the more demanding task of executing and operating a large portfolio of contracted infrastructure.
- Long concession periods increase the value of pavement durability, accurate condition assessment and well-timed maintenance.
- MeDiNa 2.0 strengthens the role of mechanistic-empirical pavement engineering as Brazil expands and rehabilitates its road network.
- Digital road engineering is spreading into conventional disciplines including drainage, inspection and pavement maintenance.
- The scale of the concession portfolio creates recurring demand throughout the operating life of highways, including maintenance, monitoring, safety equipment and asset management.
