Thummer

By Michael Harlow · Published November 12, 2026 · About 6 minutes to read

New Year's Eve at Copacabana: How to Keep Your Phone

Réveillon at Copacabana is one of the biggest parties on earth. Riotur put the crowd for the last edition at about 2.6 million people, and the city has already confirmed Djavan for Dec 31, 2026, with his show planned for the main stage on the beach. Everyone will want a video of the fireworks. That is exactly the moment a phone is easiest to lose. Here is what the police data and official warnings say, and how to set up your phone before you head to the sand.

How big is the problem?

Copacabana has a phone theft problem all year, not just on New Year's Eve. Using data from Rio's Instituto de Segurança Pública (ISP), SBT News reported that the state of Rio de Janeiro recorded 72,228 phone thefts and robberies in 2025, almost 200 a day. The Copacabana neighborhood alone accounted for more than 3,200 of those cases: 2,981 thefts and 233 robberies. Most were thefts, meaning the phone was taken without a threat, not at gunpoint.

The night itself looks calmer on paper. Rio's Civil Police registered 138 occurrences statewide for the last New Year's Eve, from the night of Dec 31 to the morning of Jan 1, down from 140 a year earlier. Theft was the most common type, with 69 cases. The year before, police recorded nine phone thefts and two phone robberies for the night.

Those small numbers count reports, not phones. In the early hours of Jan 1, 2026, a woman was arrested for theft on Avenida Atlântica, near the Copacabana Palace, in an operation involving the city's public order team and municipal guard. She was carrying 29 cell phones hidden in bags with false bottoms and wrapped in aluminum foil. Separately, in its New Year's report, Rio's Civil Police said it had recovered about 80 stolen phones that week alone, most of them belonging to tourists. Our reading: many victims, especially visitors, report later, elsewhere, or not at all.

What the security operation looks like

Security is heavy. For the last edition, the state planned 3,500 police officers for Copacabana alone, with 17 search points on the streets leading to the beach, observation towers, drones with live video feeds and crowd-control teams along the waterfront. For the 2024–25 edition, police searched people with metal detectors at the access streets from 8 a.m. on Dec 31 and barred knives, scissors and glass bottles. Expect a similar setup, and a slow walk in.

None of that stops a quiet pickpocket in a dense crowd. The U.S. Consulate General in Rio said in its alert for the last edition that "opportunistic crime is a critical issue" during events like Réveillon.

Before you go: set up your phone

Do this at your hotel, not on the beach.

On the sand: habits that help

Some people add a layer for the grab itself: a wrist tether, a lanyard case, or an app. Thummer, for example, locks an Android phone within five seconds when the owner's thumb lifts off an on-screen bubble. It won't stop a pickpocket who takes a phone from your pocket, so the habits above still matter most.

If your phone is taken

Staying in Rio into the new year? Our guides to phone theft in São Paulo and Rio and Rio Carnival cover the rest of the season, and our holiday travel checklist covers the trip itself.

What we couldn't find

We found no official count of phones stolen at Copacabana on New Year's Eve itself, only statewide occurrence totals, recovery figures and arrests. We also found no official list of phone safety tips from Rio's police for the night.

The bottom line

Copacabana on Dec 31 is safe enough for millions of people to enjoy each year, and the security operation is large. But the neighborhood records thousands of phone thefts a year, and the crowd at midnight is perfect cover. Set the phone up before you leave, carry it where it's hard to reach, film briefly, and you can watch the fireworks instead of watching your pocket.