There are two ways to look at a movement that is growing. One is to count how many clubs exist today. The other — more revealing — is to ask when each of them was born. By putting the founding dates in order, the map stops being a photograph and becomes a film: you can watch the expansion accelerate, decade after decade, until it takes off.
According to the Desbravai club map (July 2026), there are 14,257 clubs in 21 countries, about 9,369 of them in Brazil. Not all of them report the year they began; among those that do, the picture is unmistakable — most are young, and a large share was born in the last decade and a half. This article follows that timeline.
From photo to film: what changes when we look at the dates
The question "how many clubs exist?" has a simple answer. The question "when were they born?" has an answer that tells a story. It is this second one that matters here.
According to the Desbravai club map, among the clubs that report a founding year, each decade brought more foundings than the previous one — until the turn of the 2010s, when the number did not just grow, it leaped. It is worth separating this panorama from the current age portrait: there the focus is how many years the club has today; here, the focus is the moment it appeared on the map. They are different questions, and the second one draws a curve of expansion.
A reminder that runs through the entire text: the dates are self-declared by the clubs themselves in the public database of the South American Division. They are what the map records, not an official historical census — and they change as new clubs enter and others update their data.
The timeline of expansion, decade by decade
The table below shows how many clubs, according to the founding dates on the Desbravai club map, were born in each decade. The share column uses as its base the clubs that have a registered year.
The vertical reading is the point: from 11 foundings in the 1950s to 5,211 in the 2010s, the scale shifts from dozens to thousands. Each row practically doubles the previous one or more — growth that accelerates rather than stabilizes.
| Decade | Clubs founded | Share* |
|---|---|---|
| 1950s | 11 | 0.1% |
| 1960s | 98 | 0.8% |
| 1970s | 239 | 1.9% |
| 1980s | 659 | 5.2% |
| 1990s | 1,087 | 8.6% |
| 2000s | 1,872 | 14.8% |
| 2010s | 5,211 | 41.2% |
| 2020s (through Jul 2026) | 3,459 | 27.4% |
*Share calculated over the clubs that have a registered founding date on the map (sum of the decades above). Source: Desbravai club map, July 2026.
The explosion of the 2010s
If there is a chapter that defines the timeline, it is this one. According to the Desbravai club map, 5,211 clubs record a founding in the 2010s — on its own, that decade accounts for more than a third of all clubs with a date on the map. No other decade comes close.
To give a sense of scale: the 2010s record almost triple the 2000s (1,872) and nearly five times the 1990s (1,087). It is as if, in ten years, the movement had added more clubs to the map than in all the previous decades combined.
The usual caution applies: part of this leap may also reflect when clubs began to register and declare dates in the public database. Even so, the concentration in the 2010s is too strong to be merely a registration effect — it points to a phase of real expansion.
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The 2020s are still only halfway through — the map goes only through July 2026 — and already total 3,459 clubs with a founding date in that span. Passing 3,400 at the midpoint suggests a pace that did not slow down after the peak of the 2010s.
The most recent individual years reinforce this. According to the Desbravai club map, the years with the most registered foundings are led by 2025, followed closely by 2022, 2023 and 2024 — all above half a thousand. The 2026 figure is partial, because the year has not yet ended.
| Year | Clubs founded |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 711 |
| 2022 | 632 |
| 2023 | 612 |
| 2024 | 586 |
| 2019 | 529 |
| 2021 | 390 |
| 2026 (partial) | 267 |
| 2020 | 261 |
The year 2020 appears lower than its neighbors — one possible reading, though not confirmed by this data, is the impact of the pandemic period on the opening of new clubs. The recovery in 2022 and 2023 is visible in the table.
Why the base is so young
When most of the foundings are concentrated in the last fifteen years, the arithmetic consequence is direct: the clubs, on average, are new. According to the Desbravai club map, the average age is just about 14 years, and the median is 11 years — meaning half of the clubs with a registered date are 11 years old or younger.
The low median is the detail that closes the story. It says that the "typical" club on the map is not a decades-old institution, but a recent community, built already in this century. A movement with roots in the 1950s, but with a predominantly young body.
If you want the other side of that same coin — not when the clubs were born, but how many years they have today —, it is worth seeing the portrait of a club. And for the geographic dimension of this expansion, the countries where there are clubs complete the picture.
What these numbers do not say
This data counts only the clubs that reported a founding date on the map — not the total, and not an official historical record. Because the dates and member counts are self-declared by the clubs in the public database of the South American Division, they may diverge from consolidated histories. That is why we do not claim which was the "first club in history": we state what the map records.
The portrait is also alive. Each new club that enters the database, and each old club that finally fills in its founding year, slightly changes the bars of this chart. A club founded in the 1980s that only registered now enters the count for the 1980s — reinforcing the past, not the present.
What survives all these caveats is the shape of the curve: rising, accelerated and recent. Whatever the fine-tuning, the central message of the Desbravai club map is that of a movement in growth.