Every Pathfinder eventually runs into the acronym. The club belongs to a Conference (or Mission); the Conference belongs to a Union; the Union belongs to the South American Division, the SAD. That much is the org chart — and we already explained the abstract org chart on another page. What's missing is the concrete part: which Unions these are, and what each one actually covers on the map.
That's what this article delivers. All of Brazil is split into eight Unions, and they fit together like a jigsaw: together they administer the 26 states and the Federal District without any piece being left out or showing up twice. Knowing which one you're in changes practical things — who organizes your regional camporee, which headquarters your investiture paperwork goes up to, who is responsible for your club's insurance.
Each Union below comes with three verified pieces of information: the states it administers, the headquarters city, and the fields (Conferences and Missions) it gathers. Data checked on 07/22/2026 against the official sources listed at the end.
So what is a "Union" — and how many does Brazil have?
Before the list, three words that will show up all the time. Conference and Mission are the "fields": the area that groups several clubs and several churches of a region. The difference between the two is one of maturity — the Conference is a field that already sustains itself administratively and financially; the Mission is a newer field, still developing, which usually becomes a Conference once it grows. The Union is the step above: it brings together several Conferences and Missions of a larger territory.
At the top of the Brazilian pyramid is the South American Division (SAD), headquartered in Brasília. It is responsible for eight countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay — and gathers sixteen Unions in total, being eight in Brazil and eight in the Spanish-speaking countries.
So the short answer is: Brazil has eight Unions of the Adventist Church. They do not overlap. Each Brazilian state — and the Federal District — sits under one, and only one, of these Unions. Add up the territories of the eight and you get the whole country, the 26 states plus the FD, with nothing left over and nothing repeated. Keep this number in mind: 27 federative units split among 8 Unions.
An honest note before we go on: the borders you'll read here are stable, but they are not eternal. Unions are born, split, and change headquarters as the church grows — whoever decides that is the SAD's own structure, in council, not a club board. The split described in this article is the one in effect on the date it was checked.
The 8 Unions and their territories, at a glance
Start with the whole picture. The table below is the direct answer to the question "which Union is my region in?": find your state in the middle column.
| Union (acronym) | States it administers | Administrative headquarters |
|---|---|---|
| Central Brazil Union (UCB) | São Paulo | Artur Nogueira (SP) |
| Central-West Brazil Union (UCOB) | Distrito Federal, Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul | Brasília (DF) |
| Northwest Brazil Union (UNoB) | Amazonas, Roraima, Acre, Rondônia | Manaus (AM) |
| North Brazil Union (UNB) | Pará, Amapá, Maranhão | Greater Belém — Ananindeua (PA) |
| Northeast Brazil Union (UNeB) | Ceará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas | Greater Recife — Jaboatão dos Guararapes (PE) |
| East Brazil Union (ULB) | Bahia, Sergipe | Greater Salvador — Lauro de Freitas (BA) |
| Southeast Brazil Union (USeB) | Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro | Petrópolis (RJ) |
| South Brazil Union (USB) | Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul | Curitiba (PR) |
Notice something worth checking: every Brazilian Union administers whole states. None takes "half a state." The only one that administers a single state is the UCB, with São Paulo — and not by accident: it was from it, the "mother union," that the others were carved off over the decades. The next sections go through those eight, grouped by neighborhood, with the fields each one gathers.
North and Northwest: the two Unions of the Amazon
The country's largest geographic area is split between two Unions, and this is where the first map trap lives.
The North Brazil Union (UNB), headquartered in Greater Belém (Ananindeua, PA), administers Pará, Amapá, and Maranhão. Among the fields it gathers are the North Pará Conference, the Pará-Amapá Mission, and the Northeast Maranhão Mission, plus other fields in Pará and Maranhão. It is a Union of rivers and enormous distances, with institutions such as the Belém Adventist Hospital and FAAMA in its territory.
The Northwest Brazil Union (UNoB), headquartered in Manaus, is young — it began operating on January 1, 2010 — and administers Amazonas, Roraima, Acre, and Rondônia, a strip that borders five countries. It gathers the Amazonas Roraima Conference, the South Rondônia Conference, the North Rondônia and Acre Conference, and the East Amazonas Mission. The Manaus Adventist Hospital is in its area.
The trap: Maranhão is, geographically, a Northeastern state — but the one that administers it is the North Union. Why? Because the church organizes its boundaries thinking about logistics and pastoral proximity, not about copying the IBGE regions. Belém reaches São Luís more easily than Recife would. Come back to this detail in the last section; it explains half the confusion.
Read alsoWhat Is the South American Division (SAD)Northeast and East: six states and the Bahia duo
The Brazilian Northeast is split between two Unions, and the division follows a clean logic: one looks after the "core and north" of the region, the other looks after Bahia and Sergipe.
The Northeast Brazil Union (UNeB), headquartered in Greater Recife (Jaboatão dos Guararapes, PE), administers six states: Ceará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, and Alagoas. It is the largest number of states in a Brazilian Union. It gathers several fields spread across those six states — among them the Ceará Conference (once called the North Coast Mission) and the Northeast Brazil Mission — with church influence centers in cities such as Fortaleza, Natal, João Pessoa, Recife, Teresina, and Maceió.
The East Brazil Union (ULB), headquartered in Greater Salvador (Lauro de Freitas, BA), looks after only two states — Bahia and Sergipe — but with a great deal of church inside. It gathers seven fields: four Conferences (Bahia Conference, in Salvador; Central Bahia Conference, in Feira de Santana; South Bahia Conference, in Itabuna; and North Bahia Conference, in Juazeiro) and three Missions (Southwest Bahia Mission, in Vitória da Conquista; South Bahia Mission, in Eunápolis; and Sergipe Mission, in Aracaju). It is a good portrait of how a Union works on the inside: several already-mature Conferences coexisting with Missions still in growth.
Central-West and São Paulo: the UCOB and the "mother union"
Here sit the most recent Union in shape and the oldest in origin.
The Central-West Brazil Union (UCOB), organized in 2004 and headquartered in Brasília, administers five federative units: Distrito Federal, Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul. It gathers about half a dozen fields, among them the South Mato Grosso Conference (headquartered in Campo Grande) and the Tocantins Mission, plus the fields serving Goiás, the Federal District, and Mato Grosso. It is in its area — in Brasília — that the headquarters of the SAD itself also sits, the step above all the Unions.
The Central Brazil Union (UCB) is a case apart. Today it administers a single state, São Paulo, headquartered in Artur Nogueira (SP), and gathers the São Paulo fields — the "Paulista"-type Conferences (Paulistana, Central Paulista, East Paulista, West Paulista, South Paulista, among others) and the Paulista do Vale Conference, in the Paraíba Valley. It seems like little territory for so many names, but there is history there: the UCB is Brazil's "mother union." It once spanned São Paulo, Goiás, Mato Grosso, the Federal District, and Tocantins all at once. As the church grew, those territories were carved off into new Unions — and the Central kept shrinking on the map precisely because São Paulo, on its own, concentrates enough church for a whole Union.
Southeast and South: the most populous territories
Closing the map, the two Unions that concentrate a huge share of the country's members, each with three states.
The Southeast Brazil Union (USeB), headquartered in Petrópolis (RJ), administers Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, and Rio de Janeiro. It is a territory of more than a thousand municipalities and tens of millions of inhabitants. It gathers fields such as the Rio de Janeiro Conference, the Espírito Santo Conference (Vitória), the South Espírito Santo Conference (Cariacica), and the South Minas Conference (Juiz de Fora), plus the remaining fields that cover the interior of Minas and Rio. In its territory sit traditional boarding schools, such as the Minas Gerais Adventist College, in Lavras.
The South Brazil Union (USB), headquartered in Curitiba, administers the three states of the South Region — Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Here the Union's border matches the border of the IBGE region, which is not always the case. It gathers fields such as the Central Paraná Conference (Curitiba), the South Paraná Conference, and the North Santa Catarina Conference (Joinville), plus the fields that serve the rest of Santa Catarina and all of Rio Grande do Sul.
Add it all up again, section by section, and the result closes: São Paulo; FD, Goiás, Tocantins, and the two Mato Grossos; Amazonas, Roraima, Acre, and Rondônia; Pará, Amapá, and Maranhão; the six of the Northeast; Bahia and Sergipe; Minas, Espírito Santo, and Rio; and the three of the South. Twenty-seven federative units, eight Unions, a perfect fit.
Why don't the Unions' borders match the IBGE regions?
This is the question left over once the table is understood — and the answer neatly separates the three layers that tend to get mixed up.
The written rule: the Unions' territories are officially defined by the South American Division. It is not the club, nor the Conference, nor even the Union that decides on its own where its map ends: that split is approved in council, at the SAD level, and it is the SAD that says Tocantins is the UCOB's and Maranhão is the UNB's, and not the other way around.
What varies: within each Union, the number and the names of the Conferences and Missions change over time. A field that was a Mission becomes a Conference when it grows; a very large Conference can be split into two; a headquarters moves cities. That's why this article nailed down the states of each Union (which rarely change) and was more cautious in listing field by field — the living list of each Union is on its official website. If you need the exact name of your field today, that's where it's confirmed.
The principle behind it: the church draws these boundaries thinking about pastoral care, not atlas geography. What matters is proximity, ease of travel, the number of members, and the headquarters' capacity to truly serve the clubs of that area. That is why Maranhão ended up with Belém and not with Recife, and why the UCB shrank down to São Paulo while the Central-West gained its own Union. The question the structure tries to answer is not "which region of the map is this in?" but "from where can this flock be best cared for?".
For the Pathfinder, the practical lesson is simple: find your Union in the table up top, and treat its name as your "address" within the church. It is through that address that your regional camporee, your Field's investiture calendar, and the paperwork rising from the club to the levels above all pass.