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Today, August 22, H&M opened the doors of its second Paraguayan store, H&M Distrito Perseverancia in Asunción, just nine days after its first-ever store in the country debuted a few kilometers away at Paseo La Galería. The back-to-back openings — complete with celebrity previews, all-night queues and six-figure gift-card giveaways for the earliest customers — cap a week the company treated less like a routine store launch and more like a market-defining event.
It is also the clearest sign yet that South America has moved from the margins of H&M’s growth story to its centre.
The Launch: Two Stores, One Week, a New Market
H&M’s Paraguayan debut was built for spectacle. The celebrations opened on August 11 with a VIP preview at Paseo La Galería, where more than 350 guests — including local celebrities, fashion influencers and content creators — previewed the collection alongside a live performance. Two days later, the store itself opened its doors: the first person in line had arrived the night before, and some 375 customers were waiting when the doors opened at 11am, greeted by a ribbon-cutting led by H&M Group CEO Daniel Ervér, Latin America managing director Sam Miller, and Anna Barigazzi, the general manager overseeing Chile, Peru, Uruguay and now Paraguay.
“After successful openings in other Latin American markets, we’re excited to finally welcome fashion customers in Paraguay,” Ervér said at the opening, framing the entry as part of the group’s continuing regional growth rather than a one-off launch.
That continuation arrived fast. The second store, at Distrito Perseverancia, opened today, again with gift-card incentives for the first customers in line and exclusive styling sessions — a clear signal that H&M intends to build density in Paraguay quickly rather than test the market with a single flagship.
The entry had been flagged months earlier: H&M’s own financial reporting pointed to a third-quarter 2026 Paraguayan launch, positioning the country as the fourth South American market in its regional operation, after Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and offering its full range — womenswear, menswear, kidswear, its Move activewear line and H&M Home.
The Chronology: How H&M Got Here
2012 — Mexico. H&M’s first Latin American store opened in Mexico City, the beachhead for everything that followed. Mexico remains the group’s largest market in the region by store count.
2013 — Chile. The first true South American entry came a year later. H&M now operates roughly 30 stores there alongside its online shop — still one of its largest footprints on the continent.
2015 — Peru. H&M expanded into Peru, where it has since built out to 19 stores plus an e-commerce presence.
2018 — Uruguay. Uruguay marked what would become, for several years, the group’s last new South American market — three stores today, but notable mainly for what came after: nothing. For roughly seven years, H&M made no further move into a new Latin American country.
2023 — The Brazil Announcement. That silence broke in July 2023, when H&M announced plans to launch stores and e-commerce in Brazil during 2025, entering initially through major cities in the southeast with local partner Dorben Group.
2025 — The Acceleration Begins. The follow-through, when it came, was rapid and multi-pronged. H&M entered three new Latin American countries in a single year:
- Brazil — debuting in August 2025 with a simultaneous store opening (Shopping Iguatemi, São Paulo) and e-commerce launch, the first time H&M had done both together in a new market. Three more Brazilian stores followed before year-end, including one in Campinas.
- Venezuela — a roughly 2,500 sq m flagship in Caracas’s Sambil mall, launched in late November, carrying the brand’s full assortment. The opening came just weeks before the United States intervened militarily in the country and captured Nicolás Maduro — a reminder of the political volatility underlying the region’s retail opportunity.
- El Salvador — entering via a 3,500 sq m “macro store” in San Salvador’s Multiplaza, the largest H&M location in Central America, carrying the full range including H&M Home.
H&M also deepened an existing market that year, opening a third Costa Rican store in Alajuela (2,400 sq m), making Costa Rica the Central American/Caribbean country with the most H&M locations. Combined, the year closed with ten net store openings across the Americas and a regional network of 769 stores.
2026 — Brazil Scales Up, Paraguay Arrives, Argentina Is Confirmed. The pace has, if anything, increased:
- April 2026 — H&M opened its first Rio de Janeiro store, a 1,400 sq m location at RIOSUL Shopping Center that drew more than 450 people in line. Management confirmed a second Rio store would follow later in the year, on top of six further Brazilian openings planned for 2026 and a dedicated men’s-only concept store at São Paulo’s Morumbi Shopping.
- April 2026 — On the same day, H&M confirmed it would enter Argentina in 2027 through franchise partner Hola Moda — its first announced Latin American entry to run on a franchise model rather than the Dorben Group partnership used elsewhere.
- August 2026 — Paraguay opens, with two stores in nine days, becoming the group’s fourteenth Latin American market alongside Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and the Dominican Republic.
Reading the Pattern
Three things stand out when the moves are lined up chronologically.
The tempo has changed categorically, not incrementally. Seven years passed between Uruguay (2018) and Brazil’s confirmation (2023); it then took less than three years to go from that announcement to three new countries, a second Brazilian city, and a confirmed fourth (Argentina). This is not steady, compounding growth — it is a step-change in strategy.
Brazil is being treated differently from every other market. No other Latin American country has received a same-day store-and-e-commerce launch, a men’s-only concept store, or a confirmed multi-city rollout within twelve months of entry. The scale of investment suggests H&M sees Brazil as a market on the scale of its Mexico footprint, not a market to be added incrementally like Paraguay or Uruguay.
H&M is willing to vary its operating model by market risk. The Dorben Group partnership — which also distributes CH Carolina Herrera, Tory Burch and Alo Yoga regionally — underpins Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica and El Salvador. Argentina, by contrast, will run through a different franchisee, Hola Moda. That distinction, paired with a full year’s runway before the store opens, hints at a more cautious calculus for a market with its own history of currency and import volatility.
Core pThe Bottom Line
A year ago, H&M’s Latin American presence was defined by patience: a handful of steady, unglamorous markets built up slowly over a decade. Today, with Paraguay’s second store opening and Argentina on the calendar for 2027, the region looks like one of the busiest fronts in the group’s global growth plan — a bet that South America’s growing middle class, not just its established markets like Mexico and Chile, is ready to spend on “fashion and quality at the best price,” as CEO Daniel Ervér has repeated at nearly every ribbon-cutting this year.
Whether that bet pays off will depend on execution in markets far less predictable than H&M’s European home turf — Venezuela’s political rupture being the starkest example. But for now, the direction of travel is unambiguous: H&M is moving into South America faster than at any point since it first arrived in 2012.