The organisation International Baccalaureate® (IB) is a transnational provider of education which offers international curricula and diplomas for the complete education cycle from primary level to the conclusion of secondary level, which are recognised by almost all countries in the world. During recent decades, IB has expanded greatly and currently ca. 5900 IB World Schools exist in 160 countries (IB 2025a). In Portuguese-speaking countries, however, the expansion of IB World Schools is currently more modest, with 66 school in Brazil, 16 schools in Portugal, four schools in Mozambique and in other lusophone countries only one school or none (IB 2025b). This situation can be explained by the fact that IB schools in the lusophone space are restricted to the private education segment and due to the high school fees, are only accessible to privileged social milieus. In response to a very limited state of the art, we present some results of a study on IB World Schools in the lusophone world employing a global comparative approach (e.g. Resnik 2016). Firstly, we outline general tendencies of the development of IB mainly based on an analysis of school websites in the metropolitan regions of São Paulo, Lisbon and Maputo. Secondly, we discuss some results of semi-directive qualitative interviews with IB representants for the three Portuguese-speaking regions, with a focus on the mission of IB in the respective countries.

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