Palmeiras U20

The academy fields sit in Guarulhos, at Academia de Futebol 2, built to FIFA-certified pitch standards and used exclusively by the club's youth categories rather than the first team, which plays its home matches across town at the 43,713-capacity Nubank Parque. It is on those Guarulhos pitches, not under the first team's stadium lights, that Palmeiras built the busiest production line in Brazilian youth football.

Palestra Itália, as the parent club was named by its Italian immigrant founders on 26 August 1914 in São Paulo, became SE Palmeiras in 1942. The Sub-20 side carries no separate legal identity — it operates under the Centro de Formação, the first team's own development structure, wearing the same green and white and the same Verdão nickname.

The trophy count reads unlike most academy sides: four Brazilian Sub-20 championships since 2018, the most recent in 2025, alongside back-to-back Copa São Paulo de Futebol Júnior titles in 2022 and 2023 and two Copa do Brasil Sub-20 wins. Domestically, in the state of São Paulo, the category has been near-unbeatable, taking the Campeonato Paulista Sub-20 thirteen times since 1976, including three years running from 2019 to 2021.

What the honours board does not capture is who came through on the way to the first team and beyond. Gabriel Jesus and Endrick both left Guarulhos for the senior side before moving on to European football; Danilo, Gabriel Menino and Vitor Reis followed similar paths, and Estêvão joined that lineage before his own move abroad. Further back, the academy's graduates included Altafini and Vagner Love.

With the 2025 Brazilian Sub-20 title already added to the collection, the category enters the current cycle defending its status as the country's leading production line, its next test being whatever competition follows on the domestic calendar.