The emergence of middle powers in the last decades of the twentieth century was driven by two key factors. Firstly, there was a quest for autonomy in foreign policy in the so-called Third World. Secondly, there were significant power imbalances within global regimes, especially in the post-Cold War period. Dynamics such as variable coalitions, South-South cooperation, and the advent of new global agendas, in the context of asymmetric globalisation, have led to the development of new margins for autonomy in the Global South. During the second Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration (1999–2002), Brazil strengthened its strategic relations with the “whale countries,” favouring the foreign policy guidelines that took on new features during the first Lula administrations (2003–2006 and 2007–2010), which repositioned Brazil as one of the main emerging powers in international politics. However, during the Dilma Rousseff administrations (2011–2014 and 2015–2016), Brazil’s foreign policy struggled with its “emerging identity” due to domestic economic and political crises, lack of regional protagonism, and restrictive conditions in the international environment. The adoption of a neoliberal nuance in Brazilian political matrix during the short-term administration of Michel Temer (2016–2018) resulted in a disruptive agenda concerning the emerging power values that characterised the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022). Therefore, our research seeks to answer what happened to Brazil’s emerging power performance after the consolidating of an autonomous matrix at the turn of the present century. Our main hypothesis is that there was a process of stagnation in the emerging power identity in Brazilian foreign policy, consolidated by a Western credibility agenda and conservative-oriented behaviour, which encompassed different Brazilian political matrices from 2013 to 2023. We provide a case study about major changes in Brazilian foreign policy, interpreting the inflections of Brazilian political matrix. The research adopts a qualitative approach, utilising the documental analysis and review of secondary sources to collect data and assumes a descriptive inference and exploratory research strategy. Our findings suggest that the stagnation process began with the crisis of economic, social, and political agents that had sustained Lula’s autonomous matrix, especially after the June 2013 protests across the national territory, and pushed its consequences to the retreat of the emerging identity that occurred during Temer’s administration and its deep stagnation in the Bolsonaro years.