The struggle of urban social movements led to the insertion of Urban Policy in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 and to legal recognition of the right to housing, opening the way for the creation of several instruments for its implementation. The complex and unequal Brazilian reality, however, holds social rights under constant threat. More recently, statutory change and infrastructure projects were conducted in the country, being justified as an alleged necessity for the hosting of the 2014 World Cup, and generating tensions around the historic achievements in urban policy. This dissertation assesses, on the one hand, how the FIFA World Cup of 2014 impacted the effectiveness of the social right to housing and the urban legal regime that protects it, and on the other, how new urban struggles emerged in resistance to it. The hypothesis discussed is that the World Cup implied a qualitative shift in the legal urban regime, affecting its effectiveness in respect to the right to housing. The central aim is to analyze the impacts of the statutory, administrative and urban changes conducted under the justification of the World Cup in what is described as a legal urban regime of protection to the right to housing. By analyzing these legal changes, it is possible to evaluate the institutional commitment to the effectiveness of social rights. Based on this analysis, it is argued that since the 1980s the process of recognition of urban rights resulted in the structuring of a legal urban regime that protects the right to housing. The legal reforms implemented under the auspices of the World Cup, however, indicate a commitment of the State with a contradictory agenda, affecting this regime's normative force. This is because a new institutional framework was created -one that is friendly to FIFA's demand. This framework implicated the endorsement of a an entrepreneurial model of urban planning that, once it became hegemonic, ended up suspending the efficacy of the principles of democratic management of urban policy, and of the social function of urban property. The legacy of these legal reforms, it is argued, is the mutation of the legal urban regime, the flexibilization of rights, the commodification of the territory, and the private appropriation of capital. Instruments such as urban master plans or those created the Statute of the City (Estatuto da Cidade), were made irrelevant, to a considerable extent, by the 2014 World Cup. This is because the model of urban planning propelled by mega-events is showed to be averse to the protection of housing rights. The historical tolerance toward forced evictions, already present in Brazil before the World Cup, contributed to enabling new evictions related to these mega-events. Thus, this dissertation argues that hosting 2014 World Cup impacted the effectiveness of the right to housing and the legal urban regime. However, urban struggles emerged in resistance to evictions and to the neoliberal model of urban planning, and in defense of the right to the city. United around the idea of ...