Purpose Encouraged by the State, the Brazilian public organizations practice sustainable procurement as one of the strategies to promote sustainable development. Performing them requires understanding to manage stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to identify and categorize the stakeholders of Brazilian public organizations’ sustainable procurement system.5 Design/methodology/approach Preliminarily, the stakeholders were identified in the literature and by interviews with experts. Later, in a multi-case study, it was categorized by the model of stakeholder salience. Findings In general, governmental and intra-organizational stakeholders were classified as more salient. However, some stakeholders considered important by literature and experts have been categorized as less salient by organizations. Originality/value The proposed categorization is useful for the system comprehension and will serve as a basis for the development of future works, notably those who propose to understand or evaluate the sustainable public procurement (SPP). Additionally, this work aims to enlarge the knowledge and the better practices of SPP in a large emerging South American country, giving its contribution to the transition to more sustainable societies.