In the 1980s, the internationalisation of higher education, especially in European countries and North America, intensified through a series of initiatives seeking to consolidate university institutions internationally. This process expanded to the rest of the countries during the 1990s through various actions: joint search projects; teaching, student and server mobility; events; extension of campuses in other countries and interculturality in the curriculum. In the 2000s internationalisation intensified and reached most Brazilian institutions, becoming a constituent aspect of universities’ social mission, alongside research, teaching and extension. The article analyses the process of establishing and consolidating internationalisation at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), highlighting how it is understood and expressed in its institutional guidelines, as well as the strategies and procedures adopted, with a view to consolidating and expanding the internationalisation process. To this end, legal documents and standards, such as the Institutional Development Plan (IDP) 2015-2019, were analysed; Institutional Management Plan and Management Reports (2000-2017) and the Institutional Plan for Internationalisation (2018-2022). As a result, it was found that internationalisation was initially not an institutional policy, but slowly identified an interest in setting up actions to this end, until the establishment of an Institutional Plan for Internationalisation, approved in 2018. It is also noted that the design and rationale of internationalisation actions are based on the traditional and traditional understanding of knowledge transfer through scientific and technological innovation.