Nelson Freire (born October 8, 1944) is a Brazilian classical pianist.

Freire began playing the piano when he was three years old. He replayed from memory pieces his older sister had just performed. His teachers in Brazil were Nise Obino and Lucia Branco, former students of a pupil of Liszt. For his first public recital, at the age of four, Freire chose Mozart's Sonata in A major, K. 331.