Currently, advanced materials are still a source of the interest for scholars and the private sector, since they are regarded as the foundation for the promotion of technology-based innovation and, also, because they have the potential to add value and competitive differential. Considering the efforts of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC), which has established advanced materials as a priority, this work presents an analysis of the most important international public policies in the field of advanced materials, thus identifying their main characteristics, tendencies and priorities, with the intent of subsidizing the devising of a Brazilian Plan for Advanced Materials. The countries selected for analysis were the European Union, the BRIC, United States, Japan and Germany, due to their relevance of the field of Advanced Materials. Based on this study, and with the intention to get it to fit the national reality, the main suggestions presented are the following: (i) the need to establish favorable conditions for an interaction between academy and companies; (ii) promotion of the training of specialized human resources, geared towards technology-based entrepreneurship; (iii) an incentive to international cooperation, in order to promote a knowledge exchange to boost national technology-based companies to reach new markets abroad; (iv) a special support to future-devoted fields like aerospace and defense, energy, health and biotechnology, nanotechnology and nanomaterials; (v) a sustainable exploitation of national biodiversity, to benefit from the potential for innovation and also the discovery of new materials extracted from national biodiversity; (vi) an incentive to add value to mineral raw materials and to the exploitation of strategic minerals such as rare earths, niobium and graphene; and (vii) emphasize the need to overcome social issues in Brazil, such as poverty, low access to drinking water, malnutrition, limited access to health, improper basic sanitation, among others.