In Brazil, environmental topics in teacher education programmes have largely been addressed and explored by the field of research in Environmental Education and subsidized by legislative and normative instruments. Nevertheless, the difficulties in articulating environmental topics within some areas of knowledge compromise their integration in certain subject-specific courses, as is the case for initial physics teacher education courses. In this light, this article seeks to identify the main challenges and motivations to incorporating environmental topics in physics teacher education courses, with the aim of identifying strategies that may contribute to overcoming these difficulties. Interviews were carried out with 15 physics teacher education courses coordinators at state-funded higher education institutions in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing upon Content Analysis procedures, analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts as well as pedagogical plan courses. The main findings highlight that the presence of environmental topics in these programmes reflects legislative and normative requirements. In addition, other factors motivated the inclusion of environmental topics in these courses, thus indicating recognition of its importance to initial physics teacher education. This study also shows that the small number of university lecturers and professors involved in environmental education working within these programmes is the main challenge to including environmental topics in initial physics teacher education curriculum.