Soldiers and workers of the Neotropical nasute genus Cortaritermes are easily differentiated from other nasutitermitine genera by the first proctodeal segment of the coiling gut in situ forming a distinct loop visible throughout the abdominal wall on the right side of the abdomen. The study proposes to transfer two species currently in Nasutitermes to Cortaritermes, raising the total number of Cortaritermes species to five: C. silvestrii (Holmgren, 1910) (type species), C. fulviceps (Silvestri, 1901), C. rizzinii (Araujo, 1971), C. intermedius (Banks, 1919) comb. nov. and C. piliceps (Holmgren, 1910) comb. nov. The last two species, C. intermedius and C. piliceps, are herein redescribed, and digital images are provided. The distribution of Cortaritermes is now expanded to northern and north‐eastern South America.