Standard diesel is expected to rise by around 15 cents a litre and 95 petrol by around 12 from Monday 7 September. At 2.169 and 2.142 euros, both clear the records set in April and May.

If the tank is half full and the car is sitting outside, this is one of those weekends when a trip to the pump pays for itself. From the early hours of Monday 7 September, standard diesel is expected to go up by roughly 15 cents a litre and 95 petrol by roughly 12, according to the weekly forecast published by the Automóvel Club de Portugal.

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Portugal's infrastructure company will invest the sum across Beja, Évora and Portalegre by the end of 2028. The announcement came at a roadside ceremony, not in a press release.

The Alentejo is the part of Portugal where you drive the furthest to do the least, and where the train, on several lines, is still a single railcar on a single track. Infraestruturas de Portugal said this week it will invest €700 million in the region by the end of 2028, split between roads and railways across the districts of Beja, Évora and Portalegre. Infrastructure Secretary of State Hugo Espírito Santo made the announcement, and it did not arrive in…

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An order published on 2 September gives Novobanco another €40m and Montepio €60m. The overall ceiling on Portugal's young-buyer housing guarantee rises to €2.4bn, double where it started in 2024.

Novobanco asked for another €40 million. Montepio asked for €60 million. The government added the two together and published the result in Wednesday's official gazette: €100 million more of state guarantee for young buyers' mortgages, in response to the lending both banks still expect to do before the year ends. This is not a new scheme or an extra credit line. It is the 2024 mechanism being given more room because the slice reserved for those two lenders…

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Blissfulbreeze, which ran the e-commerce for the Cristina brands, was declared insolvent by the Vila Nova de Gaia commercial court on 11 August and is heading for liquidation. Anyone who had already paid becomes an ordinary creditor, with a deadline that starts at the judgment.

The company behind the online shop for the Cristina, Love Cristina and Daily Cristina labels has gone under. Blissfulbreeze was declared insolvent on 11 August by the commercial court in Vila Nova de Gaia and is now heading into liquidation, with Santander, Vodafone and Amor Ponto, Cristina Ferreira's own company, among the creditors. The presenter has said her commercial relationship with Blissfulbreeze covered only the production and sale of footwear…

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Law 59/2026 scraps the surge-pricing cap, lets licensed taxis sign up to the apps and allows advertising on the cars. An operators' association says the statute gives two different start dates.

Eight years after Portugal first wrote rules for the ride-hailing trade, those rules have been rewritten. Law 59/2026 was published on 25 August and its article 7 brings it into force today, 1 September. It is the first substantial revision of Law 45/2018, which had promised a review after three years and never got one. It starts with the name. The sector is no longer defined as transport in unmarked vehicles but as paid passenger transport in…

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Tourist accommodation took €923.7 million, up 4.9% on last July. Greater Lisbon's takings fell 2% and its revenue per available room dropped 7.3%, while the Alentejo grew almost 20%.

Portuguese tourist accommodation took €923.7 million in July, 4.9% more than in the same month last year. The figures landed on Monday, and they carry a detail that rarely makes the headline: revenue rose in every region of the country bar one. In Greater Lisbon it fell 2%. Small as a percentage, large as a signal. Greater Lisbon is the second biggest earner in the country, taking 21.2% of everything Portuguese accommodation billed that month. Run the…

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From today until 6 September, average diesel in mainland Portugal falls to around €1.995 while 95 petrol rises to about €2.004. The two swap places, and diesel is the cheaper fill again.

Anyone who filled up on Sunday picked the wrong day. From today until 6 September, standard diesel in mainland Portugal is expected to fall by roughly 7.5 cents a litre, taking the average price from €2.071 to somewhere near €1.995. On a 50-litre tank that is close to four euros. 95 petrol moves the other way, with far less conviction: up about 1.5 cents, to roughly €2.004 a litre. Look at what that does to the pair. Last week diesel sat eight cents above…

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Economy minister Castro Almeida declared the plan fully executed on 28 August. The closing numbers: €22 billion, 403,000 approved applications, and a tenth payment request still to file.

Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan reaches its deadline today. This is the date the country agreed with Brussels for signing off every milestone and target, and the government turned up to it three days early with the verdict already written: at a Lisbon press conference on 28 August, the economy and territorial cohesion minister declared the plan "totalmente executado", fully executed.

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M&A involving Portuguese companies reached €4.5bn in the first seven months of 2026, TTR Data says. Real estate leads with 44 deals and Macquarie's €310m purchase of Luz Saúde was July's biggest.

Fewer companies are changing hands in Portugal this year. Between January and July there were 289 mergers and acquisitions worth €4.5bn in total, 28% fewer deals than in the same stretch of 2025 and 20% less capital moved. The figures come from TTR Data, with one caveat worth keeping: only 31% of deals disclosed a price, so the real total is larger than the countable one.

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The Oiã-Soure concession drew no valid bids at all in 2024 and was relaunched in January. This time it drew two: 2,038 million euros from Sacyr with DST and Alberto Couto Alves, 2,300 million from the Mota-Engil grouping. Price carries 80 per cent of the award decision.

In July 2024 the state rail body Infraestruturas de Portugal put the Oiã to Soure section of the Porto-Lisbon high-speed line out to tender and received not a single valid bid. The process was scrapped. In January, after the government told IP to rework it, the tender was relaunched on redrawn terms. Two bids came in.

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Portugal's Council of Ministers declared a final assembly line for the A-29N to be in the national public interest, pointing at Air Base 11. It is a planning decision, not a signed contract.

Meeting on 20 August, Portugal's Council of Ministers recognised the national public interest in setting up a final assembly line for the A-29N Super Tucano in Portugal, pointing, under certain conditions, at Air Base 11 in Beja. It is worth being precise about what that decision does. A declaration of national public interest is an administrative lever: it unblocks procedures, signals priority, smooths permits. It is not a signed contract with Embraer.…

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The Portuguese ceiling is tighter than the European one and already applies. Above €3,000 neither buyer nor seller may use cash, splitting the purchase into instalments does not get around it, and two lower thresholds catch businesses and tax bills.

The question comes up every time someone buys a second-hand car or settles a builder's invoice: what is the legal ceiling for paying in cash in Portugal? It is €3,000, and it bites lower than most people expect. The rule sits in Article 63-E of the General Tax Law and has been in force for years. It prohibits paying or receiving cash in amounts equal to or above €3,000. Note the wording: equal to or above. A transaction of exactly three thousand euros…

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The Road Service Contribution was found incompatible with EU law in 2022, then folded into Portugal's fuel tax. It brought Infraestruturas de Portugal 710 million euros in 2025. The Finance Ministry says today's model is lawful.

Fill up anywhere in Portugal and a slice of the bill is earmarked for Infraestruturas de Portugal, the state company that runs the national road network. It works out at 8.7 cents on every litre of petrol, 11.1 cents on every litre of diesel and 12.3 cents on every kilogram of LPG. The original version of that charge was found to breach EU law four years ago. Here is how that happened. In February 2022 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that…

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Infarmed data shows 66,305 kilos left the country in the first half of 2026 alone, more than 80% of the 2025 total. Germany takes roughly three quarters of it.

An industry has been quietly scaling up in Portugal, and the regulator's latest figures make it hard to keep ignoring. In the first six months of 2026, 66,305 kilos of cannabis for medicinal use left the country. That single half-year is already more than 80% of everything Portugal exported across the whole of 2025. The climb has been steep and short. Foreign sales were 32,558 kilos in 2024. In 2025 they reached close to 80 tonnes, a jump of roughly 156%.…

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Alibaba announced a placing of new Hong Kong shares worth HK$80 billion on Sunday. It says 100% of the net proceeds go into chips, infrastructure and AI models.

Alibaba said on Sunday it will issue new ordinary shares and place them with investors outside the United States, raising HK$80 billion — roughly 10.2 billion US dollars. The reason is stated flatly in the company's own announcement: the placement is being done to extend the group's global AI leadership, and 100% of the net proceeds will go into its full-stack AI capabilities, including expanding its AI infrastructure.

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The Kansas City Fed's annual gathering runs 27–29 August in Wyoming, and this year's theme is financial innovation rather than the rate path. Warsh took over from Jerome Powell in May.

There is one week in the financial calendar when a mountain lodge in Wyoming matters more to markets than any scheduled meeting. This is it. The Jackson Hole economic policy symposium, hosted every year by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, runs from 27 to 29 August and carries the theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy". In more than four decades of the event, this is the first time digital payments have been the…

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For the week of 24 to 30 August, ACP expects diesel to rise 3.5 cents to around 2.072 euros a litre and petrol 2.5 cents to 1.989. The fuel tax discount could still soften the blow.

If your tank is running low, fill it this weekend. The Automóvel Club de Portugal expects diesel to gain about 3.5 cents a litre on Monday, with unleaded petrol up 2.5 cents. If that holds, diesel averages 2.072 euros a litre and petrol 1.989, measured against the daily average prices published by DGEG, the national energy regulator. Put in terms of a tank, 50 litres of diesel moves from roughly 101.85 euros today to 103.60. That is 1.75 euros. For petrol…

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Household borrowing rose 9.9% in June against the same month of 2025, the sharpest annual increase since the series started in December 2008. Mortgages account for most of it. In total, households, companies and the state owe 894 billion euros.

The headline figure is 894 billion euros. That is what general government, companies and households together owed at the end of June, up 39.6 billion since December, according to figures the Banco de Portugal released on Friday. The number that actually matters sits further down the release. In June, household borrowing was 9.9 per cent higher than a year earlier. That is the steepest annual rise since the series began in December 2008. Portuguese…

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The board of the world's oldest surviving bank approved two simultaneous all-share exchange offers: €25.3bn for Banco BPM and €8.72bn for Banca Generali. The acceptance window should open in December, with completion targeted for mid-February 2027.

The oldest bank still trading anywhere in the world has decided not to wait to be bought. The board of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena approved, by majority, two voluntary and parallel public exchange offers: one for all the ordinary shares of Banco BPM, the other for all the ordinary shares of Banca Generali. Together they are worth roughly €34bn, and they are settled entirely in shares.

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Our running tracker of the markets that move savings in Portugal — gold, Fed and ECB decisions, oil and stocks. Updated whenever there is news.

This is our running tracker of the markets that move savings in Portugal. Instead of a fresh article for every swing, we update this page whenever something matters: gold, Federal Reserve and European Central Bank decisions, oil and the main stock indices. For the background on the Portuguese economy, see our mid-year review. Official data is at the Bank of Portugal.

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The combined current and capital account surplus came to €1,201 million in the first half of 2026, down 45.8% on the same period last year. The Bank of Portugal points to the goods balance, where imports rose €4,715 million against €2,207 million for exports.

Portugal closed the first half of the year with an external surplus of €1,201 million. That is still a positive balance, which in the country's recent economic history is not something to shrug at. It is also 45.8% smaller than in the same period of 2025, and the Bank of Portugal is fairly precise about where the margin went. Almost all of it sits in the goods balance. Imports rose €4,715 million on the year, more than double the €2,207 million increase…

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An Informa D&B study counts 17,000 foreign-capital firms in Portugal. They employ 808,000 people, turn over 173 billion euros and account for 52 billion in exports.

There are 17,000 foreign-capital companies registered in Portugal. They are 3% of the country's business base and, according to the Informa D&B study released on Thursday, they are behind 46% of everything Portugal exports. The rest of the picture comes from the same source. These firms account for 31% of the combined turnover of all Portuguese companies, 22% of employment and 15% of the gross value added generated by business. In absolute terms: 808,000…

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The energy regulator has signed off new time bands. On the two-rate tariff the off-peak window shifts to 22:30-08:30, half an hour later at both ends. It reaches 500,000 homes between July and December 2027, and six million simple-tariff meters get updated too.

If you are on a two-rate electricity tariff in Portugal, you have probably internalised one rule: after ten at night, the dishwasher can go on. That rule is about to be wrong. On 31 July the regulator, ERSE, closed its review of electricity time bands for mainland Portugal, and the headline fits in two lines. On the daily cycle of the two-rate tariff, the off-peak window stops starting at 22:00 and starts at 22:30 instead. To compensate, it stops ending…

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Portugal's per-passenger aviation carbon charge has collected €266.58 million since July 2021, including €31.48 million in the first half of this year. €258.58 million has reached the Environmental Fund; the €8 million gap is the share the law reserves for the aviation regulator.

It is two euros. It sits inside the ticket price, almost nobody notices it, and since July 2021 it has added up to €266.58 million. Portugal's aviation carbon charge is a flat amount per passenger, collected by airlines when they sell a commercial ticket and handed on to the state. In the first half of this year it brought in €31.48 million, against €30.6 million over the same months of 2025 — a rise of 2.9%, tracking traffic growth closely. The law is…

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Pontegadea and state holding company Parpública have signed for 91,723,676 REN shares, but the deal only takes effect once the Court of Auditors grants prior approval — a step seldom used for share purchases by state entities. The market filing carried no price; the figure since put on it is about €380 million, a premium of roughly 17%.

There is a contract, and the deal has not actually happened yet. Pontegadea Inversiones, the investment vehicle of Zara's founder, has agreed to transfer 91,723,676 REN shares — about 13.7% of the company — to the state holding company Parpública, according to the filing REN sent to the market on 14 August. Everything waits on the Court of Auditors granting prior approval, and it is the filing itself that says so.

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Law 51/2026 takes effect on 18 August and settles a split between two Portuguese courts over when the clock stops on antitrust cases. Nineteen proceedings across banking, retail, energy, telecoms and transport are affected.

More than a dozen Portuguese banks were convicted at first instance for swapping commercial information between 2002 and 2013. They never paid. Lisbon's appeal court ruled the case time-barred, and the whole thing evaporated. From today that particular escape route closes for the cases still running. Law 51/2026 was published in Diário da República on Monday and comes into force on Tuesday. The text creates nothing new. It states that Law 17/2022 — which…

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Average gross monthly pay per worker reached €1,835 in the second quarter, INE reports. Base pay alone was €1,342 — and the €493 gap is everything that is not written into the contract.

Average gross monthly pay per worker in Portugal rose 5.1% in the second quarter to €1,835. Strip out inflation and the real gain was 1.8%. Prices took the other 3.3 percentage points. The figure that usually falls out of the headlines is the second one. Base pay — what the contract says, before bonuses, variable allowances, overtime or top-ups — went from €1,278 in June 2025 to €1,342 in June 2026. That is also 5.1%.

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Pontegadea, Amancio Ortega's holding company, has agreed to sell 91,723,676 REN shares to Parpública, or 13.7% of the capital. The deal needs Court of Auditors clearance and no price was disclosed.

Twelve years after selling out of REN, the Portuguese state is back in. Pontegadea Inversiones, Amancio Ortega's holding company, has signed a contract with state holding company Parpública to sell 91,723,676 REN shares, equal to 13.7% of the capital. The deal was announced to the market on 14 August and is conditional on clearance from the Court of Auditors. Neither side disclosed a price. Pontegadea was the second-largest shareholder in the operator of…

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Diesel goes up around 8 cents a litre from 17 August and petrol 7.5, after the government raised the ISP discount on Friday to soften a much bigger rise.

If you can get to a pump this weekend, do. From Monday 17 August fuel goes up across mainland Portugal, and it is one of the sharper rises of the summer: roughly ten cents a litre on standard diesel and nine on 95 petrol, counting only what comes from international markets. What reaches the forecourt is a little gentler than that. On Friday the government published Portaria 345-C/2026/1, the order revising the rates of the fuel tax, ISP, raising the…

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Portugal's 2025 Tourism Satellite Account gives three different readings of the same sector, which is why the headlines never agree. Only one of them measures what tourism actually adds.

If you read this month that tourism is worth 8.1% of the Portuguese economy, you read correctly. If you read 11.8%, that was correct too. And 16.1%. All three come from the same INE release, published on 3 August, and they measure different things. Worth knowing which, because mixing them up is why the argument about tourism in Portugal keeps going round in circles.

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