Tugadaily bar chart of gross monthly pay per worker in Portugal: €1,835 total in Q2 2026, €1,342 base pay in June 2026 and €1,278 in June 2025

Business 17 August 2026

Portuguese pay is up 5.1% to €1,835 a month. After inflation it is up 1.8%

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%.

The €493 that is not base pay

The subtraction is worth doing: €1,835 minus €1,342 leaves €493. Almost 27% of average gross pay comes from somewhere other than the salary scale — meal and holiday allowances spread across the year, bonuses, expenses, overtime, commission.

That matters for a practical reason. Base pay is what most of the calculations that shape a household actually use: how much mortgage a bank will approve, what redundancy is worth, which contributions build the eventual pension. The rest is real income, but it is income that can quietly disappear in a bad year without anyone rewriting a contract.

That base and total both grew by exactly 5.1% is, even so, encouraging. It means the past year’s increase was not propped up by one-off bonuses.

The wider picture

The national minimum wage rose 5.7% in 2026 to €920 a month, and the government is still aiming for €1,100 by the end of the parliament. Unemployment sits at 6%, with roughly 337,000 people out of work and 5.275 million employed, and GDP grew 2.5% year on year in the second quarter.

So: employment rising, pay rising faster than inflation, output expanding. The brake is still the cost of living — which is why the real increase came out at 1.8% rather than 5.1%, and the same reason diesel has risen 39 cents since February without any of it showing up in a payslip.

The figures cover 4.9 million filled jobs, 1.7% more than in the same quarter of 2025. The full series by sector and region is published in the INE portal.

By Beatriz Mota

Chart: Tugadaily · data from INE

Business 16 August 2026

Zara's owner sold out of Portugal's power grid. The state stepped in

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…

Tugadaily chart with three bars for diesel: a ten-cent rise from markets, two cents absorbed by the ISP discount, and a real rise of eight cents on 17 August 2026

Business 16 August 2026

Filling up before Monday will save you about four euros a tank

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…

Tugadaily bar chart showing tourism's weight in the Portuguese economy in 2025: consumption 16.1%, total contribution 11.8%, direct gross value added 8.1%

Business 15 August 2026

Portuguese tourism is 8.1% of the economy. It is also 16.1%

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.

Business 14 August 2026

Montijo finally has a long-distance coach stop of its own. The fare to Coimbra starts at €4.49

The route began running on 13 August and links Montijo to Torres Vedras, São Martinho do Porto, Nazaré, Marinha Grande and Coimbra. Four departures a day, two each way, from a new stop at Portas da Cidade beside the A33 and A12.

If you live in Montijo and wanted a long-distance coach, the drill until this week was tedious and familiar. Cross the Tagus, get to Gare do Oriente, start the journey there. That changed on 13 August, when FlixBus began running in the municipality and put its new stop at Portas da Cidade, on Avenida Pedro Nunes, behind the Decathlon and next to a Carris Metropolitana stop.

Cars stacked in a scrapyard awaiting shredding, with fluid collection drums in the foreground

Business 13 August 2026

The EU's new car-scrapping rules start today. The parts that reach your driveway come later

Regulation (EU) 2026/1738 entered into force on 13 August. It requires 15% recycled plastic in new cars from 2032, extends the framework to lorries, buses and motorcycles, and from mid-2031 lets only roadworthy vehicles be exported out of the EU.

The regulation that decides how cars are designed, dismantled and recycled at the end of their lives came into force across the European Union today. It replaces two directives old enough to vote: one from 2000, the other from 2005. None of this will be visible in a showroom tomorrow. Almost every figure in the text is dated to the next decade, and that is where the story sits. From today, manufacturers have to publish clear instructions for removing and…

Business 11 August 2026

Novobanco made €367.2m in six months, 15.6% less than a year ago

The drop comes from one-off costs tied to the sale to Groupe BPCE and a higher effective tax rate. Lending grew 5.9%, deposits 7.7%, and the CET1 ratio climbed to 19.2%.

Novobanco closed the first half of the year with a profit of €367.2 million. The same six months last year produced €434.9 million, which makes for a 15.6% fall. The bank's explanation rests on two things, neither of them commercial. The first is the one-off cost of the sale to Groupe BPCE, the French deal that formally got moving this half and completed on 30 April. The second is a higher effective tax rate, with the tax bill up by close to 38%. Add…

Business 11 August 2026

Norway's oil fund just bought eight Spanish shopping centres. Sonae Sierra gets to run them

Norges Bank Investment Management takes 92% of a portfolio valued at around €1.5bn. Sonae Sierra puts in 8% and takes on asset management of the 258,000 square metres.

The world's largest sovereign wealth fund is adding eight Spanish shopping centres to its books, and the company running them day to day will be Portuguese. Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway's oil fund, signed the agreement on 31 July to acquire a 92% interest and will pay around €1.4bn for it. The portfolio's gross value is roughly €1.5bn. A Sonae Sierra subsidiary takes the remaining 8% and will perform asset management on behalf…

Business 11 August 2026

Portuguese industry sold 6.5% more in June. Its payroll shrank

Turnover rose 6.5% year on year, driven by the domestic market (up 9.0%) and energy (up 11.6%). In the same month industrial employment fell 0.7% while wages paid rose 5.6%.

Portuguese factories took more money in June. The industry turnover index rose 6.5% on the same month last year, according to the series INE publishes for industrial business indices, and across the whole second quarter sales were up 7.5%, against a mere 1.4% in the previous quarter. The small print matters here. A good chunk of that rise is price rather than volume — the statistics office itself attributes the quarterly acceleration largely to prices.…

Business 10 August 2026

Five Braga charities are up to 95% through their builds and could still lose the EU money

UDIPSS Braga has written to the President and the Government about €11.9 million of social investment, €6.1 million of it from the recovery plan, at risk because deadlines expire before the works finish.

The question sounds absurd until you look at the paperwork. There are building sites in Braga that are 95% complete and may lose the European money that has paid for them so far, because the spending deadline runs out before the builders do. UDIPSS Braga, the district union of private social solidarity institutions, has sent an open letter to the President, the Prime Minister and several government ministers asking for an urgent political answer. Its…

Business 10 August 2026

Only two bidders are left in the race to sell CP its 300 km/h trains

France's Alstom and Spain's Talgo were the only companies to clear pre-qualification in CP's tender for 12 high-speed trains. They now have 90 days to file firm proposals, with a decision due late this year.

Two are left. Alstom of France and Talgo of Spain were the only companies to enter the pre-qualification stage of the tender CP launched in May to buy 12 high-speed trains, with submissions closing on 1 August. The timetable from here is set. Both have 90 days to turn a qualification into a firm proposal with prices and delivery dates, and a decision is expected before the end of the year. The tender carries a base value above €500 million and can reach…

Tugadaily chart with three bars: a 12-cent gross fall, a 2-cent cut in the ISP discount and a 10-cent real fall per litre of diesel on 10 August 2026

Business 9 August 2026

Fuel gets cheaper in Portugal on Monday (the state kept two cents of it)

Markets took about 12 cents a litre off diesel and 12.5 off petrol 95 for the week of 10 to 16 August. A two-cent cut in the ISP discount trims the real fall to 10 and 10.5.

If you put off filling the tank until Monday, you called it right. From 10 August fuel comes down across mainland Portugal, and on paper it is one of the biggest weekly falls of the summer: roughly 12 cents a litre off standard diesel and 12.5 cents off petrol 95, counting only what the international markets did. The pump display will tell a slightly different story. While the markets were easing, the government trimmed the discount on the fuel tax, the…

Business 8 August 2026

Portugal's competition authority clears Fnac's owner to take over 11 Staples stores

The AdC issued a non-opposition decision on the deal notified in May by Darty Portugal, finding it unlikely to create significant obstacles to effective competition in the national market.

The deal had been sitting on the table since June, waiting for a stamp. It arrived on Friday: the Autoridade da Concorrência will not oppose Darty Portugal taking exclusive control of 11 stores operated by Staples Portugal. The regulator concluded that the notified concentration is not likely to create significant obstacles to effective competition in the national market — the formula the AdC uses when it lets a transaction through without attaching…

Business 8 August 2026

easyJet agrees to a £5.7bn takeover by Apollo

The offer is £7.15 a share in cash, and it only stood up after rival bidder Castlelake walked away. Shareholders, the UK courts and merger regulators all have to sign off, and completion is not expected before the first quarter of 2027.

easyJet is leaving the London stock market. The board has accepted an offer from Apollo Global Management valuing the airline at £5.7 billion, roughly 7.7 billion dollars, announced on 6 August just hours after rival bidder Castlelake confirmed it would not pursue a deal. The price is £7.15 a share in cash. The buyer, formally, is Eagle Bidco, a Jersey-incorporated company indirectly owned by funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Capital Management. The…

A transmission pylon silhouetted against a sunset sky, power lines running across the landscape

Business 7 August 2026

Portugal approves €1.6 billion to rebuild its electricity distribution grid

The 2026-2030 investment plan for the high and medium voltage distribution network cleared the Council of Ministers on Thursday, aimed at absorbing more renewables and a fast-electrifying economy.

On 6 August the Council of Ministers signed off the development and investment plan for Portugal's high and medium voltage electricity distribution network covering 2026 to 2030. The headline figure is €1.6 billion. This is the unglamorous half of the grid. The long-distance high voltage corridors are the ones you notice crossing the countryside; medium voltage is what leaves the substations and reaches neighbourhoods, mid-sized factories and charging…