Portugal's economy slows this year and 2027 barely lifts it, warns the Competitiveness Forum
The Forum for Competitiveness sees Portuguese GDP growing 1.7% to 1.9% in 2026 and 1.8% to 2% in 2027, blaming structural weakness rather than the cycle.
Portugal’s economy will grow less this year than it did last year, and next year brings no comeback either. That is the picture from the Forum for Competitiveness, and the uncomfortable part is not this year’s number. It is next year’s.
How fast will Portugal’s economy grow in 2026?
Between 1.7% and 1.9%, after 1.9% in 2025. A modest tap on the brakes. The trouble is 2027: the forecast lands at 1.8% to 2%, which is to say almost exactly the same. This is not one weak year followed by a rebound. It is a plateau.
The Forum does not hide what it thinks of that, calling it unsettling that no meaningful recovery is expected in the year after the slowdown.
What is holding Portuguese growth back?
Not the cycle, the foundations. The Forum reads this as structural weakness, and specifically as weak growth potential that tends to deteriorate rather than improve over time. In plain terms: even when the world outside behaves, the Portuguese economy lacks the muscle to grow much beyond this.
On inflation the picture is a contained peak. The Forum sees a rise from 2.3% in 2025 to somewhere between 2.3% and 2.7% this year, easing to 2.1% to 2.4% in 2027. Nothing dramatic, but enough to keep eating into pay rises.
It is worth noting that not everything points the same way. Foreign investment hit a record and Portugal’s airports keep breaking passenger records. The question the Forum raises is whether that good news reaches the long-term potential or simply sits on top of it. The official GDP and inflation series are published by Statistics Portugal.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: Jules Verne Times Two / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
