The European Commission approved a €30 million Portuguese scheme for farming, fishing and aquaculture on Wednesday. IFAP has to pay every cent of it by 31 December.

The European Commission signed off on Wednesday on a €30 million Portuguese state aid scheme for farming, fishing and aquaculture businesses. It was the last formal step, taken under the temporary framework created in response to the Middle East crisis and the fuel and fertiliser prices it pushed up. For anyone actually working the land, the approval is not the interesting part. The rates are. The farming side has been mapped out since June, in Council of…

Continue reading

The second-round total everyone quoted is not the final one. DGES publishes today the first-round seats nobody enrolled in, and applications stay open until 20 September.

Everyone printed the same figure: 6,639 places going into the second round. It is accurate and it is incomplete. The DGES note itself says the September round also takes in the seats that were awarded in August but never enrolled against, and that those numbers are only published today, 1 September, on the agency's website. Which means anyone weighing up whether to apply spent last week looking at a total that is about to grow. Once today's list is out,…

Continue reading

Up to 6% of annual base salary escapes both income tax and social security in 2026. The ceiling counts fourteen months rather than twelve, and tax is withheld anyway when the bonus lands.

A performance bonus in Portugal can reach you without a cent of income tax on it. Whether it does is largely out of your hands. The rule works like this: up to 6% of annual base salary, productivity and performance bonuses, profit shares and balance-sheet gratuities are exempt from IRS and sit outside the social security contribution base, provided they are paid voluntarily and without regular character. Anything above the 6% line is taxed the way it…

Continue reading

Government transparency data shows 20.5 of 23 billion euros advertised across 1,467 calls. Madeira sits at 59.57% of its programmed envelope and the Azores at 68.95%, against 101.83% in Lisbon.

Every time another Portugal 2030 call opens, one question goes unasked: how much of the total has actually been advertised, and how much is still sitting there. The government's own transparency portal answers it. Of the 23 billion euros programmed under Portugal 2030, 20.5 billion has been put out to tender across 1,467 published calls. That leaves roughly 2.5 billion that has not yet reached an application form. The figures come from AD&C and are…

Continue reading

A decree approved on 20 August extends the exceptional overtime regime to the entire Kristin calamity period, 28 January to 28 June, and puts central government, municipal and state-owned company staff under one set of rules.

If you spent January nights clearing drains, reopening roads or answering phones in a council office while the water rose, you worked well past your hours. What stayed unresolved for months was how those hours would be paid — and whether the answer changed depending on which employer's badge you happened to be wearing. The Council of Ministers settled it on 20 August. A decree-law was approved amending the regime for overtime worked in response to Storm…

Continue reading

The subclass 462 visa now shows as paused on the Australian Home Affairs site, with Portugal one of 24 countries affected. A pause is not a closure, and the annual quota for Portugal is only 500 places.

Anyone planning a year in Australia got unwelcome news this week. The Work and Holiday visa for Portuguese citizens now shows as paused on the Australian Department of Home Affairs website. Portugal is one of 24 countries whose subclass 462 has been put on hold, a status published on the official country caps page. The Australian embassy in Lisbon confirmed it and pointed to the number that explains most of it: the annual quota for Portuguese applicants…

Continue reading

ManpowerGroup's 2026 talent shortage study puts the Centro region at 88% of employers unable to fill vacancies, against 79% in Greater Lisbon. Nationally the figure is 82%, the fifth highest in the world.

Job hunters tend to assume the openings are all in Lisbon. Employers report something close to the opposite. Companies in central Portugal complain hardest about not finding people, and the gap to the capital runs to nine percentage points. The figures come from ManpowerGroup's 2026 talent shortage study, built on a survey of more than 39,000 employers across 41 countries. In the Centro region, 88% of organisations say they cannot fill their vacancies.…

Continue reading

The Series F base rate tracks three-month Euribor, but the IGCP term sheet caps it at 2.5%. Three-month Euribor traded at 2.507% on 22 August, which puts it above the ceiling for the first time.

Portugal's most popular savings product has a brake written into its own term sheet. Euribor has just reached it. Nobody sits in a room deciding the base rate on Series F savings certificates. It is the average of three-month Euribor over the previous ten business days, rounded to three decimal places. But the same IGCP term sheet that sets out that formula adds a line that rarely makes the coverage: the base rate may not be higher than 2.50% or lower…

Continue reading

The second edition of Laç(z)os Artísticos is open until 15 September with 20 mobility grants covering travel and insurance. Three are ring-fenced for young artists from Portuguese-speaking Africa and Timor-Leste.

The first round of Laç(z)os Artísticos handed out eleven grants. This one has twenty, and applications close on 15 September. The programme pays for artists to travel and develop a project outside their own country, within a bloc that combines the CPLP member states with the Ibero-American countries. Each grant is worth a maximum of €2,250 and covers the cost of the journey, health and travel insurance included. Eligible fields are visual arts, performing…

Continue reading

The first round placed 49,991 students and filled 88.9% of the seats. What remains opens on Monday, and more than half of it sits in inland institutions.

There is a lot less room to manoeuvre this year for anyone who misses out. The second round of Portugal's national university competition opens on Monday, 24 August carrying 6,639 places, 42.3% fewer than the same round in 2025. The reason is straightforward. The first round took almost everything. A total of 49,991 students were placed, which works out at 88.9% of the available seats and 6,092 more students than last year. The Ministry of Education,…

Continue reading

The BSC AI Factory Incubation Space Program gives startups and small firms free access to supercomputing, technical support and mentoring between 5 October and 30 March at UPTEC Asprela II. Applications close on 15 September.

Training an AI model costs money most small companies do not have. This programme aims squarely at that gap, and it does so in the most direct way available: it hands you the machine. The second call of the BSC AI Factory Incubation Space Program is open and accepts applications until 15 September. In Portugal it is run by the Foundation for Science and Technology alongside the National Centre for Advanced Computing, under the EuroHPC network of AI…

Continue reading

Portugal Space has set three annual assessment rounds for the ESA's InCubed programme through to 2028. Applications never close; the assessment dates do.

An electricity grid operator can work out, without leaving the office, that a branch is growing too close to a high-voltage line. That is not science fiction and it is not expensive. It is what VESTA does — a system built by the Portuguese company Spotlite that combines satellite imagery with AI to watch vegetation along power lines, railways and roads. VESTA was funded through InCubed, the European Space Agency's industrial innovation programme for Earth…

Continue reading

Portugal's education ministry placed 1,505 more teachers than last year, with 5,894 going to the regions with the deepest shortages. Acceptance closes on 18 August and staff report to schools on 1 September.

Anyone who applied has until the end of today to click accept. Portugal's education ministry has placed 20,404 teachers for the 2026/2027 school year, and the acceptance window on the AGSE platform opened on Sunday and closes on Tuesday 18 August. Those who accept report to their school on 1 September. Of the total, 19,152 are established staff moved through the internal mobility competition. The other 1,252 came in through initial recruitment, the route…

Continue reading

Call COMPETE2030-2026-7 puts €45m behind knowledge-transfer work at Portugal's collaborative labs and technology centres, 85% of it European money. Only the North, Centre and Alentejo can apply.

There is fresh money for the part of Portugal's science system almost nobody writes about: the institutions sitting halfway between a university lab and a factory floor. Call COMPETE2030-2026-7 opened on 12 August with €45 million and closes at 17:00 on 15 October. It is aimed at Laboratórios Colaborativos, known as CoLABs, and Centros de Tecnologia e Inovação, the technology and innovation centres. Both are interface bodies. They exist to take research…

Continue reading

The Foundation's Apoio à Internacionalização covers travel, accommodation and meals for artists, curators and programmers in performing arts, visual arts, cinema and cross-disciplinary work — and applications must land 30 days before the trip.

One Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation grant has been open since January and closes on 31 October, and unlike most competitions it has no single submission date: applications to the Apoio à Internacionalização run continuously and a decision follows within 30 days. The reference ceiling is €5,000 per project. It pays for one specific thing: getting artists, curators and programmers to events run by major international cultural institutions. Performing arts —…

Continue reading

Notice PESSOAS-2026-9 funds mentoring teams for young people under child protection measures, for up to 24 months each, across the Norte, Centro and Alentejo regions. Applications opened on 3 August, with 85% ESF+ co-funding.

There is a point in the life of a young person in residential care when the system stops walking beside them and they have to do everything alone: rent a room, manage a wage, enrol on a course, book a doctor. This money is aimed squarely at that step. Notice PESSOAS-2026-9 has opened with more than €6.2 million from the European Social Fund Plus to fund teams that accompany, one by one, young people who are or have been under a child promotion and…

Continue reading

15 August falls on a Saturday this year. Anyone working it at a company that stays open is owed either compensatory rest worth half the hours or a 50% pay uplift, and article 269 of the Labour Code hands the choice to the employer, not the worker.

The Feast of the Assumption, 15 August, is one of Portugal's mandatory public holidays, and this year it lands on a Saturday. For plenty of people that changes nothing at all. For anyone who works Saturdays it changes quite a lot, and what the law actually hands you is thinner than most people assume. Start with the misunderstanding that causes the most office arguments. A public holiday falling on a day you would not have worked anyway does not buy you a…

Continue reading

Portaria 332/2026/1, published on 11 August, sets the rules for applications, places, assessment and external training. One new duty stands out: seven hours a month on emergency service from the second year onwards.

More than 550 pharmacists are currently working through Portugal's Residência Farmacêutica, the specialist training route that leads to the title of specialist pharmacist. Until this week they were doing it under a 2020 legal framework that never spelled out how any of it actually worked. Portaria 332/2026/1, published on 11 August, supplies the missing rulebook. The timing is the story. The first cohort is reaching the end of its training, with the first…

Continue reading

The chain is putting over €45 million into the country by summer 2027. The first opening is 2 September at Forum Castelo Branco, the second 10 September at Alegro Setúbal.

Four new stores, an extension to an existing one and around 300 jobs by summer 2027. That is what Primark has under way in Portugal, backed by an investment of more than €45 million. The first two openings already have dates. Forum Castelo Branco gets the city's first Primark on 2 September. Eight days later, on 10 September, Alegro Setúbal follows. Next come GaiaShopping in Vila Nova de Gaia and central Porto, and the Porto one is worth flagging…

Continue reading

Calls PESSOAS-2026-10 and PESSOAS-2026-11 fund youth Education and Training Courses for 2026/2027. PESSOAS-2026-11 has been extended to 14 September; PESSOAS-2026-10 closes on the 16th.

There is €17.5 million on the table for youth Education and Training Courses in the 2026/2027 school year, €15 million of it from the European Social Fund Plus. The calls opened on 7 August, and there is not one of them. There are two, with different eligible applicants and different deadlines, and mixing them up costs an application. Call PESSOAS-2026-10 is for public education establishments running CEF courses at level 2 of the National Qualifications…

Continue reading

Crescer com o Turismo takes rolling applications until 31 December 2026, with non-repayable grants capped at €400,000 per project. Councils, non-profits and SMEs can all apply.

Most Portuguese funding programmes run as closed competitions with a hard deadline and a scramble in the final fortnight. Crescer com o Turismo, run by Turismo de Portugal, does not. It takes applications on a rolling basis until 31 December 2026 or until the money runs out, whichever comes first. The pot is €30 million and it covers the whole country, Madeira and the Azores included. Two things make it unusual. The support is a straight grant rather than…

Continue reading

The EU directive makes employers tell candidates what a job pays before the interview, bans asking what they earned before, and requires larger companies to publish their gender pay gaps. Portugal has still not published the law transposing it.

A date written into European law has come and gone with almost no noise. Directive (EU) 2023/970 set 7 June 2026 as the deadline for member states to transpose it, and Portugal has reached August without publishing the law that does so. This is not a technicality. It is the directive that kills off the job ad reading "salary to be discussed". Four concrete things, and every one of them touches people looking for work or already in it.

Continue reading

The AMADEE-27 analogue mission sets up around Monsaraz and Alqueva in April 2027. The Austrian Space Forum is taking applications from researchers in robotics, astrobiology, geosciences, life sciences and human factors.

In April 2027 there will be people in spacesuits walking the plain around Monsaraz and Alqueva. This is AMADEE-27, an analogue mission run by the Austrian Space Forum, and applications to take part in the scientific programme are open now. The deadline is 6 September. A dress rehearsal. For two weeks a team of analogue astronauts wears spacesuit simulators and runs procedures as though they were on Mars, constraints included: restricted movement, delayed…

Continue reading

The 16th edition of the EPIS Social Scholarships is open to secondary and higher-education students and to young adults with disabilities in traineeships, across mainland Portugal, the Azores and Madeira.

Around this time every year thousands of Portuguese households do the same piece of mental arithmetic: enrolment, textbooks, transport, and sometimes a rented room in another city. The EPIS Social Scholarships exist for that arithmetic, and the 16th edition is now open. There are 395 scholarships on offer, worth 970,000 euros in total. Applications run until 25 September 2026 and cover the whole country, mainland Portugal plus the Azores and Madeira. The…

Continue reading

The Trainees Metro | 1.ª Viagem programme places recent graduates and master's holders in multidisciplinary teams for a year. Eligible fields run from law and economics to geospatial and electrical engineering.

You finished your degree this summer and the first year is still a blank. Here is one answer with a date attached to it. Lisbon Metro has opened the 2026 edition of its Trainees Metro | 1.ª Viagem programme, aimed at recent graduates and master's holders. Applications run until 31 August and are made online through the recruitment section of the company's institutional site. The placement lasts twelve months. Trainees join multidisciplinary teams, work on…

Continue reading

The 2026/2027 application period is exceptional and opens before term starts. Enrol before 2 October and you always get 20 working days to file, even if that runs past the deadline.

For 2026/2027 only, applications for a Portuguese higher education study grant run from 14 August to 2 October. Worth putting in the calendar, because the window opens before most applicants even know which course they got into. This year's calendar sits awkwardly against the national admissions round. First-phase placements are not published until 22 August, but the grant window opens on the 14th. In practice some applicants will sort the grant out after…

Continue reading

The national admissions round opened on 20 July and closes this Thursday, with more than 56,000 places on offer. Applications are running 164 ahead of the same point last year.

If your application is still sitting unfinished, you have two days. The first phase of Portugal's national admissions competition for public higher education opened on 20 July and closes on 6 August. What follows are second and third phases with far fewer places and much sharper competition. The numbers suggest this summer's disruption has not put anyone off. In the first 14 days the Directorate-General for Higher Education logged 47,960 applications, 164…

Continue reading

AICEP's Portugal To Take Off, run with Start2 Group, sends four startups through an acceleration programme for the US market: eight finalists on 21 August, four picked by the 31st, a virtual programme from September and a Demo Day in California on 29 January.

If you have been eyeing the American market and putting off the decision, here is a date worth writing down: midnight GMT on 14 August. That is when applications close for Portugal To Take Off, the AICEP programme that prepares Portuguese startups to enter California. The places are few and the funnel is tight, which in practice is good news for whoever gets through. AICEP publishes a shortlist of eight finalists by 21 August. Start2 Group then runs the…

Continue reading

Blue Book traineeships now accept vocational education and training graduates. Applications close on 4 September for a five-month placement running March to July 2027.

For years, the answer to "can I apply for a European Commission traineeship?" started with the same condition: you need a university degree. Not any more. The Blue Book programme now accepts graduates of vocational education and training too, and it is the most consequential change the scheme has made in a long time. Applications for the next round are open until 4 September 2026. Placements selected in this call run from March to July 2027. The baseline…

Continue reading

Second-phase applications to Portuguese public higher education run from 24 August to 2 September 2026, with results on 13 September. Deadlines, places and who qualifies.

The second phase of Portugal's national competition for public higher education runs from 24 August to 2 September, with results on 13 September. That is ten days to decide something a lot of people will then spend three years living with. The second phase exists for two groups: those who were not placed in the first round, and those who were placed on a course that, on closer inspection, was not the one. It is that second group that tends to hesitate…

Continue reading