Group of students with backpacks in a brightly coloured school corridor, image from the EPIS Social Scholarships programme

Opportunities 7 August 2026

395 scholarships, 970,000 euros, and one deadline in September

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.

Organizer: EPIS - Empresários pela Inclusão Social
Deadline: 25 September 2026

Apply / Learn more

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.

Who can apply

The programme is wider than a conventional study grant, and that is what sets it apart. Secondary school students can apply, as can post-secondary and higher-education students, and young adults with disabilities who are in a traineeship or working towards employment. There is also a strand aimed at schools running social inclusion projects, which means an application can come from the institution rather than only from a student.

The selection criteria combine two things that competitions usually keep separate: academic merit and financial need. Good grades alone will not do it, and demonstrated need alone will not either.

The programme’s track record

Between 2011 and this 2026 edition, EPIS has recognised 137 schools and institutions and awarded 1,918 scholarships, a cumulative social investment of 4.17 million euros. That is enough history to distinguish this from a one-off announcement.

The required documents and the application form sit on the official EPIS Social Scholarships page. Read the requirements before assembling paperwork, because the different strands ask for different things.

One calendar note for anyone starting university this autumn: this does not replace state support. Portugal’s university grant window through DGES has its own dates and is where most students should begin. Both can be pursued in parallel.

By Miguel Sarmento

Image: EPIS - Empresários pela Inclusão Social

Information card setting out the two forms of compensation under article 269 of the Portuguese Labour Code for working a public holiday, four hours of compensatory rest or a 50% pay uplift, based on an eight-hour shift

Opportunities 13 August 2026

Working this Saturday's public holiday in Portugal? Your employer picks how you get paid back

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…

Opportunities 12 August 2026

Who decides when a resident pharmacist becomes a specialist? Portugal has finally written it down

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…

Opportunities 11 August 2026

Primark is opening four more stores in Portugal, and 300 jobs come with them

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…

Three teenagers assembling robotics and electronics kits in a classroom

Opportunities 10 August 2026

€17.5 million and two deadlines for the courses that keep teenagers in school

Calls PESSOAS-2026-10 and PESSOAS-2026-11 fund youth Education and Training Courses for 2026/2027. Applications close on 31 August and 16 September, through the Portugal 2030 portal.

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…

Opportunities 10 August 2026

€30 million for tourism projects in Portugal, and the door stays open until December

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…

Opportunities 8 August 2026

When will Portugal pass its pay transparency law? The deadline was 7 June

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.

Opportunities 7 August 2026

A Mars mission is coming to the Alentejo, and researchers have until 6 September to apply

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…

Official Lisbon Metro trainee programme poster showing participants and the 31 August deadline

Opportunities 7 August 2026

Lisbon Metro is hiring graduate trainees for 12 months, and applications close on 31 August

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…

The Paço das Escolas courtyard at the University of Coimbra

Opportunities 6 August 2026

Portugal's university grant window runs 14 August to 2 October this year

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…

Opportunities 4 August 2026

47,960 applications are already in for Portugal's public universities (and the first phase shuts on 6 August)

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…

Portugal To Take Off programme banner showing the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline at sunset

Opportunities 3 August 2026

Four Portuguese startups get a runway into California, and the deadline is 14 August

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…

Opportunities 3 August 2026

You no longer need a degree to apply for a paid European Commission traineeship

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…

The Pátio das Escolas courtyard at the University of Coimbra on a sunny day

Opportunities 2 August 2026

Portugal's second-phase university applications open 24 August and close 2 September

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…

Opportunities 1 August 2026

Portugal's university placement results land on 22 August and enrolment lasts four days

First-round results of Portugal's National Access Competition 2026 are published on 22 August. Placed students enrol online between 24 and 27 August through the DGES portal.

The date to put in your phone is 22 August: that is when first-round results of Portugal's National Access Competition for higher education are published. Anyone placed then has four days, from 24 to 27 August, to enrol and register — and missing that window means losing the place. On 22 August 2026, by the Directorate-General for Higher Education. You check them using your candidate number and access password, the same pair used to submit the…