The 2026 EUIPO SME Fund reimbursed 75% to 90% of what small firms spend on trade marks, designs, patents and IP pre-diagnosis. Since 8 September only patents and plant varieties remain open, to 4 December.

Deadline

4 December 2026

By Miguel Sarmento

Illustrative · Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels

Applications shut at 15:00 Lisbon time on 30 September, while recommendation letters are due on 6 October. The entry bar is a 16.5 average with no rounding.

One detail about the Gulbenkian New Talents scholarships rescues a good share of the late applications every year, and hardly anyone says it out loud. There are two deadlines, not one. The applicant's own form closes at 15:00 Lisbon time on 30 September. Recommendation letters work differently: the Foundation requests them directly from whoever you name in the references field, and they are not due until 15:00 on 6 October. So if you are putting off…

The pot is 18 million euros and applications close at 6pm on 12 October. The rate runs from 1.99% of sales for a polyvalent boat under 12 metres to 10.17% for a trawler of 24 metres or more.

It opened on 11 September and closes at 6pm on 12 October. In between, fishing, aquaculture and fish-processing companies operating on the Portuguese mainland can claim compensation for this year's jump in fuel prices. The government announced 18 million euros and said the amount depends on the fleet segment and the size of the vessel. It is worth spelling out what that means, because the gap between one boat and another is fivefold.

Startup Portugal has two questionnaires open, one for startups and one for incubators, and the answers feed straight into the ENE 2030 diagnosis. The final strategy lands at the end of this year.

There is a practical difference between complaining about stock-option taxation at a conference and having that complaint land inside a document that later sets policy. Right now, and not for long, the second route is open. Startup Portugal is building the National Entrepreneurship Strategy 2030, the document that will set the public-policy agenda for entrepreneurship in Portugal across 2026-2030. The process is currently in its diagnosis phase, which…

Portugal's tripartite agreement puts the minimum wage at 970 euros in 2027 and 1,020 in 2028. The CGTP wants 1,100 from 1 January 2027, and has called a national demonstration for 17 October.

Back in July, when we last wrote about this, the CGTP was asking for a 1,050-euro minimum wage in 2027. Its national council met on Friday and the number moved up: it is now 1,100 euros, from 1 January 2027. Fifty euros does not sound like much of a shift in a union demand. But 1,100 is not a round figure picked at random, and that is where it gets interesting. It is the number the government itself wrote into its programme as the target for 2029.

The second PME Pitch awards are open to startups incorporated in Portugal within the last ten years, and to teams whose project exists only on paper. The final is at Taguspark on 28 October.

Three minutes is not long to explain a business to people who have never heard of it. That constraint is the whole point of the second edition of the PME Pitch awards, which take applications until 16 October. The winner gets €5,000, handed over as a symbolic cheque at the closing ceremony of the Fórum PME Magazine. The final runs on 28 October at Taguspark in Oeiras, and each finalist walks on stage with those three minutes and nothing else. Slides,…

The EUIPO has closed its two most popular vouchers — IP Scan, and trade marks and designs — because the money ran out. Patents and plant varieties still take applications until 4 December, or until they go the same way.

Small firms put off registering a trade mark for the same reason every time: it looks like something you do once you already have money. The European scheme built to undo that calculation has just closed that particular door. The EU SME Fund, the grant scheme the EUIPO runs for small and medium businesses, has stopped taking applications for IP Scan and for trade marks and designs — its two most popular vouchers — because the money set aside for each of…

Portugal 2030's MPR-2026-6 call closes at 5pm on 30 September. Of the total, €71m is ring-fenced for low-density areas and €111.5m for the rest of the mainland. Applications go through the Balcão dos Fundos.

There is a Portugal 2030 call closing on 30 September, and the pot is one of the year's biggest for companies: €182.5 million in non-repayable funding for innovative productive investment by micro, small and medium-sized firms. It is called notice MPR-2026-6, it sits inside the SICE incentive system, and it is a joint call from COMPETE 2030 and the mainland regional programmes. It opened on 15 June and applications close at 5pm on 30 September.

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…