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.

By Miguel Sarmento

Image: ManpowerGroup

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 —…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…