Tugadaily chart: Medida +Emprego payment per permanent contract, from €6,446 with no top-ups to €15,469 with four

Opportunities 23 October 2026

Hiring with the +Emprego subsidy? Get the application in by 6pm on Monday

IEFP's Medida +Emprego pays €6,445.56 per permanent hire, with 35% top-ups, and was meant to take applications until 15 December. Its portal now says the window shuts on 26 October because the budget for the call has run out.

Organizer: IEFP
Deadline: 26 October 2026

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If you were counting on Medida +Emprego to help pay for a new hire, you have until Monday. Portugal’s employment institute, IEFP, has put an alert on its portal: applications close at 6pm on 26 October 2026 because the budget ceiling for the call has been reached.

The same page still shows the original timetable, running from 9am on 15 July to 6pm on 15 December. The early close cuts 50 days off the window.

What is at stake

For a small business, a lot. The scheme pays €6,445.56 for each open-ended contract, twelve times the 2026 social support index (IAS) of €537.13. That rises by 35% for each of five situations: hiring a person with a disability, someone aged 35 or under, someone registered with IEFP for more than 12 months, someone for a profession where one gender is under-represented, or filling a job in the interior. One top-up takes it to €8,701.51. Up to four can be stacked, which brings it to €15,469.34 per contract.

The rules haven’t changed since July. The deadline has.

Before Monday

The employer applies through the iefponline portal, and only for vacancies reported to IEFP from 16 March 2026 onwards. The contract must be open-ended and full-time, with someone unemployed and registered with IEFP, and the company has to hold its headcount for at least 24 months. If the vacancy is already logged and the hire decided, don’t leave it to Monday afternoon.

One practical note: IEFP warns that Segurança Social Direta logins will be down between 00:45 and 02:00 on Sunday 25 October. If you were planning a late-night session, Saturday is the better bet.

The lesson for internships

IEFP’s +Talento and INICIAR internship schemes, whose first window of the year closed on 30 July, opened their second on 12 October, due to close on 7 December. The small print is the same as +Emprego’s: “or until the budget is used up”. Anyone planning to take on a trainee with an IEFP-backed grant now has a very recent example of the calendar date not being the real one.

By Miguel Sarmento

Chart: Tugadaily, from IEFP data

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