COMPETE 2030's STEP calls cover up to 70% of factory investments between €3M and €25M in the North, Centre, Alentejo and Algarve. Applications close at 5pm on 4 January 2027.

Deadline

4 January 2027

By Miguel Sarmento

Graphic: Tugadaily · COMPETE 2030 data

Madeira 2030 notice M2030-2026-35 refunds the cost of shipping goods for companies that produce or process them on the island: 90% of the spend (80% in the Free Trade Zone), up to €750,000 each, as a non-repayable grant. The pot is €5.695 million and applications close on 20 November at 5pm.

Making things on an island costs more, and freight is where it hurts most. Madeira 2030 has opened a scheme that hands some of it back: companies that produce or process goods in the region can recover up to 90% of what they spent shipping goods in 2025, as a grant that never has to be repaid. The money is EU regional funding (FEDER), and the notice, M2030-2026-35, carries €5.695 million. Applications opened on 19 October and close on 20 November at 5pm,…

The second round of DGARTES's Arte e Coesão Territorial programme has €1 million for projects worth €25,000 to €50,000, to run in 2027 and 2028 in 78 municipalities with little professional arts activity. Visual, performing, street, traditional and digital arts all qualify. Deadline 6 November.

If you are an artist, a collective or a cultural organisation with a project designed for somewhere beyond Lisbon and Porto, you have twelve days to get it on paper. Portugal's arts agency DGARTES has opened the second round of its Arte e Coesão Territorial partnership programme, worth €1 million in total, and applications close on 6 November, as the government's announcement of the new round confirms.

Round two of the IEFP's Estágios +Talento and Estágios Iniciar opened on 12 October and closes at 6pm on 7 December, or sooner if the budget runs out. Monthly grants run from €913.12 to €1,396.54, and it's the employer who applies, on iefponline.

Portugal's employment institute, the IEFP, has reopened its subsidised internships, and this is not one to leave until December. The second round of Estágios +Talento and Estágios Iniciar opened at 9am on 12 October and closes at 6pm on 7 December, or earlier if the money runs out first, according to the IEFP's notice on the new application window. That "or earlier" is not a formality. Medida +Emprego, another IEFP hiring incentive, closes on 26 October,…

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.

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.

The second Skills for Work round adds 50,000 free places to August's 50,000, across 80-plus certified Coursera courses. Applications close on 9 December, and there is an assessment test to pass.

You don't need a Santander account, and you don't need a degree. You do need to be over 18, live in one of the 12 countries where the programme runs (Portugal is one), and sit an assessment test on the platform. Santander and Coursera have opened a second round of 50,000 free places in their Skills for Work programme, adding to the 50,000 released back in August. That's 100,000 places in total, spread across more than 80 courses in artificial…

ManpowerGroup's net employment outlook for Q4 rises to +32%, up 14 points on the previous quarter, with industry, construction and the Centro region leading hiring intentions.

Anyone job-hunting has reason to look at the year's final quarter with a bit more hope. ManpowerGroup puts Portugal's net employment outlook at +32% for October through December, up 14 points from the previous quarter and 19 above the same period last year. Of the employers surveyed, 44% plan to grow their teams, 44% plan to hold steady, and only 12% expect cuts. The survey, run across 42 countries and territories, finds manufacturing at the top of hiring…

Decree-Law 161/2026 retires the registration-anniversary date. From 2027 the IUC is assessed once a year per taxpayer, covering every vehicle you own on 1 January, and the combined total decides whether you pay in one, two or three instalments.

For nearly two decades the IUC has run on one stubborn rule: you pay it in the month your car was first registered. Own three cars bought in three different seasons and you keep three dates in your head, and the penalty for forgetting never much cared whether the fault was yours or the calendar's. That is ending. Decree-Law 161/2026 was published on 4 August and takes effect from 1 January 2027, which is worth saying plainly up front: nothing at all…

The lab runs on 26 and 27 October at Forum Braga, takes teams of one to five, and asks each company to bring one real problem. Applications close on 16 October and the whole thing is held in English.

Most digitalisation schemes ask a small company for a plan. This one asks for a problem. The SpaceX AI Lab for AI and Digital Transformation runs on 26 and 27 October at Forum Braga, and it is built like a hackathon. Each participating SME brings one concrete challenge from its own operation and spends two days building something against it, with mentoring and AI tooling on hand. A prototype, a workflow, a working solution. Not a slide deck. Applications…

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…