About 121,000 Vehicles Are on Portugal's Roads Without Insurance, the Sector Regulator Counts

Roughly 121,000 vehicles are circulating on Portugal's roads without the mandatory third-party insurance every driver is legally required to carry, according to a new profiling study from the sector regulator, the Autoridade de Supervisão de Seguros e Fundos de Pensões (ASF, the Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority). The regulator calls the level "um risco significativo" (a significant risk) for accident victims and for the wider system, and stresses that driving uninsured "is not a residual phenomenon."

The study, titled "Perfil do Condutor Sem Seguro" (Profile of the Uninsured Driver), draws on Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP) traffic-enforcement records from 2023 to 2026. It puts the share of checked vehicles found without valid cover at 1.47 percent in early 2026, up from 1.33 percent across 2025 and 0.93 percent in 2024 — a clear upward drift over three years.

Who drives without cover

The regulator's profile of the typical uninsured driver is unusually specific: Portuguese men aged between 20 and 40 account for the bulk of cases. In the accident data, men aged 20 to 39 were the at-fault driver in 1,436 incidents involving an uninsured vehicle, against 311 for women. Geographically, the problem clusters in and around the two big metropolitan areas — Lisbon led with 423 cases, followed by Sintra (262), Porto (204) and Cascais (155).

A rising bill for the guarantee fund

When an uninsured or unidentified vehicle causes injury or damage, the victim is not left empty-handed: the Fundo de Garantia Automóvel (FGA, the Motor Guarantee Fund), housed within the ASF, steps in to pay compensation and then pursues the responsible driver to recover the money. That safety net is being leaned on harder. The FGA logged 2,709 new claims by early July 2026, a 15 percent jump on the same point last year, after a 9 percent rise across 2025. This continues the trend flagged when uninsured driving first began pressuring the fund earlier this year.

What the law says

Motor third-party liability cover (seguro de responsabilidade civil automóvel) is compulsory for every vehicle on a public road in Portugal, and the penalties for going without are steep. Driving an uninsured vehicle carries a fine (coima) of €500 to €2,500, the loss of two points on the driving licence and an accessory ban from driving of between one month and one year. Authorities can also seize the vehicle. If an uninsured driver causes an accident, the FGA settles with the victims and then seeks to recover the full amount from the person responsible — a bill that can dwarf years of skipped premiums.

What this means for expats

• Check your policy is active, not just signed. Cover must be valid and the premium paid; a lapsed direct debit can leave you technically uninsured. Portugal scrapped the windscreen insurance sticker years ago, so enforcement now runs off a national database that the PSP and GNR can query on the spot.
• Newly imported or foreign-plate cars are a common gap. A car you bring into Portugal must be insured under a Portuguese policy once it is registered here; relying on an old foreign policy after matriculation is a frequent, and costly, mistake.
• Being hit by an uninsured driver is not a dead end. If you are the victim, the FGA is the body that pays out — keep the accident report (Declaração Amigável or police record) and your own documentation.
• The full mechanics are worth knowing. Our companion guide to car insurance in Portugal walks through the mandatory cover, the optional extras and exactly what happens if a policy lapses.

The ASF frames the findings as a call to tighten enforcement and awareness rather than an emergency, but the direction of travel is unmistakable: a small, rising fraction of drivers is shifting a growing share of the cost of accidents onto everyone else.