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The Portugal Brief
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About The Portugal Brief

Portugal, explained in English

The Portugal Brief is a free, independent publication for English speakers who live in Portugal or are planning to move here. Every morning we explain the news that affects your daily life, and our guides walk you through everything from getting a NIF to filing your IRS.

Publishing since 2024 · 200+ guides to living in Portugal · Official sources listed on every guide · Free to read

What we publish

The daily brief. Every morning, the Portuguese news that matters if you live here: new laws, deadlines, strikes, prices, and public services, explained in plain English.

Weekly city briefs. Braga on Fridays, Lisboa on Saturdays, and Porto on Sundays, at 08:00. Local news, what is on, and a weekend pick.

Guides to living in Portugal. More than 200 guides on visas and residence, tax, healthcare, housing, driving, schools, and everyday life. Browse the guides

How we work

News. Our news comes from public, authoritative sources: official government communications, the Lusa news agency, and established national outlets such as RTP, Observador, and Diário de Notícias. We translate and summarise it in English, and we name or link the source so you can check it.

Guides. Every guide is written from official Portuguese and EU sources, lists those sources at the end, and shows the date it was last verified. An automated check refuses to publish a guide whose sources are not on our approved list. In autumn 2026 we rebuilt and re-verified our whole guide library to this standard, and when the rules change, we update the guide.

Human review and AI. We use AI tools for translation, research, drafting, and editing. Our editor spot-checks a selection of articles and guides, but cannot review every one before it is published, which is why we date our content, list our sources, and act quickly on corrections. Read more in our Editorial Standards.

Corrections. If we get something wrong, we fix it, and for significant errors we say so at the foot of the page. Readers and specialists who write in help us catch mistakes, and we thank them for it. Email [email protected].

Independence. Advertising and sponsored articles are always labelled. Advertisers do not choose or review what we write. Where a link earns us a commission, it is labelled "Affiliate link".

Who we are

The Portugal Brief is published by Thrifty Explorations LLC, an independent, family-run publisher founded in 2023 by Virginia Thrift, its Founder & President, after her family moved from the United States to Portugal. Virginia is also Editor in Chief of The Portugal Brief, which we started in 2024 because English-language coverage of our new country deserved more than sunshine and "top 10 beaches" lists.

We are not gurus. We are immigrants who had to work it out ourselves, and we build the resources we wished we had had, and still use every day.

Thrifty Explorations also publishes The Journal and Portuguese language-learning books for kids. Read more about Thrifty Explorations

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