Employers Can Apply for State-Backed Internships From Monday, With Graduates Paid Up to 1,396 Euros a Month and 20 Million Euros on Offer

Employers in mainland Portugal can apply from Monday for the state's two main internship subsidies. The Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profissional (IEFP, the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training) opens a second application round for its +Talento and INICIAR internships at 9:00 on 12 October, and it closes at 18:00 on 7 December 2026, or earlier if the money runs out.

The budget for this round is 20 million euros: 18 million for +Talento, which is aimed at graduates, and 2 million for INICIAR, aimed at people with secondary or post-secondary qualifications. Both figures come from the application notices on the IEFP website. The first round ran from 10 February to 30 July. ECO reported on Thursday that some employers had contacted the IEFP in September because no date had been set for a second round.

Who can be an intern

Both schemes are for people registered as unemployed with the IEFP. The internship lasts six months, or 12 months for a person with a disability. It must be in the intern's own field of training, and the IEFP says it is a professional internship that cannot be used to fill or replace a job.

+Talento is for unemployed people aged up to 35 with a degree, a master's or a doctorate (levels 6, 7 and 8 of the Quadro Nacional de Qualificações, the National Qualifications Framework). The notice says it also covers young people who emigrated permanently at least 12 months ago. The gross monthly grant is 1,181.69 euros for a degree, 1,289.11 euros for a master's and 1,396.54 euros for a doctorate.

INICIAR is for unemployed people with a level 4 or 5 qualification who are aged 18 to 35, or older if they gained the qualification in the last 24 months. Some groups qualify at any age, among them refugees and beneficiaries of temporary protection. The gross monthly grant is 913.12 euros at level 4 and 966.83 euros at level 5.

In both schemes, 11 percent of the grant goes to social security and IRS (income tax) is withheld. Interns also get a meal allowance (the employer's own rate, or 6.15 euros a day where it has none) and accident insurance.

What employers get

Any private employer, profit-making or not, can apply, including sole traders; public bodies cannot host these internships. The IEFP pays 65 percent of the grant, or 80 percent if the internship is in an interior region, the intern has a disability, the profession is one where one gender is under-represented, or the employer hires the intern on a full-time permanent contract within 20 working days of the internship ending. It also covers the meal allowance and part of the insurance; the employer pays the rest, plus its own social security contributions.

Applications go through the iefponline portal. They are assessed in order of arrival in each region and decided within 30 working days. To be approved, an application needs at least 60 points on a scoring grid that rewards internships in the interior (25 points, against 10 elsewhere), employers whose past interns found work or were hired, an experienced supervisor and small firms: an employer with fewer than ten staff scores 15 points, one with more than 250 scores 5. An employer can take up to 20 interns a year.

How to find a place

Candidates do not apply to the IEFP for a grant. They register on iefponline or at their local job centre, look through the internship vacancies and pre-apply for the ones that suit them, or approach companies directly and suggest an internship.

The round opens as the labour market cools: Portugal had 41,500 fewer people in work in August than in May, although the jobless rate held at 5.7 percent. The IEFP contact centre answers questions on 215 803 555 on working days from 9:00 to 19:00.