General Daily Briefing — Monday, 29 June 2026
Getting Vaccinated in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the Programa Nacional de Vacinação, the Free SNS Vaccines, the Boletim de Vacinas, Catch-Up Shots for New Residents and the Annual Flu and COVID Campaigns
Portugal runs one of the world's most comprehensive free immunisation programmes through the SNS. Here is how the Programa Nacional de Vacinação works, how new residents and their children plug into it, where the digital boletim de vacinas…
The Atestado Médico de Incapacidade Multiusos in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the 60% Threshold, the Junta Médica Route, the ULS Application and the IRS, ISV, IUC and Parking-Card Benefits It Unlocks
The Atestado Médico de Incapacidade Multiusos is the single document that unlocks Portugal's disability benefits — from reduced IRS to vehicle-tax exemptions and the parking card. This 2026 guide explains the 60% threshold, the junta médica…
📋 In This Edition
- Portugal Scraps Loan-Processing Fees on Pre-2021 Mortgages and Makes Tied Products Optional From 28 June
- Portugal's New-Lease Rents Jump 9.1% in Early 2026, With Lisbon at €17.42 a Square Metre
- Foreign Workers Now Make Up Nearly One in Five Segurança Social Contributors as Portuguese Firms Lean Harder on Immigrant Labour
- Lisbon Targets a 2027 River-Ferry Return to Parque das Nações, While Transtejo Pegs the Restart No Earlier Than 2028
Portugal Scraps Loan-Processing Fees on Pre-2021 Mortgages and Makes Tied Products Optional From 28 June
A piece of Portuguese consumer-credit law that has been switching on in stages since the start of the decade reached its final phase on 28 June 2026. From that date, banks can no longer charge the monthly comissão de processamento (loan-instalment processing fee) on credit contracts signed up to 31 December 2020 — the last tranche of borrowers still paying it. Lenders are also barred from making a credit renegotiation conditional on buying insurance or other tied products, and must show customers exactly what each spread discount is worth. For households carrying older mortgages it is a small but recurring saving; for anyone renegotiating in a year of shifting Euribor, it strips out a familiar piece of arm-twisting.
Portugal's New-Lease Rents Jump 9.1% in Early 2026, With Lisbon at €17.42 a Square Metre
The cost of signing a new lease in Portugal climbed again at the start of 2026. The median rent on contracts signed between January and March reached €9.46 per square metre, up 9.1% on a year earlier, according to figures released on 26 June by the statistics office INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Statistics Portugal) — and the pace is quickening, after a 7.9% annual rise the previous quarter. The data cover 39,395 new family-housing contracts, the slice of the market that matters most to new arrivals, who almost always sign new leases. Lisbon remained the most expensive market at €17.42 per square metre.
Foreign Workers Now Make Up Nearly One in Five Segurança Social Contributors as Portuguese Firms Lean Harder on Immigrant Labour
Portugal's economy is leaning on foreign labour to a degree without recent precedent. In 2025 the number of foreign workers paying into Segurança Social (Social Security) passed one million for the first time, reaching 1,115,541 contributors, up from 1,048,174 a year earlier — close to a fifth of everyone in the system. The trajectory is what stands out: foreign nationals made up just 5.1% of contributors in 2015, a share that climbed to 19.7% by 2025, a near-quadrupling in a decade. Public broadcaster RTP reports the reliance is far heavier in particular industries, with foreign workers making up about half the agricultural workforce and around 40% of hotel and restaurant staff.
Lisbon Targets a 2027 River-Ferry Return to Parque das Nações, While Transtejo Pegs the Restart No Earlier Than 2028
Lisbon's eastern riverfront could get its boats back. The city councillor for projects and public-space works, Joana Baptista, said this week that ferries will once again call at Parque das Nações from 2027, restoring a river stop that last operated during the 1998 World Exposition (Expo'98), with services linking the area to Cais do Sodré and Terreiro do Paço. The route would be run by Transtejo Soflusa (TTSS), the state company that operates the cross-Tagus ferries. The operator is more cautious than city hall, however: its president has put any restart no earlier than 2028, citing the dredging and demand studies still to be done.
