GNR Records 1,657 Crimes in Schools So Far in 2026 and Links 78 to Bullying, as It Urges Parents to Keep the Evidence and Report

The GNR (Guarda Nacional Republicana, the national guard that polices most of Portugal outside the big cities) has recorded 1,657 crimes in the school environment in its area so far in 2026. It released the figure on 20 October, the World Day Against Bullying, in a statement on its website.

Of those crimes, the GNR linked 78 to bullying: 72 to bullying in person and six to cyberbullying. Lusa's wire story rounded this to "about 80". The districts with the most bullying cases were Setúbal (10), Porto (9), Castelo Branco (8), Lisbon (8) and Santarém (7). The six cyberbullying cases were in Braga (2), Setúbal (2), Porto (1) and Santarém (1).

Why the bullying count is small

Bullying is not a crime in its own right under Portuguese criminal law, the GNR points out. Its 78 cases are general crimes recorded at schools that officers judged, from how they were committed, to be bullying. The offences most often involved are assault (ofensas à integridade física) and insult (injúrias), followed by threats and coercion. The GNR did not break down the full 1,657 by crime type.

The figures are not directly comparable with last year's. In its October 2025 statement the GNR counted 119 bullying cases (106 in person, 13 online), but for the 2024/2025 school year rather than the calendar year.

The GNR also ran 1,845 bullying awareness sessions in the 2025/2026 school year, reaching 67,117 children and young people, mostly in schools. It describes this as a rise of more than 23 percent. Set against the provisional 2024/2025 figures it published a year ago (1,537 sessions, 55,108 children), the rise works out at about 20 percent in sessions and 22 percent in children by our arithmetic, so the earlier numbers may have been revised.

The GNR covers only part of the country. In the cities, school policing falls to the PSP (Polícia de Segurança Pública, the urban police), whose Escola Segura (Safe School) report for 2025/2026 we covered last month. Euronews reported that it counted 155 bullying and 22 cyberbullying cases in that school year.

What to do if your child is bullied

The Ministry of Education's Escola Sem Bullying (School Without Bullying) page for parents, in Portuguese, and the GNR's statement give broadly the same advice:

• Stay calm, take threats seriously and keep a record of each incident: who, what, when and where, and who saw it.
• Keep the evidence. For cyberbullying, save messages and screenshots, and tell your child not to reply to the person targeting them.
• Report it to the school, which is responsible for the space where it happened. Teachers, staff and the school psychologist are the first adults pupils are told to go to.
• Go to the police if needed. The GNR asks parents to inform it straight away of any suspected bullying, cyberbullying or threats. In an emergency, call 112.
• For cyberbullying, block and report the person on the platform and check your child's privacy settings.

The ministry's page also points pupils to APAV (Associação Portuguesa de Apoio à Vítima, the victim support charity) on the free number 116 006. The GNR lists 808 24 24 24, the SNS (national health service) helpline, for anyone who needs to talk.

The GNR also advises parents to watch for signs that often go unspoken: mood changes, anxiety, sleep problems, repeated headaches or stomach aches, and unexplained bruises.