Hotels and Restaurants Drove Portuguese Insolvencies Up 36 Percent to August, While New Company Registrations Fell for the Year
Iberinform counts declared insolvencies up 5.1 percent nationally in the first eight months, with hospitality at 36.2 percent, and 36,047 new companies created, 1.7 percent fewer than a year ago.
Portuguese hotels and restaurants are failing at a faster rate than any other sector, according to figures released on Thursday by Iberinform, the business information arm of the Crédito y Caución group. Declared insolvencies in hospitality rose 36.2 percent in the first eight months of the year against the same period of 2025, well ahead of the next two sectors on the list, other services at 15 percent and construction and public works at 13 percent.
The national total rose 5.1 percent, which in absolute terms means 55 more insolvent companies than in the same stretch of last year. The two routes into insolvency moved at different speeds. Cases brought by third parties, that is by creditors, were up 7.1 percent. Cases filed by the companies themselves rose 3.1 percent, to 619.
Where the Failures Are
Lisbon holds the largest number of declared insolvencies at 271, followed by Porto at 242 and Braga at 154. Measured by growth rather than volume the picture shifts to the districts around them: Aveiro is up 8.1 percent, Setúbal 6.4 percent, Faro 4 percent and Leiria 3.5 percent.
August itself was calmer than the year-to-date figure suggests. The month produced 96 declared insolvencies, one more than August 2025, a rise of 1.1 percent. The cumulative increase is therefore carried by the earlier months rather than by a late-summer deterioration.
Fewer Companies Being Born
The other half of the release runs the opposite way. Between January and August, 36,047 companies were created in Portugal, down 1.7 percent year on year. August alone produced 3,151 new companies, 303 fewer than in August 2025 and a fall of 8.8 percent. Iberinform describes the year-to-date trajectory as below what was seen in previous years.
Within company formation the sector pattern does not simply mirror the insolvency pattern. The largest increases are in extractive industry, up 20 percent, and construction and public works, up 13 percent, the latter a sector that also appears near the top of the insolvency table. The sharpest falls are in electricity, gas and water, down 28 percent, agriculture, hunting and fishing, down 26 percent, and telecommunications, down 23 percent.
Lisbon leads company creation too, with 11,127 registrations, ahead of Porto at 6,447 and Setúbal at 2,904. The strongest growth is in Angra do Heroísmo, up 27 percent, followed by Santarém at 6.1 percent, Vila Real at 5.8 percent and Coimbra at 4.7 percent. The largest contractions are in Madeira, down 21 percent, Ponta Delgada, down 18 percent, Évora, down 16 percent, and Faro, down 8.8 percent. That Faro appears on both lists, with insolvencies rising 4 percent and new registrations falling 8.8 percent, is the sharpest single reading in the release for a district whose economy leans hard on tourism.
The hospitality number is the one that will travel furthest. Portugal's restaurants and hotels have spent the year reporting a squeeze that record visitor numbers have not relieved, with wage costs, rents and energy bills rising faster than what operators can charge. Insolvency declarations lag the trouble that causes them by months, so a 36.2 percent rise through August reflects businesses that ran out of room some time earlier.
The figures also sit against a labour market moving the other way. Portugal added jobs faster than any other EU country last quarter, and the count of people in work reached 5.49 million, a record. Collective redundancy procedures, meanwhile, reached 375 by July, the most since the pandemic. Our guide to personal insolvency in Portugal covers what happens when the debts follow the business owner home.
