Hunting Season in Portugal in 2026: A Practical Guide to the 78 Percent of the Mainland Inside a Hunting Zone, the Thursday and Sunday Rule, the 250-Metre Ring Around Your House, and the Right to Ban Shooting on Your Own Land

Portugal's 2026-2027 hunting season opened on the third Sunday of August, which this year fell on 16 August, and it runs until 31 May 2027. If you own rural land here, walk in the countryside, cycle on gravel tracks or simply live outside a town, this is the statute that decides who may carry a loaded shotgun across the field behind your house, on which days, and how close to your kitchen window.

Most foreign residents assume hunting in Portugal happens somewhere else, on estates, behind gates. The numbers say otherwise. According to the Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas (Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests, ICNF) and its own Relatório de Atividade Cinegética, mainland Portugal contains 5,302 hunting zones covering 6,973,660 hectares. Mainland Portugal is about 8.91 million hectares in total. Roughly 78 percent of the country you can drive across is inside a licensed hunting zone.

That is the single fact this guide exists to convey. The default assumption should be that your land is in one, not that it is not.

The rules come from two instruments: Lei n.º 173/99, de 21 de setembro, the Lei de Bases Gerais da Caça (General Hunting Framework Law), and Decreto-Lei n.º 202/2004, de 18 de agosto, its regulation, which has been amended repeatedly and is quoted here in its consolidated form. Which species may be shot, when, and how many per day comes from a separate order, currently Portaria n.º 67/2024, which fixes the calendar for three seasons running to 2026-2027.

The four kinds of hunting zone, and what each means for access

Article 9 of Decreto-Lei n.º 202/2004 creates four categories. Article 10 sets who may enter each.

Everything outside those zones is terreno cinegético não ordenado, unmanaged hunting ground, where hunting is still lawful but on tighter national defaults.

The priority order for ZCN and ZCM, under Article 15, is worth knowing if you own land inside one: first in line are the owners and holders of use and enjoyment rights over land inside the zone, alongside hunters who sit on the managing body. Then residents of the municipality, then non-residents, then everyone else. Owning the field does not stop the hunt, but it does put you at the front of the queue for a day on it.

Who is allowed to hunt at all

Article 63 requires four things at once, and Article 65 requires you to carry the proof:

• the carta de caçador (hunter's certificate), unless legally exempt;
• a valid licença de caça (hunting licence) for the season;
• a civil liability insurance policy, minimum cover 100,000 euros under Article 76;
• where a firearm is used, the licença de uso e porte de arma of the class the law allows for hunting.

Plus, on the person: the dogs' licences, the firearm's livrete de manifesto and a loan declaration if the gun is not theirs, the insurance premium receipt, identity document, written parental authorisation if a minor, the national CITES registration if a bird of prey is being flown, and proof of authorisation if hunting in a ZCN or ZCM.

The carta de caçador

Under Article 66, it can only be issued to someone over 16, free of any psychological disorder or organic or physiological impairment that would make hunting dangerous, not subject to a legal or judicial ban on hunting, and who has passed the examination. The application (Article 67) must be accompanied by a medical certificate and a criminal record certificate. The exam is a written theory paper whose structure, duration and syllabus are set by ministerial order; ICNF publishes a question bank of around 506 questions on its website, which it credits with the steady rise in pass rates.

It is not a hard exam. ICNF's own figures put the average national pass rate at 85 percent in 2022, up from 83 percent in the two preceding years, with Castelo Branco at 95 percent and Setúbal lowest at 77 percent.

Validity, under Article 71: the carta runs until the holder turns 60, and in five-year periods after that. Renewal must be requested in the twelve months before expiry, with an exceptional renewal window of five years after the expiry date, after which it lapses entirely and you sit the exam again.

Holders of an equivalent certificate from another EU member state can apply to ICNF for a Portuguese carta by equivalence under Article 70. For foreign residents the equivalence is conditioned on reciprocity, and you must produce proof of having passed a competence exam in the issuing state.

What it costs

ICNF's published fee table for the year running from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2026 (the most recent it has posted; the 2026-2027 figures will be indexed upward again):

A non-resident licence (Article 75) requires an identity document, proof of civil liability insurance valid for Portuguese territory and for the licence period, proof of residence abroad, and a document equivalent to the carta de caçador or a licence proving entitlement to hunt in the country of nationality or residence.

Where hunting is forbidden, and how far the buffer runs

This is the section to read if you never intend to hold a gun. Article 53 lists the áreas de protecção, protection areas, where the act of hunting is prohibited. The distances are not decorative; they are the reason a legal hunt can still end up two hundred metres from your washing line.

• 500 metres around bathing beaches, schools, hospitals, prisons and juvenile institutions, scientific establishments, care homes, military and security force installations, childcare establishments, radio stations, lighthouses, sea and river ports, airports, tourist installations, campsites, sports grounds, and industrial and animal-rearing installations.
• 250 metres around povoados, settlements. Article 2 defines a settlement as a set of contiguous or nearby buildings, no more than 50 metres apart, with ten or more dwellings.
• 100 metres along national roads, principal and complementary routes, motorways, regional roads in the autonomous regions, and railway lines.
• 100 metres around apiaries and dovecotes.
• Aerodromes, cemeteries, regional roads and municipal roads.
• Land under flower and vegetable crops from sowing or planting until the end of harvest, and nursery ground.
• Fruit crops other than olive groves, from bud burst until the end of harvest.
• Olive groves, and orchards and vineyards with drip or micro-sprinkler irrigation.
• Land under arable crops and under forest sowings or plantings less than 80 cm in average height.
• Stock enclosures, and land in military or security zones and on school, hospital, prison, juvenile and care-home sites beyond the 500-metre band, and land where research or experimentation is under way.

Read paragraph 2 of Article 53 carefully, because it is where people get caught out. For stock enclosures, apiaries and dovecotes, military and institutional land beyond the band, olive groves and irrigated orchards and vineyards, and arable and young forest plantings, the prohibition is only effective if the land is signposted in the form set by ministerial order. An unsignposted olive grove is not, in enforcement terms, protected. If you own one, the sign is the protection.

The 250-metre ring around your house

Separately from the protection areas, Article 56 creates terrenos de caça condicionada, conditioned hunting ground:

It is prohibited to hunt without the consent of the person entitled in yards, parks or gardens attached to dwelling houses, as well as in any land surrounding them within a band of 250 m, and also in walled land.

"Walled land" is defined in Article 2 as land enclosed around its entire perimeter by a wall at least 1.5 metres high. Note the difference from the protection areas: this is not an absolute ban, it is a consent requirement. The householder can say yes. If nobody has asked you, the answer is no.

Article 4 adds two seasonal bans that matter in a country that burns: no hunting on burned ground or within 250 metres of it while a fire lasts and for the 30 days after, and no hunting on land cut off by floods or within 250 metres of the flood line, while the flooding lasts and for 30 days after. Given how much of the Centro and Norte has burned this summer, that second-order effect will move hunting pressure onto unburned ground for weeks.

When hunting is allowed

A hunting day, under Article 2, runs in principle from sunrise to sunset. Article 89 fixes which days those are.

On managed ground (ZCN, ZCM, ZCA): for sedentary small game, Thursdays, Sundays, obligatory national holidays, and one further day of the zone's own choosing set out in its management plan. For migratory small game, the same. In ZCT, the days come from the zone's management plan, and for migratory species that means obligatory national holidays plus three weekdays named in the plan. Big game follows the zone's plan.

On unmanaged ground, the days are Thursdays, Sundays and obligatory national holidays, with two exceptions: driven hunts for fox and Egyptian mongoose and wild boar hunting in January and February may also run on Saturdays; and falconry, coursing for fox, and bow or crossbow hunting run on Wednesdays and on Saturdays that are not obligatory national holidays.

Article 89(4) bans hunting outright on days when national elections or referendums are held, and, in the relevant municipalities, on local election or referendum days.

One further timing rule that catches walkers by surprise: under Article 88(2), the hunting day for pigeons, thrushes and spotted starling ends at 16:00, not at sunset, except at designated passage sites named in an ICNF public notice.

The 2026-2027 calendar

From the annexe to Portaria n.º 67/2024, as amended. "Managed" is terreno ordenado, meaning inside a ZCN, ZCM, ZCA or ZCT; "unmanaged" is terreno não ordenado. Where the annexe fixes no period for unmanaged ground, no season exists there for that species, and it may be hunted only inside a zone. "Per plan" means the daily bag comes from the zone's own annual exploitation plan or management plan rather than from the order.

Three notes on the list. Hare hunted by coursing or falconry runs on a different clock, from 1 September to 28 February. The big-game row runs the full year on paper, but what actually governs it is the zone's plan, plus Articles 89 and 105 for driven hunts on unmanaged ground, which is why wild boar may also be hunted on Saturdays in January and February. And the annexe's own footnote records that for ZCM the sedentary-species limits come from the annual exploitation plan, and for ZCA and ZCT from the hunting management and exploitation plan.

Two further conditions sit outside the table. Rock pigeon may only be hunted in the municipalities named in a 2001 order. And the turtle dove, rola-comum, remains closed by default: Article 1(2) of the portaria allows it in 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 only if ICNF's board resolves that the population trend permits it, under an adaptive management quota published on ICNF's own website. Assume it is closed unless ICNF has said otherwise.

None of this decides how much game is actually shot where you live. That comes from the zone's plan, which is also why wild boar walking into Setúbal's streets is a management problem rather than a season problem.

If you own the land: two different escape routes

This is the part that is almost never explained in English, and the two routes are not interchangeable.

Route one: exclusion from the zone

For a ZCA or ZCT, a concession, the applicant needs written agreements from those holding use and enjoyment rights over the land, unless the applicant owns it. Article 37 covers the case where an owner cannot be identified or located: the file proceeds with a declaration from the junta de freguesia, and the owner who was never asked may, at any time during the concession, ask the minister to have their land excluded.

For a ZCM, the municipal type, your land can be swept in without your signature. Article 28 lets owners, usufructuaries and rural tenants whose lease includes hunting management request exclusion, but only where both conditions hold: they hold legal use and enjoyment rights that include hunting management, and they have not concluded any agreement with the managing entity. Article 167 puts a hard clock on it. The request may be made within one year of the publication of the despacho creating or renewing the hunting zone.

That one-year window is the trap. ZCM concessions are renewed periodically, and each renewal reopens the window; miss it and you wait for the next one. The despachos are published on ICNF's portal, which ran 843 of them in a single year, 321 of which were renewals. Nobody is going to write to you about it.

Exclusion takes effect only on the date the despacho redefining the zone's boundaries enters into force, not on the date you asked.

Route two: the direito à não caça

Chapter V of the decree-law creates a standalone right. Article 57 defines the direito à não caça, the right to no hunting, as the power of owners, usufructuaries and, where the lease includes hunting management, tenants, to request that hunting be prohibited on their land, which then becomes a designated no-hunting area.

There is a qualifying condition that catches people: the applicant may not hold a carta de caçador. For a company, the corporate object may not include the exploitation of hunting resources and no member of its governing bodies may hold a carta.

The application goes to ICNF and must identify the applicant, identify the rural properties with a digital plan of the land, state the applicant's rights over them, and include a declaration that no agreement integrating the property into a hunting zone applies to it. The right is granted for a minimum of six years and a maximum of twelve, renewing automatically for equal periods (Article 59), and is confirmed by ministerial despacho published on ICNF's website.

Two obligations come with it. Under Article 62, the holder must put up the signage and keep it in good condition, and must remove it within 30 days if the right lapses, failing which ICNF removes it and bills them. And under Article 119, in a no-hunting area liability for damage caused by game species, on neighbouring land and on your own, falls on the holder of the right. If you exclude the hunters and the boar then eat your neighbour's vines, that is your problem, and any culling must be requested by you and paid for by you.

The right also extinguishes automatically if the holder acquires a carta de caçador, or if hunting takes place on the land with the holder's consent.

What the fines are

Article 123 divides hunting offences into crimes, which are defined in Lei n.º 173/99, and contraordenações, administrative offences, which are listed with their bands in Article 137 of the decree-law. The relevant bands for the situations most readers will encounter:

For legal persons the ceiling on the lower bands rises to 22,400 euros. Attempt and negligence are both punishable. Accessory sanctions under Article 138 can be added for the more serious offences, and enforcement officers must seize the carta de caçador on the spot whenever they witness a punishable act, along with any object used in the offence.

Voluntary payment is available under Article 136, by reference to Article 36 of Lei n.º 173/99. Of every fine collected, 10 percent goes to the body that wrote the ticket, 20 percent to the body that runs the file, 10 percent to the body that imposes it and 60 percent to the State.

A shrinking, ageing population of hunters

Whatever your view of the activity, the demographic direction is not in doubt. ICNF's figures record 235,269 holders of a carta de caçador in 2020, 230,172 in 2021, 225,397 in 2022 and 219,459 in the 2022/23 season. Licences actually taken out that season came to 111,551, roughly half of all certificate holders.

The age profile is the striking part. Hunters aged 51 to 70 make up about 51 percent of the total. There are 59,958 hunters aged 61 to 70 and 14,405 aged over 80, against 999 under 20 and 6,242 aged 21 to 30. By district, Lisboa has the most certificate holders at 28,964, then Santarém at 17,374 and Braga at 16,798.

New entrants are younger than the base: 48 percent of the 2,692 people who sat the exam in 2022 were 30 or under, and under-20s outnumbered the over-50s among candidates by nearly two to one. But 2,692 entrants a year does not replace a base falling by about 6,000 a year.

What This Means for You

If you walk, run or cycle in the Portuguese countryside. Learn the two days. Thursdays and Sundays, plus obligatory national holidays, are when small-game hunting is lawful almost everywhere; managed zones add one further day of their own choosing that you cannot know from the outside. Sunrise to sunset. Wear something bright between October and February. And look for the metal signs on posts and trees at track entrances reading Zona de Caça Associativa, Municipal or Turística with a process number: that is not decoration, it is the legally required marking of the ground you are walking onto.

If you own rural land. Find out which zone you are in before you do anything else, by checking ICNF's published despachos for your concelho. If you are inside a ZCM and want out, you have one year from the publication of the creation or renewal despacho, and only if you have never signed anything with the managing entity. If you are inside a ZCA or ZCT and were never asked to sign, you may request exclusion at any time. If you want a permanent ban rather than a boundary change, the direito à não caça is the instrument, it lasts six to twelve years and renews itself, and it comes with the sting that crop and neighbour damage from game becomes your liability. Also: if you own an olive grove, an irrigated orchard or vineyard, an apiary or a stock enclosure, put up the sign. Without it, the statutory protection does not bite.

If you live in a house in the country. The 250-metre ring under Article 56 is a consent rule, not an absolute ban. Nobody may hunt within 250 metres of a dwelling house and its yard, park or garden, or inside walled land, without the entitled person's consent. If a hunting party is working ground closer than that and you have not given permission, the offence is theirs, and it sits in the 500 to 3,700 euro band as hunting in a place where it is not permitted.

If you want to hunt here. Budget around 42 euros for the exam, 13 euros for the certificate and 78 euros for a national licence, plus civil liability cover of at least 100,000 euros and, if you are using a firearm, the separate weapons licence under the arms law, which is a heavier process than any of the above. If you already hold a hunting certificate from another EU state, apply for equivalence rather than sitting the Portuguese exam, subject to reciprocity. If you are visiting rather than resident, take the non-resident licence, 78.14 euros for 30 days or 151.33 for the season, and bring proof of your home entitlement.

Related reading

Two other Portuguese regimes govern what you may do on and around rural land, and both catch newcomers out for the same reason: they are national rules that look like local custom. Our guide to cutting down a tree on your own land covers the cork oak and holm oak authorisation and the olive and holly bans. Our guide to recreational sea fishing covers the DGRM licence and the daily limits, and follows the same licence-plus-limits-plus-fines structure as this one. If you are touring rather than settling, the rules on where a motorhome may legally stand overnight overlap heavily with the protected-area map used here.

On the enforcement side, firearms held for hunting are licensed under the arms law and can be seized in unrelated proceedings, as happened when the GNR removed 30 firearms and 2,803 rounds from a Paredes home. And hunting seasons can be closed by public health order without warning, as the Azores did when they halted pigeon hunting over a Newcastle disease outbreak.

This guide describes the national regime for mainland Portugal as it stands on 25 August 2026, drawn from the consolidated text of Decreto-Lei n.º 202/2004, Portaria n.º 67/2024 as amended, and ICNF's published fee tables and hunting activity reports. Madeira and the Azores administer their own hunting services and their calendars and fees differ. Individual hunting zones may impose stricter conditions than the national default, and never looser ones.