Monthly Transport Passes in Portugal 2026 — Navegante for Lisbon, Andante for Porto, MOVE-C for Coimbra, Passe Algarve, the €40 Cap, and How Expats Get the Card

Public transport in Portugal is one of the parts of expat life where the State has done a quietly aggressive job over the past seven years. The €40 metropolitan monthly cap and the €30 municipal counterpart, introduced under the PART (Programa de Apoio à Redução do Tarifário) reform in 2019, have not moved upwards a single cent in seven consecutive years — not even in 2026, with the operating-cost pressure on Carris, Metropolitano de Lisboa and STCP at the highest level since the reform began. For an expat household, that pricing logic is an unusually clean offer: load one card every month, and the public-transport cost line in your budget is fixed.

The system has different brand names depending on which Área Metropolitana or região you live in — Navegante in Lisbon, Andante in Porto, MOVE-C in Coimbra, Passe Algarve on the VAMUS network — but the price architecture and the eligibility rules are nearly identical. This guide walks through how each works, what it costs in 2026, who is entitled to free or reduced passes, and where you actually go to get the card and load it.

Lisbon: the Navegante family

The Lisbon metropolitan area — AML — covers 18 municipalities running from Mafra in the north to Setúbal in the south, including the city of Lisbon itself. The Navegante metropolitan pass costs €40 per calendar month and is valid on every regular public-transport operator in those 18 municipalities. That includes Metropolitano de Lisboa (the four metro lines plus the new Linha Circular), Carris (buses, trams and elevadores), CP urban trains (the Sintra, Cascais, Sado and Azambuja lines), Fertagus on the south-bank rail axis, MTS (the Almada-Cacilhas-Cova da Piedade light rail), and the Transtejo and Soflusa river ferries to the south bank. It is a single ticket on every operator under the Carris Metropolitana banner.

The Navegante municipal pass costs €30 per month and is valid only inside one selected municipality — the city of Lisbon for most expats, but you can pick any AML municipality where you live. It is the option for residents who do not commute outside their municipality, or whose journeys stay short enough that the metropolitan pass adds no value.

A reduced Navegante exists for under-23s, over-65s and beneficiaries of social tariffs — the price drops to €20/month for the metropolitan version and €15/month for the municipal version, with documentary proof.

Lisbon city council operates a separate scheme on top of those national tariffs: free public transport for residents of the city aged up to 23 and aged 65 and over, regardless of student status. That scheme runs through the same Navegante card and is loaded as a free monthly subscription. Residents who qualify still need to load the pass each month at the machine or app.

Porto: the Andante family

The Porto metropolitan area — AMP — works on the same architecture, with prices held at exactly the same levels as Lisbon. Andante Metropolitano costs €40 per calendar month and is valid on every operator in the AMP — STCP buses, Metro do Porto's six lines (now seven, with the MetroBus hydrogen BRT in service since April), CP's urban service to Aveiro and to Caíde-Marco-Penafiel, and the regional bus operators integrated into the Andante system. It covers all five tariff zones across the AMP.

Andante 3Z (three-zone) and the municipal pass each cost €30/month and are aimed at users whose journeys stay within a tighter ring. The municipal pass is valid for all zones inside a single municipality. The choice between the two depends on the geometry of your daily commute — cross-municipal but compact, or single-municipality but long.

The reduced Andante prices for under-23s, over-65s and social-tariff holders match the Lisbon structure: €20/month metropolitan, €15/month municipal.

The Andante card is the physical credential you load at any STCP customer-service desk, any Metro do Porto station ticket office, or directly through the Andante app on a smartphone.

Sub-23+: the free pass for under-23s loaded onto the card

The Sub-23+ scheme makes urban public transport free for residents up to 23 (inclusive) who are enrolled at a Portuguese educational establishment under the sub23+TP modality, and for under-23 residents of the city of Lisbon regardless of student status under the city's own programme. The free credit is loaded onto the same Navegante or Andante card every month — the pass is not automatically renewed, so eligible users have to top up the card each month at a station machine, the operator app, or a customer-service desk.

For CP's regional network outside the AML and AMP, the Sub-23+ scheme also covers urban services in Coimbra and selected regional and inter-regional services. The scheme runs alongside the older Sub-18 free programme, which uses the same architecture for under-18s.

Coimbra: the new MOVE-C intermodal pass

Coimbra moved to its own integrated intermodal pass, MOVE-C, in January 2026. The price structure is the same logic as the AML and AMP: €30 for a single municipality, €35 for two municipalities, and €40 for the full intermunicipal pass covering the 19 municipalities of the Região de Coimbra under the SIT (Sistema Intermunicipal de Transportes) framework. The pass is loaded at SMTUC desks in Coimbra, at Metro Mondego sales points in Lousã and Miranda do Corvo, and at the regional CP and bus operator desks integrated into the SIT.

The MOVE-C launch closed the last major regional gap in Portugal's intermodal-pass coverage. Together with the AML, AMP, and the Algarve scheme below, it means that any expat resident in mainland Portugal living in or near a metropolitan area or major city can use a single monthly card to cover their daily transport.

Algarve: the VAMUS Passe Algarve

The Algarve runs its own intermunicipal pass on the VAMUS network — the public bus operator that succeeded EVA in 2022 and now covers the regular interurban routes across the 16 Algarve municipalities. The Passe Algarve costs €40 per month and is valid on every regular VAMUS line across the region, with no distance or transfer limit. The AeroBus airport service is excluded. The card is sold and loaded at VAMUS terminals across the Algarve and through the VAMUS Algarve app.

For tourists, VAMUS also runs a turístico version that covers shorter periods and is sold at AMAL points across the region. That version is not the residents' monthly pass and is priced separately.

How an expat actually gets the card

Each system uses a contactless smart card — the Navegante card in the AML, the Andante card in the AMP, the MOVE-C card in Coimbra, the VAMUS card in the Algarve. The card itself costs between €6 and €12 depending on the system and is valid for several years. To buy one, a resident expat needs:

• Identification: the Cartão de Cidadão for Portuguese and EU residents, or a passport plus residence card (Título de Residência) for non-EU residents
• NIF: the Portuguese tax-identification number, used to associate the card with a contributing taxpayer for the residential rates
• Photograph: the personalised version of each card carries the user's photograph; the card cannot be transferred between users
• Address proof: where applicable, especially for residents claiming the city-of-Lisbon free programme or Coimbra's municipal-only tariff

The customer-service desks where the cards are issued are at every metro station in Lisbon and Porto, at the major Carris and STCP customer-service points, at all CP urban stations, and at the VAMUS bus terminals in the Algarve. Most counters issue the card on the spot once the documentation is presented.

What the freeze actually buys you

The €40 metropolitan ceiling has held for seven years. Inflation across that period has cumulatively raised the consumer-price index by roughly 25%, but the State has chosen to compress the public-transport tariff rather than let it follow consumer prices. The political logic is simple — almost 90% of journeys in the AML are made on the Navegante pass, the system is the largest single touchpoint between the State and urban household budgets, and any rise hits commuters every working day of the month.

The fiscal logic sits with the central State Budget, which transfers the difference between what passengers pay and what operators need through the PART envelope each year. The 2026 OE held the PART transfer at the level required to maintain the freeze. The next pressure point is 2027 — the political consensus around the freeze is intact for now, but operating costs at Carris, STCP and Metro do Porto are climbing fast, and the Court of Auditors flagged the structural sustainability of the freeze in its 2025 report. For now, the cap is held.

Where the system stops being seamless

Two gaps remain. The first is the cross-regional gap: the Navegante pass does not work in Porto and the Andante pass does not work in Lisbon. There is no single national pass; if you commute regularly between AML and AMP, you load both. The second is the long-distance gap: the urban CP services covered by Navegante and Andante stop at the AML and AMP boundaries. CP intercity and Alfa Pendular tickets between Lisbon and Porto are sold separately and are not part of the metropolitan-pass system. For a Braga or Setúbal commuter who works once a week in Lisbon, the practical structure is a metropolitan pass for the home region plus pay-per-trip CP intercity tickets.

For everything else — daily commutes, school runs, weekend trips inside the home metropolitan area, and even the long bus rides across the Algarve — the €40 ceiling is the single most consequential budget line the Portuguese State currently writes for an expat household.