Poland Is Not the Only Country Courting Web Summit, Says the Head of Startup Portugal, With Lisbon's Contract Expiring in 2028
Miguel Aguiar told ECO that several candidates to replace Lisbon have surfaced in recent months. He also set out what replaces the recovery plan vouchers, and why the startup law needs a definition of a scale-up.
Lisbon's contract to host Web Summit expires in 2028, and the chief executive of Startup Portugal has confirmed that Poland is not the only country trying to take the conference away. Miguel Aguiar, speaking to ECO as the association marks ten years since it was set up to promote the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem, said several candidates to replace the Portuguese capital have surfaced in recent months.
Startup Portugal has been supplying the government with information to support the case for renewal. Aguiar described the relationship with the company co-founded by Paddy Cosgrave as one of trust and of valuable help, while acknowledging the competition is real and broader than the Polish bid that has been publicly reported.
The Funding Cliff Behind the Conference
The interview matters for a second reason, which is what happens to Portuguese startup funding now that the Recovery and Resilience Plan has closed. Execution of the plan was Aguiar's main task since he joined the association in September 2025, and he says the targets were met: his team worked until midnight on 31 August, the final deadline for submissions.
The vouchers that the plan financed are gone with it. Startup Portugal is negotiating with Compete, the competitiveness programme, to access Portugal 2030 money for a replacement scheme. The new vouchers would be smaller and aimed earlier, at the seed stage, to help ideas become companies at the point just after what the American shorthand calls family, friends and fools. Nothing is closed, and Aguiar wants the scheme running by the end of the year. The team currently verifying how the old voucher recipients spent their money is funded by the recovery plan until December and would then be reassigned.
Five Thousand Startups, and a Law That Does Not Define Scale-Ups
Portugal reached five thousand startups in the association's November ecosystem report, a milestone hit 18 months earlier than forecast. Aguiar's argument is that the country is now in a consolidation phase: the priority is fewer new companies and more scale-ups, meaning existing firms that grow, hire more, pay more and expand into new markets.
That runs into the 2023 startup law, which was the first in Europe to define the term. In Portugal a startup is a highly scalable and innovative company under ten years old, with revenue below 50 million euros and fewer than 250 employees; meet those criteria and Startup Portugal grants formal recognition. The gap, Aguiar says, is that the definition of a scale-up is not clear, and the association is in talks with the government about amending the law. Any change has to pass through parliament, and there is no closed proposal yet.
The Financing Problem Is European
On money, Aguiar points to two structural difficulties for Portuguese and European companies: access to finance at the scale-up stage, and bureaucracy. One long-discussed domestic fix is requiring Portuguese pension funds to place a minimum of 1 or 2 percent of their assets in startups. On the European side, Startup Portugal has been to Brussels three times this year to work on the 28th regime, also called EU Inc, which would create a single company form usable across all 27 member states from the moment of incorporation. Aguiar expects progress within months and is clear it solves only the first stretch: tax and fiscal fragmentation come next.
He counts seven Portuguese unicorns today, eight created in total, with Farfetch no longer among them. Tekever is now discussed at a valuation of 5.5 billion euros. On artificial intelligence and job losses he is unwilling to draw a straight line, noting that in the United States some companies have found AI expensive enough that they have rehired. Startup Portugal is meanwhile building its Web Summit stand with Lisbon city council and the economy ministry, and has opened applications for its Road 2 Web Summit programme, looking for more than a hundred companies. Our report on the Porto deep tech cohort covers another corner of the same pipeline.
