Porto's Airport Grew Seven Times Faster Than Lisbon's in the First Seven Months of 2026, and Lisbon's Cargo Went Backwards

Portugal's airports handled 43.1 million passengers between January and July, 2.4 percent more than a year earlier. Almost all of that growth happened outside Lisbon.

Figures published on Monday by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (National Statistics Institute, or INE), in its monthly rapid statistics on air transport, put Lisbon's seven-month total at 20.8 million passengers, a rise of just 1.0 percent. Porto carried 10.3 million, up 7.1 percent. Faro carried 6.2 million, up 3.8 percent. Everything else, which means Madeira, the Azores and the smaller mainland airports taken together, carried 5.8 million and actually fell 1.6 percent.

Lisbon still accounts for 48.4 percent of all passengers moved in the country. But its share is what is doing the work here, not its growth: the busiest airport in Portugal added about 200,000 passengers over seven months, while Porto, at half its size, added around 680,000.

A year of slowing down

The national picture has cooled sharply. Over the same seven months of 2025, passenger numbers had risen 4.9 percent. This year the rate is 2.4 percent, so growth has roughly halved. Cargo and mail tell the same story, up 1.0 percent so far in 2026 against 2.6 percent in 2025.

Lisbon's ranking reverses entirely when you compare the two years. In 2025 it grew 3.0 percent while Porto grew 5.5 percent and Faro 7.3 percent. In 2026 Lisbon has slowed to a third of its own previous pace, Porto has accelerated, and Faro has halved.

The cargo numbers are the sharpest illustration. Lisbon moved 115,467 tonnes of freight and mail in the seven months, 77.1 percent of the national total, and that figure is down 0.1 percent on last year. Every other airport combined moved 34,228 tonnes and rose 4.8 percent. On the freight side, Lisbon is not slowing. It has stopped.

July itself

For the single month of July, national airports handled 7.7 million passengers, up 2.0 percent, and 23.8 thousand tonnes of cargo and mail, up 4.4 percent. There were 26.5 thousand commercial landings, up 1.3 percent. That is a recovery from June, when passenger traffic had actually fallen 0.2 percent and landings fell 1.0 percent.

An average of 128.5 thousand passengers disembarked every day in July. INE notes that every month of 2026 so far has set a record monthly high for passengers moved, with June the single exception.

International traffic accounted for 82.7 percent of arrivals, at 3.3 million passengers, and Europe supplied 69.0 percent of everyone who got off a plane in Portugal. The Americas were second at 9.2 percent. On departures, 81.5 percent flew international, Europe took 66.3 percent and the Americas 10.3 percent, the latter down 0.2 percent on last July.

The United Kingdom remained the single largest country of origin and of destination, as it has been throughout. British arrivals were up 4.7 percent across the seven months and departures to Britain up 4.8 percent, both comfortably ahead of the national average. France, Spain, Germany and Italy held second through fifth place in both directions.

What this means for residents of Portugal

• Porto is where the capacity is going. If you fly regularly and you are weighing where to base yourself, or which airport to route family through, the route map is shifting north faster than the headline national figure suggests.
• Lisbon's flatness is not a demand problem. Humberto Delgado has been at the edge of its slot capacity for years, and a 1.0 percent rise in a year when Porto managed 7.1 is the shape that ceiling makes in a spreadsheet. The new airport at Alcochete is a long way from opening.
• The islands and the smaller airports went backwards. The 1.6 percent fall in the "other airports" group is the only negative number in the table, and it covers Madeira and the Azores. For residents there, that is a thinner connection than last summer, not a fatter one.
• These are preliminary figures. INE marks 2026 results as preliminary and 2025 as provisional, so the percentages can move. The next monthly release is due on 14 October.

Portugal spent a decade getting used to air traffic that rose every year by mid single digits. What the July release describes is a country where that is still true in Porto, roughly true in Faro, and no longer true in the capital.