Portugal's Footwear Exports Slipped 2.1 Percent to €813 Million in the First Half, While Italy Lost Twice That and Spain Three Times

Portugal's footwear industry sold €813 million abroad in the first half of 2026, 2.1 percent less than in the same six months of last year. APICCAPS, the industry association, released the figure in its latest newsletter on Friday and framed it the way a trade body frames a bad number that could have been worse: as evidence the strategy is working.

The comparison it reaches for is the honest part of the case. Through May, Italy's cumulative footwear export losses ran at 4.3 percent and Spain's at 7.3 percent. Those are the two competitors Portugal measures itself against, and both fell roughly two to three times as far.

The numbers

• €813 million in footwear exports in the first half of 2026, down 2.1 percent year on year.
• Italy minus 4.3 percent, Spain minus 7.3 percent in the year to May.
• China minus 10.9 percent, Brazil minus 15.7 percent, Turkey minus 5.3 percent over the first five months of 2026. Vietnam held up best of the Asian producers, at minus 1.3 percent.
• €1,718 million of Portuguese footwear exports in the full year 2025, up 0.8 percent, which broke two consecutive years of decline.

Paulo Gonçalves, APICCAPS's executive director, was quoted in the newsletter saying the Portuguese industry "is going through a very difficult period, as are most of the world's main producers," and that even so Portugal "managed to resist the pressure better than many of its competitors and preserve an international position based on value, quality and companies' responsiveness."

He does not pretend the contraction away. It "cannot be minimised," he says, but "should be seen in the context of a general slowdown in global footwear trade."

Why the demand is missing

APICCAPS points at two specific channels rather than a vague global slowdown, and both are worth understanding because they explain why a Portuguese factory can be efficient and still lose orders.

The first is luxury. The association says the armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East "continue to affect the fashion value chain, significantly reducing access to luxury markets that have traditionally been important for Portuguese companies." Portugal does not compete on price. It competes at the top of the market, much of it as a contract manufacturer for European fashion houses, and when luxury demand thins, Portugal feels it before the volume producers do.

The second is shipping, specifically around the Strait of Hormuz, which the association says is penalising economic activity heavily and pushing costs up.

The price position is the actual asset

The most revealing figure in the release is not the decline. It is the average export price: $28.25 a pair in 2025, up 2.5 percent, which keeps Portugal second in the world behind Italy alone.

Set that beside the volume statistics and the shape of the industry becomes clear. Portugal accounted for 0.3 percent of world footwear production by volume in 2025 and 0.5 percent by value, according to the World Footwear Yearbook 2026, which APICCAPS itself publishes. It ranked eighteenth among world producers, in a table China leads with 55 percent of global output. On exports it sat thirteenth by value, at $1,949 million, and seventeenth by volume, at 69 million pairs.

A country that is seventeenth by volume and thirteenth by value is being paid a premium, and the average-price ranking says how large a premium. About 93 percent of the shoes made in Portugal are sold abroad, across 174 markets.

Where the shoes go

Germany is the largest destination at 24 percent of Portuguese footwear exports, followed by France at 20 percent, the Netherlands and Spain at 11 percent each, and the United Kingdom at 6 percent. That is close to three quarters of the trade sitting in five European markets, four of them in the single market.

The concentration cuts both ways. It insulates Portuguese producers from the tariff turbulence that has hit their wine and olive oil exporters in the United States, a story we covered in July. It also means a consumer slowdown in Germany and France passes through almost undiluted.

The quiet shift in what Portugal actually makes

Buried in the release is a structural change that matters more for the next decade than this half's percentage. Leather footwear has fallen from 69 percent of Portuguese exports three years ago to 58 percent. Over the same period rubber and plastic products rose from 13 percent to 21 percent, and textile footwear from 8 percent to 12 percent.

That is a large move in three years for an industry whose international reputation was built on leather. It reflects where footwear demand has gone, toward sneakers, performance and hybrid categories, and it means new machinery, different suppliers and different skills on the factory floor.

One niche shows what that repositioning can produce. In waterproof footwear Portugal is already the fifth largest exporter in the world, with a 3.4 percent share and sales of $55 million.

The context this half sits in

Three weeks ago we reported that Portugal had overtaken Spain to become Europe's second largest shoemaker, on 2025 output. Friday's numbers do not contradict that. They describe a sector holding a rank it recently gained while the whole market shrinks around it, which is how ranks usually change hands.

The domestic picture is less comfortable than the league table. Earlier this month a Gaia shoe factory founded in 1948 collapsed into insolvency owing 54 workers their July wages. A sector-wide decline of 2.1 percent is survivable in aggregate and fatal for individual firms with thin margins and one large client.

What This Means for Expats

• If you work in or supply the sector, plan around a soft second half. The two headwinds APICCAPS names, luxury demand and shipping costs, are not the kind that clear in a quarter. Small subcontractors in the Felgueiras, Guimarães, São João da Madeira and Oliveira de Azeméis belt are the most exposed.
• Buying Portuguese shoes is still buying near the top of the market. The $28.25 average export price is second only to Italy's. If you have been comparing a Portuguese pair against an unbranded import and wondering about the gap, that gap is the whole business model.
• Factory outlets are worth the drive, and they are concentrated. Portugal's footwear industry sits mostly in a narrow band of the north, between Porto and Aveiro. The same towns hold the factory stores, and the industrial-tourism routes at São João da Madeira let you see production up close.
• Anyone reading the trade figures should separate value from volume. Portuguese footwear exports can fall in euros while the country climbs the value rankings, or the reverse. Look at the average price per pair alongside the headline: this half, it is the price that is holding.
• Do not read the headline as a Portugal problem. Every major producer bar none is down, most of them by more. A 2.1 percent fall against China's 10.9 and Brazil's 15.7 is a relative gain in market share, even as the absolute number shrinks.

The next reading that matters is the full-year figure, and the question it answers is whether 2026 breaks the 2025 recovery or merely pauses it. Portugal enters the second half with its rank intact, its pricing intact, and its two largest markets, Germany and France, deciding the answer.