Portugal's Free Flu Shot Now Covers Every Child From Six Months to Four, and the Private Supply Is the Part Under Strain
Norma 006/2026 opens the campaign on 30 September and adds two, three and four year olds to the free list. The SNS bought 2.3 million standard doses; pharmacists say the separate private allocation may be smaller than in past years.
The Direção-Geral da Saúde (Directorate-General for Health) published the rulebook for this winter on Thursday, and its widest-reaching change is a quiet one. Free flu vaccination now covers every child from six months to four years old. Norma n.º 006/2026, signed at midday by Director-General Rita Sá Machado, runs the campaign from 30 September 2026 to 31 March 2027,.
Until this season the free shot stopped at 23 months. Adding two, three and four year olds closes a gap any parent with a child in creche will recognise, and the DGS is explicit that the point is not only the child: it wants to slow transmission and take winter pressure off the health service.
Who qualifies
The norm sorts eligibility into four tests, and meeting any one is enough. By age: children from six months to four, and everyone aged 60 or over. By condition: pregnancy, or being aged five to 59 with a listed risk pathology, a catalogue running from chronic respiratory and cardiovascular disease through advanced kidney disease, diabetes and immunosuppression.
The third test is setting rather than diagnosis, covering care-home and continuing-care residents, people on home support, prisoners and people who are homeless. The fourth is occupational and longer than most expect, reaching past SNS clinical staff to contracted cleaners, canteen workers and security guards inside SNS units, prison staff, vaccinating pharmacists, and anyone exposed to sick or dead animals in a suspected zoonotic flu setting. Nearly everyone gets the standard-dose trivalent vaccine; the high-dose version is held back for the over-85s.
Where to go, and the bit that catches people out
Adults aged 60 to 84 can walk into a community pharmacy registered with INFARMED and be vaccinated free, with no condition to prove. Adults aged 18 to 59 with a risk pathology can use a pharmacy too, but eligibility must be confirmed electronically or with a valid SNS message carrying their Número Nacional de Utente. Bring identification either way.
Children are the exception. Free childhood vaccination is allowed only at SNS units or at private and social-sector hospitals and clinics that are authorised vaccination points, so the pharmacy route does not apply to the newly eligible two to four year olds.
The supply story running underneath
The SNS bought roughly 2.3 million standard-dose and 369,000 high-dose vaccines, up 187,000 and 12,000 on last season, which the DGS says guarantees doses "for everyone who wants to be vaccinated". One lot in the procurement drew no bid at all, which the DGS confirmed while saying it did not affect the strategy.
The private market is a different matter. The DGS told Lusa on Thursday it had learned of constraints in supplying standard-dose vaccines there, a process it neither coordinates nor intervenes in. The Associação Nacional de Farmácias (National Association of Pharmacies) said its preliminary information points to a private allocation smaller than in past years, without quantifying it, and blamed the simultaneous updating of all three strains this season, a problem affecting several European countries. The same squeeze appeared at the end of 2025.
The DGS's answer was to write private and social-sector care staff into the free campaign rather than leave them to that market. For anyone outside an eligible group, the shot still means a prescription and the private contingent, which is exactly the supply under strain. Portugal priced the pharmacy administration fee at 3.15 euros in August.
A companion norm the same day lifts the recommended Covid threshold from 60 to 70, though 60 to 69 year olds may still ask for that shot. The two may be given together, but neither should be delayed to pair them.
