Portugal's Summer Policing Operation Ended With 7,214 Arrests, and the Commonest Ticket Was for a Phone in the Driver's Hand
Drink-driving and driving unlicensed came within one arrest of each other. Of 60,420 penalty notices, 11,730 were for using a mobile at the wheel.
The PSP has published the final tally for Polícia Sempre Presente: Verão Seguro 2026, the three-month policing operation that runs across Portugal's bathing areas and tourist zones each summer. It recorded 7,214 arrests, up 6.5 percent on the 6,771 of the same period last year, an increase of 443.
The single largest category is not what the operation's beach-and-nightlife framing might suggest. It is the road.
Drink-driving and driving without a licence, almost exactly level
Of the arrests, 1,559 were for driving while drunk and 1,558 for driving without a legal licence. Together those two offences account for more than four in ten arrests made during the operation.
The rest breaks down as 753 arrests for drug trafficking, with 303,133 individual doses seized; 498 for crimes against property, of which 81 were robbery and 417 other property offences; 461 for disobedience; 251 for resisting or coercing a public official; 218 for possession or trafficking of prohibited weapons; 152 for domestic violence; and 78 for illegal immigration. A further 1,072 arrests were made executing detention and transport warrants.
Seizures over the three months came to 946 weapons, including 305 firearms and 396 bladed weapons, along with 8,032 rounds of ammunition and 319 vehicles.
Traffic enforcement on a different scale
The road safety side of the operation ran to 4,630 operations, with 169,418 vehicles stopped and checked, 360,667 monitored by radar, and 47,755 breath tests administered.
Those checks produced 60,420 administrative penalty notices over the three months. The largest single line is one drivers should read twice: 11,730 for using a mobile phone while driving, more than for any other offence on the list. Speeding accounted for 8,693, missing the compulsory periodic vehicle inspection for 5,952, and driving without civil liability insurance for 2,656. There were 852 notices for driving under the influence of alcohol at levels below the criminal threshold, and 835 for breaching the rules on child restraint systems.
The human total
Across the operation the PSP registered 13,837 road accidents, from which 26 people died and 4,953 were injured, 216 of them seriously and 4,737 with lighter injuries.
The operation's footprint covered bathing areas and tourist zones, historic and shopping centres, airports, public transport interchanges, nightlife venues, the sites of large events and residential areas. For residents and visitors alike, the enforcement pattern is the useful part of the release: a summer stop in Portugal is far more likely to be about a phone in your hand, an expired inspection or an uninsured car than about anything happening on a beach.
