Portuguese Residents Took a Record 26 Million Trips in 2025 — INE's Provisional Series Posts +13.7% Growth, Domestic Travel Climbs 14% to 22.2 Million as Outbound Edges Past 3.85 Million

The Instituto Nacional de Estatística posted its provisional 2025 figures for resident travel on Tuesday morning, 28 April 2026, and the headline number is the one that closes a five-year recovery arc: 26.049 million tourist trips taken by Portugal's residents, up 13.7% on 2024 and the first reading to clear the pre-pandemic mark of 24.5 million trips set in 2019. The release was time-stamped 11:51 a.m. and lands in the same week INE has published the bank-housing valuation series and the 1975-2026 electoral participation arc.

The series is split along the same two columns INE has used since 2014. Domestic trips — overnight stays inside continental Portugal, the autonomous regions of Açores and Madeira included — totalled 22.192 million, +14% year-on-year, and account for 85.2% of all 2025 movement by residents. Outbound trips — at least one overnight stay abroad — came in at 3.858 million, +12.5%, the segment that drove the recovery beyond the 2019 ceiling.

The dominant motivation in both columns was the same: lazer, recreio ou férias — leisure, recreation and holidays — the category that traditionally captures roughly two thirds of all trip-making in the resident series. Visits to family and friends and professional travel make up the other recognised motives in the INE methodology.

The 2025 figure folds into a longer story Portuguese tourism has been telling for the past eighteen months. INE's quarterly atividade turística series for Q3 2025 already showed strong domestic momentum, and the Turismo de Portugal TravelBI desk has called 2025 a year of historical maxima for the sector overall. The provisional 2026 release confirms what the trade body Portugal Fresh and the cruise-industry CLIA report — both picked up earlier this week — are pointing at: a domestic travel base that is wider, deeper and more frequent than it was before the pandemic.

The shift is partly demographic. Portugal's resident population added foreign-born residents through 2024 and 2025, many of them at trip-making ages. It is partly logistical: the €40 metropolitan transport ceiling and the wider passe network have lowered the marginal cost of a long weekend in another district. And it is partly fiscal: the cruise sector alone pushed €940 million through the Portuguese economy in 2025, and outbound trip-making has tracked rising household real disposable income.

What This Means for Expats

• Pricing in summer 2026: A 14% rise in domestic trip-making in 2025 is the strongest signal yet that resident demand will compete more aggressively for the same beach apartments, rural alojamentos and Madeira short-breaks foreign residents tend to book. Lock in summer reservations earlier than in any of the past three years.
• Where the residents go: The provisional release does not yet break out top destinations, but the pattern in the 2024 final series put Algarve, Norte and Centro at the top of the domestic ranking and Spain, France and the United Kingdom at the top of the outbound list. Expect the 2025 final to confirm the same map.
• Outbound passes the 2019 mark: Portuguese residents are flying out at higher volumes than before the pandemic, which has implications for Lisbon and Porto airport slot pressure, codeshare pricing on the Madrid and London routes, and — for foreign residents who fly home at school holidays — for booking lead times.
• Tax-side reading: Trip-making by residents is one of the inputs INE uses in its tourism satellite account, the same account that feeds tourism's contribution to GDP. A wider domestic base supports the case the government has been making in Brussels for keeping the reduced VAT rate on hotel accommodation in the 2027 OE.

INE will publish the final 2025 series and the destination breakdown in the next quarterly release. Until then the provisional headline stands: 26 million trips, an all-time record, and the first year Portuguese residents have travelled more than they did before the pandemic.