Tribunal de Contas Releases the €1.064 Billion CP Rolling-Stock Contract — 153 Alstom-DST Trainsets Now Cleared for the Guifões Production Run

The Tribunal de Contas closed the file on Thursday 28 May 2026 by granting visto prévio to the amended fleet-renewal contract between CP — Comboios de Portugal, the Alstom-led consortium and Domingos da Silva Teixeira (DST). The court's signature lifts the suspensive condition that had hung over the largest single rolling-stock purchase in Portuguese railway history and locks the headline price at €1.064 billion, up from the €746 million floor of the 2023 award. The amendment expands the order book from 117 trainsets to 153 — 98 urban units for the Lisbon and Porto suburban networks and 55 regional units fitted with ERTMS/ETCS Level 2 signalling — and aligns deliveries with the Plano Nacional Ferroviário window that opens in 2029.

What the Court Signed Off On

The audit court's role on contracts of this scale is binary: the visto is either granted or refused, and refusal would have forced CP back to the procurement board. The 28 May visto confirms that the €318 million price gap relative to the 2023 bid is, in the court's reading, defensible on the back of the 36 additional units rather than escalation on the original 117. CP framed the decision as the green light needed to release the first manufacturing instalment to Alstom, which carries the engineering work, and to DST, which carries the local industrial component through the planned Guifões assembly facility in Matosinhos. The Guifões site is the lever DST used to anchor the Portuguese content threshold and remains a precondition for the consortium's contractual position.

What the Fleet Will Actually Do

The 98 urban trainsets are sized for the Lisbon and Porto commuter rings and slot in to retire CP's 1990s-era CPA and UDE platforms, several of which now operate well past their 30-year design life. The 55 regional units carry ERTMS Level 2, the cab-signalling layer the Plano Nacional Ferroviário is rolling out across the conventional network; the Linha do Norte and Beira Alta modernisation programmes are contingent on having ERTMS-capable stock available when the trackside upgrades come online. First deliveries are pencilled for 2029. The Guifões factory is framed as a 300-direct-job and roughly 1,500-indirect-job industrial anchor for Matosinhos, with the Norte 2030 envelope on standby for the supply-chain layer.

What This Means for Passengers

• 2029 is the first revenue date. Anyone counting on relief on the Cascais line, the Sintra line or the Porto-Caíde suburban band before then should plan around the existing fleet — the Tribunal de Contas visto does not accelerate the manufacturing curve.
• ERTMS dependency. The regional units only deliver the headline frequency gains on lines where the trackside Level 2 layer has been switched on. Until then, the new trainsets run under legacy signalling rules.
• Pricing transparency. The €1.064 billion sticker now becomes the audited reference number against which any further amendment, change order or option-tranche exercise will be benchmarked. Civil-society scrutiny of CP procurement tightens from here.
• Guifões timing. The Matosinhos assembly site has to be operational by 2028 to feed the first deliveries; any slippage on the industrial build-out flows directly into the 2029 delivery date and the lines waiting on the new fleet.
• Greve geral overlap. The Tribunal de Contas signature lands the same week as the 3 June general strike, which the Tribunal Arbitral has set at 25% minimum services on CP rail. The political subtext — fleet investment on one ledger, labour dispute on the other — is one CP management will have to navigate publicly through the summer.

The next gating point is the manufacturing release order from CP to the consortium, expected before the end of June. From there, the Norte 2030 industrial paperwork on the Guifões site becomes the binding path to keep the 2029 delivery window intact.