Lisbon Cruise Port 2025: Record Turnarounds, 15.6% Fewer Transit Passengers and a Total Below 2024

What the port's own series shows

The Port of Lisbon Administration (APL) publishes an annual table on its cruise site, lisboncruiseport.pt, for 2008 to 2025. It lists calls, total passengers, transit and turnaround. It has no crew column and no split between embarked and disembarked passengers, and it carries no publication date. APL's press-release pages blocked automated access, so every release quoted here is a Lusa or trade-press reproduction, and we say so where it matters.

On that table the peak year is 2024 for total passengers (763,752), calls (369) and transit (591,797). The year before, 2023, came close at 758,328. Turnaround is the exception, because 2025's 206,226 beats the 204,004 of 2023. APL also reports record embarked passengers, 105,900 against 102,680 in 2023, and 121 turnaround calls against 110 in 2024. That 121 is the figure most easily misread, because it counts turnaround calls and not ship calls. The table gives 335 calls in total for 2025, down 9.2% on 2024.

The comparison with 2019 changes the picture. In 2019 the port handled 571,259 passengers on 310 calls, and only 12.7% of them were turnaround. The 2025 total is 23.5% above that, a rise of 134,178 passengers, and 133,396 of them are turnaround. Transit moved from 498,429 to 499,211, a gain of 782. In derived terms, 99.4% of the port's growth since 2019 is homeport traffic, and transit has returned to almost exactly where it stood before the pandemic. Even 2019 was not a record: 2018 handled 577,605.

Crew follow the calls. APL reports 257,923 crew in 2025 against 288,049 in 2024, a fall of 10.5% (derived), almost all of them in transit. Each crew member is counted once per call, so the count is a measure of ship movements as much as of people. The 2024 release also said the 369 calls beat a previous record of 353 in 2013, while APL's own table gives 364 for 2013. Either way, 2024 set the record and 2025 gave back nine percentage points of it.

Where 29.2% sits in Europe

A turnaround share of 29.2% looks like a homeport only until it is set beside real homeports. Barcelona handled 3,999,258 passengers in 2025, and Seatrade reports 2,351,000 of them, 58%, as turnaround. Civitavecchia reports 49% home-port passengers and Genoa's Stazioni Marittime reports 620,195 of 1,630,593, or 38.0% (derived). Marseille's 680,000 turnaround on about 2.6 million is roughly 26%, although the same article also gives 30%. Valletta, at 190,302 of 962,966 movements, is 19.8% (derived). Piraeus appears at about 59% in our Greek sister site, which cites MedCruise, and we could not reach the primary source.

Lisbon therefore sits between the hubs and the pure ports of call. It is closer to Marseille than to Barcelona. The caveat is the definition. Lisbon, Barcelona and Valletta count turnaround as embarked plus disembarked movements, but Malta's statistics office publishes a different basis, and the other ports may not follow the same rule. Treat the ranking as an order of magnitude, not a league table.

Per resident, Lisbon's cruise pressure is low. Its 705,437 passengers equal 1.07 per resident on the INE 2025 municipal estimate of 658,236 (derived, and not re-verified because ine.pt was blocked). Funchal's roughly 750,000 passengers equal 6.6 per resident on a 2025 population of 113,443 (derived), and the Azores sit at 0.67. The scale of the city absorbs ships that an island capital cannot. The same scale explains why the debate in Lisbon is about air quality at the Alfama waterfront and not, as in Funchal, about crowding in the old town. In 2025 Madeira overtook Lisbon by total passengers, 746,257 against 705,437.

Why the mix matters: €573 against €39

Nova SBE's 2024 study for APL, presented on 29 October 2024 on 2023 traffic, is the only economic model of Lisbon cruise in the public record. It puts total activity at €1,934 million, value added at €794 million (about 0.3% of GDP), jobs above 20,000 and the contribution per passenger at €159, up from €82 in 2022. Its rate card is the important part. A turnaround passenger is worth about €573 in the Lisbon area, of which €288 is accommodation, and a transit passenger about €39. That is a ratio of 14.7 to 1 (derived).

The ratio is steeper than any other we found. APL's 2022 passenger survey, with 853 interviews, gave €367 for embarking passengers and €37 for transit, a ratio of 9.9 to 1. The CLIA and Cruise Europe baseline for 2019 gives €212.67 for a homeport passenger and €70.63 for a transit passenger, 3.0 to 1. These are different methods, years and definitions, and no one has reconciled them. Lisbon's own figure matters most because the €80 million headline is built from it.

The arithmetic behind that headline is not published, but it reproduces exactly. APL's 105,900 embarked passengers at €573 give €60.7 million, and 499,211 transit passengers at €39 give €19.5 million. The sum is €80.15 million. The study defines €573 per turnaround passenger, and there were 206,226 of those. If every turnaround passenger carried the full rate, the total would be €137.6 million (derived). Neither APL nor the press says whether disembarking passengers were priced, so the €80 million is a rate card applied to a chosen base. It is a defensible estimate, but it is not a measurement, and it should be quoted that way.

The rate card also lets us price the 2025 mix shift, with an assumption stated. Take embarked passengers as half of turnaround. The extra 34,271 turnaround passengers then add about 17,100 embarkations, worth €9.8 million at €573, while the 92,586 lost transit passengers cost €3.6 million at €39. The net is roughly +€6.2 million (derived). On the port's own rates, a worse year for volume was a better year for money.

The larger models do not agree. Nova SBE gives €794 million of Lisbon value added for 2023 and €1,934 million of output. CLIA Europe gives €410 million of GDP and €940 million of output for all of Portugal in 2024, published by ECO on 24 February 2026. Lisbon alone is 1.94 times the national GDP figure and 2.06 times the national output figure. The methods and the commissioning of each are not public in the coverage we could read, so we cannot say which is closer. The earlier Nova SBE study, on 2019, found €336 million of GDP, 0.16% of GDP, and 8,863 jobs. The same model's 2023 value added is 136% higher on a port whose passengers rose 33% and whose turnaround passengers nearly tripled.

One detail does reconcile. Nova SBE credits €2.29 million of GDP per call. Press coverage attributes 360 calls to the study, which would give €2.21 million. APL counted 347 calls in 2023, and €794 million over 347 is €2.29 million (derived). The study seems to use APL's call count, and the 360 figure is a press error or a different measure.

Who is on the ships

The nationality data come only from press reproductions of APL's January releases. For 2024, the UK supplied 41% of passengers, the United States 20% and Germany 14%. For 2025, the reproductions give the UK as 40%, the United States as 23%, Europe as 459,028 passengers (65.1% of the total, derived) and Canada up 19% to 39,371. The base of the 40% is ambiguous. RTP quotes it as the share of the total, while another reading takes it as 40% of the European total. On the first reading the UK sent about 282,000 passengers, and on the second about 183,600, or 26.0% of all passengers (derived). The 2024 figure of 41% of the total favours the first reading, but we could not confirm it.

Our own Lisbon article gave the UK share as 34.0%, and it matches neither reading. The nearest figures we can derive are from April 2025, when 30,823 of 98,686 passengers were British, or 31.2%, and January to April, when 49,856 of 155,364 were, or 32.1%. A spring share is not an annual share, and we withdraw the 34.0% until a primary source appears.

The turnaround segment is American. Norwegian Cruise Line raised its Lisbon calls from 11 to 20 in 2025, and the release reports US turnaround passengers rising from 62,856 to 86,889, up 38.2% (derived), with Canada up 49% and Portugal third at 19,508. These figures do not fully reconcile with the 43% share the same coverage gives to North America in turnaround, because 86,889 US passengers plus a Canadian total larger than Portugal's 19,508 would exceed half of 206,226. One of the figures describes a different base, and the primary release would settle which.

Two terminals on a 35-year concession

Cruise ships dock at two terminals operated by Lisbon Cruise Terminals under the Lisbon Cruise Port brand, Santa Apolónia and the newer Jardim do Tabaco, designed by Carrilho da Graça. The concession is a 35-year build-operate-transfer contract. Cruise Europe reports it was signed on 17 July 2014, began operating on 26 August 2014 and runs to 2049, and Cruise Business reported the same term in January 2014. A figure of 20 years attributed to the city's mayor in our files appears in no source we could find. The investment was about €23 million on Cruise Europe's account and €24 million on Cruise Business's. At the 2014 launch the shareholders were Global Ports Holding 40%, Grupo Sousa 30%, Royal Caribbean 20% and Creuers del Port de Barcelona 10%. Seatrade later reported that Global Ports bought Royal Caribbean's stake, and we could not verify the current split.

The 2014 operator said the terminal could handle more than 550,000 passengers and expected more than 750,000 within ten years. That forecast came true in 2023 and 2024. Beyond it, the public record is thin. Global Ports Holding's own page gives four berths and a 1,490 metre cruise quay in one place and a 1,425 metre berthing line in another. We found no primary source on ship-size limits, calls per day, air-draft limits under the 25 de Abril bridge, or the busiest day on record. A travel blog says the Rocha do Conde de Óbidos quay in Alcântara serves smaller ships and overflow, which we could not confirm.

The €2 tax with no receipts

Lisbon charges a Taxa de Chegada por Via Marítima of €2 per cruise passenger over 13, collected through APL's Janela Única Logística platform and passed to the city. The legal basis reported by Observador and Público is a protocol between the municipality and APL, and we found no regulation or Diário da República entry. It was planned for 1 January 2024 and took effect on 1 April 2024. APL and the city forecast about €1.2 million a year, and the mayor spoke of about €1 million, which Público put at roughly 0.3% of the city's tourist-tax revenue. No receipts have been published for any year.

An upper bound is simple. Every one of 2025's 705,437 passengers paying €2 would raise €1.41 million (derived), and children under 13 would lower it. Whether turnaround passengers pay as well as those who disembark in transit is unclear in the coverage, and the city has not earmarked the money beyond a mention of urban hygiene. Two receipt figures, €365,920 for April to December 2024 and €981,493 for 2025, appeared in one of our own drafts and returned no source in any search, so they are withdrawn. The wider picture of who charges what is in our Portugal tourist taxes article.

Shore power: five versions of one project

Lisbon's cruise terminal is meant to plug ships into the grid so that they can switch off engines at the quay. The project is described in at least five ways. APL said in July 2025 that phase one costs €20 million, with €2.7 million spent, and finishes in 2027. Funding approved in June 2024 was €18.3 million with a maximum support of €14.5 million from the Sustentável 2030 climate programme. ECO in October 2024 had phase one due in 2026 at €18.4 million, and Dinheiro Vivo in November 2024 gave 2029 for operation. A local outlet reported a €4.27 million APL-funded contract for a 4.4 kilometre cable and substation, to finish by January 2027.

Reading them together, the €20 million and €18 million figures describe phase one and the €4.27 million may be a contract inside it. We cannot reconcile them without the funding file. The design would power three ships at once at medium voltage and cut berthed-ship greenhouse-gas emissions by about 77% against 2019 (Dinheiro Vivo). No source we found says that any ship has connected. In January 2026, PCP councillors wrote to the mayor that they had received no information on the works for four years. EU rules require major ports to offer shore power by 2030.

The pollution record is older than the project. Transport & Environment's June 2023 report put Lisbon at about 11.1 tonnes of sulphur oxides from cruise ships in 2022, fifth in Europe, up from eighth in 2019 at 10.3 tonnes, with 108 ships against 101. The report counts ships and not calls. Diário de Notícias repeated the "fifth" ranking in September 2024 without naming a source or a year. A CLIA study with the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, released through APL in November 2023, reported minimal impact on air quality across September 2022 to September 2023, without numbers in the coverage we read. T&E said in July 2025 that Lisbon was one of four ports with no investment in shore-side electricity, and APL replied that the data covered 2023 and earlier. We found no noise measurement and no published air-quality reading from the terminal. In June 2022 the municipal assembly recommended limits on berthing by emissions, and no limit has been adopted.

2026 so far: more turnaround, one soft month

APL's 2026 releases show the mix shift continuing. The first half brought 302,496 passengers, up 5%, on 165 calls. June set a monthly record of 81,735, up 53%. August set another, with 86,322 passengers on 33 calls, the most for a month on record, and turnaround of 24,633, up 117% and 28.5% of the month against 16.2% in August 2025. Through August the port had 448,037 passengers, up 2%, 220 calls, up 6%, and turnaround of 127,194, up 13%, which is 28.4% of the total.

The arithmetic hides a soft month. The first half was up 5% and the first eight months up 2%. Subtracting the half-year and August from the eight-month total leaves about 59,200 passengers for July. Working back from the stated growth rates, July 2025 was about 81,000, so July 2026 was down roughly a quarter. The estimate is derived from rounded percentages and carries a band of several points either way, and we could not read the July release itself. The June turnaround figures also look suspect, because the coverage gives identical embarked and disembarked counts of 13,425.

No Lisbon forecast for 2026 has been published. The Associação de Portos de Portugal expects 1,970,275 passengers and 1,138 calls nationally, up 6% and 8%, but that is measured against 2024 INE data and is not a Lisbon number. For 2027, MSC Sinfonia is announced for 12 ten-night cruises from Lisbon beginning on 2 June, and Norwegian Dawn is scheduled for Barcelona to Lisbon open-jaw sailings. MSC Opera ran 15 round trips from Lisbon in 2026. From 2026 the EU emissions trading system covers 100% of reported cruise emissions, according to a 2023 industry source we have not rechecked against the regulation. September and October 2026 figures had not been indexed on 24 October.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. If you are cruising, a call in Lisbon is a day in a city whose terminals sit at the foot of Alfama. The APL passenger survey found that 69% of transit passengers walked around, 48% shopped and 28% visited attractions, and Baixa, Alfama and Belém were the most visited areas. Peak days are now busier than before, with 33 calls in August 2026, so book timed entries early. If you are choosing whether to stay before or after a cruise, a turnaround passenger is the guest hotels want, and the city needs two or three nights to be seen properly. Our Lisbon travel guide covers neighbourhoods and our 3 days in Lisbon itinerary fits a pre-cruise stay.

Tourism businesses and investors. The binding fact is the mix. Transit passengers are flat on 2019 and turnaround passengers have nearly tripled, so revenue per ship call depends on how many calls start or end a voyage. Hotels, transfers, airport services and tours are the beneficiaries, and the Lisbon airport slot ceiling is the constraint for anyone selling flights to turnaround passengers. On the port's rates, 100 more turnaround embarkations equal about 1,470 transit passengers. Underwriting should use the lower bound of the impact estimates, since €80 million, €137.6 million and €794 million describe different things. The thresholds that would change the view are a published tax receipt, a connected shore-power berth, and the 2026 turnaround total passing 250,000.

Journalists and analysts. The safe figures are APL's 2025 turnaround of 206,226, embarked of 105,900, transit of 499,211, total of 705,437, calls of 335 and crew of 257,923, with the 2008 to 2025 series from lisboncruiseport.pt. Do not repeat that 2025 was a record year without saying that it was a record for turnaround only. Do not write "121 calls", "UK 34%", "20-year concession", or the two Lisbon tax receipt figures. Do not call the €80 million a measured impact. Note that this article corrects a 2024 transit figure and a 2018 total in our own national cruise article. The series finding is that Lisbon, Funchal and Leixões each count cruise differently, and that only the Azores publishes cruise-tax receipts, while Lisbon publishes none and Funchal's figure is a press quote.