Porto Airport Statistics 2026: A Record 16.9M Year, 21 New Routes and a Load Factor Nobody Publishes

Three counts of one record year

Every source agrees that 2025 was Porto's busiest year. They differ in the last digits. Eurostat, which publishes the airport returns INE collects, gives 16,923,253 passengers carried, up 6.4% on 2024. VINCI Airports, which owns the concession holder ANA, reports 16,939,000 (+6.3%). ANA's report on regulated charges counts 16,934,192 terminal passengers. The spread is under 0.1% and comes from definitions: Eurostat's series of passengers on board, 16,938,072, is almost identical to the operator's figure. This article uses Eurostat's carried series for history and operator figures for 2026 quarters, and never mixes the two in one growth rate.

On any count the airport has grown quickly for a long time. Passengers rose from 5,279,622 in 2010 to 13,192,791 in 2019, an average of 8.1% a year over the fifteen years to 2025 (derived). The pandemic cut 2020 to 4,449,098. Porto passed its 2019 level in 2023 with 15,182,856 passengers and has added between 0.7 and 1.0 million a year since.

Flights grew more slowly than passengers. Commercial passenger flights rose from 93,792 in 2019 to 106,510 in 2025, up 13.6%, while passengers rose 28.3%. The average flight carried 158.9 passengers in 2025, against 140.7 in 2019 and 123.2 in 2015 (derived). Porto has filled and upsized aircraft as Lisbon did. The difference is that Porto has also kept adding flights, which Lisbon, up 3.2% on 2019, largely could not.

The traffic mix has moved outward. Domestic traffic, mostly to Lisbon, Madeira and the Azores, grew 8.9% between 2019 and 2025, and its share fell from 14.9% to 12.7%. Traffic within the EU grew 30.7% to 10,770,310 passengers, and traffic outside it, which includes the UK, Switzerland, Brazil and North America, grew 34.4% to 4,010,940 (Eurostat; shares derived).

Porto is less seasonal than its holiday image suggests. In 2025 August carried 1,763,317 passengers and January 947,799, a ratio of 1.86. Lisbon's ratio was 1.48 and Faro's 4.37. The five winter months of January to March, November and December carried 33.2% of Porto's annual traffic (derived from Eurostat monthly data). The route data below suggest why: three of Porto's busiest international routes go to Paris, Geneva and Luxembourg, cities with large Portuguese communities who fly home all year.

2026: Porto takes the growth

Lisbon's slowdown and Porto's acceleration are the same story seen from two ends. Eurostat's monthly series, which currently ends in February, shows Porto up 9.7% in January and 5.9% in February 2026. INE's releases, as reproduced by the press, then show 7.9% growth to May and 7.1% to July. VINCI's operator count gives 8,451,000 passengers in the first half, up 7.0%, with the second quarter at +6.1% while Lisbon fell 0.2%.

Set against the national total, the effect is large. INE's January–July figures imply about 1.01 million more passengers nationally than a year earlier. About 0.68 million of them were at Porto, 0.23 million at Faro and 0.21 million at Lisbon (derived from rounded totals and growth rates; the Azores fell after Ryanair left, so the parts add to more than the whole). Our Portugal airports passenger traffic analysis found that Porto and the islands supplied 54% of national growth between 2019 and 2025. In 2026 Porto is carrying that role almost alone.

ANA did not plan for this. In its September 2025 proposal for 2026 airport charges it forecast 16.6 million passengers at Porto for 2026, a total the airport had already passed in 2025. Porto carried 9,035,065 passengers in the second half of 2025 (Eurostat). If the second half of 2026 grows by 5–7%, Porto would finish the year at about 18 million passengers (our extrapolation, not a forecast by any official body).

The load factor nobody publishes

Our planning document gave this article a load factor of 88.2%. We searched ANA's and VINCI's releases, INE's transport statistics and the Portuguese and English-language press for the number and found nothing. No public body publishes a seat count for Porto airport as a whole, so no airport-wide load factor can be calculated, and 88.2% should not be repeated. Among Portuguese airports only one publishes an occupancy rate: Madeira's regional statistics office reported 85.5% at Funchal for 2025.

Eurostat does publish seats at route level, in its avia_par_pt dataset, which currently runs to 2024. Dividing passengers carried by seats on eight of Porto's busiest routes gives load factors between 72.7% and 93.1%, and 85.1% across the eight combined. Those routes carried 34.1% of the airport's 2024 passengers (derived). This is the best available proxy. It is still a proxy: the eight routes are not a random sample, and the remaining two-thirds of traffic may fill differently.

The spread says something about each market. The low-cost routes to London Stansted and Funchal ran above 90%. Paris Orly, Geneva and Luxembourg, which carry Portugal's emigrant communities, ran at 88–89%. The TAP shuttle to Lisbon ran at 72.7%, typical of a feeder route with many frequencies, and its average flight carried 109.5 passengers. The Newark route filled 89.2% of 209,601 seats.

Passengers per flight is the measure that can be tracked every year. Porto's 158.9 in 2025 is close to Lisbon's 161.4 and above Faro's 155.0 (derived from Eurostat). Porto's average rose 29% between 2015 and 2025, which is the clearest public sign that its planes are both larger and fuller than they were.

Who flies from Porto

Airline shares at Porto have not been published since the aviation regulator ANAC's figures for the fourth quarter of 2021, when Ryanair carried 37% of passengers, easyJet 17% and TAP 13% (ECO, 31 March 2022). Anything more recent comes from the airlines themselves.

Ryanair said in February 2025 that it bases 12 aircraft at Porto, flies 72 routes and carries 5.7 million passengers a year there. Against the airport's 2025 total that is about 34% (derived; the periods do not match exactly), close to its 2021 share. A Spanish newspaper later put Ryanair at 13 aircraft and about 6.5 million passengers at Porto without naming a source. For summer 2026 Ryanair added three Porto routes, Gothenburg, Rabat and Warsaw, but put its one extra Portuguese aircraft in Faro.

easyJet opened its Porto base in 2015. By May 2025 it flew 11 aircraft there, six based and five visiting in ECO's description, to 27 destinations in 12 countries, and called itself the airport's second-largest operator. The same month it told Diário de Notícias that capacity at Porto was stagnant and that it had paused growth there. Its 2026 additions were Milan Linate and three Cape Verde islands.

TAP is the airline whose Porto plans are changing fastest. It reported 135 weekly direct flights from Porto for winter 2025/26, 13 of them intercontinental to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, New York and Luanda. Porto–Boston, launched in May 2025, became year-round. Terceira and Praia were added from 1 July 2026, Sal follows from 25 October, and Rio rises to three flights a week from 28 October. TAP also plans a maintenance hangar at Porto by 2028. Our TAP privatisation explainer covers the two bidders for a minority stake; neither has published plans for Porto, and the alliance TAP ends up in will shape which long-haul routes Porto keeps.

21 new routes and the long-haul map

ANA announced 21 new routes for summer 2026, six of them intercontinental: Delta to New York JFK, easyJet to São Vicente, Boa Vista and Praia in Cape Verde, TAP to Praia and Ryanair to Rabat. The 15 European additions were Sofia (Bulgaria Air), Zurich (Chair), Milan Linate (easyJet), Newcastle (Jet2), Warsaw (LOT), Billund (Norwegian), Gothenburg (Ryanair), Prague (Smartwings), Izmir (SunExpress), Terceira (TAP), Asturias, Brive and Strasbourg (Volotea), and Bucharest and Katowice (Wizz Air). ANA credits Warsaw to LOT, although Ryanair also lists a new Porto–Warsaw route. Turkish Airlines rose to 17 flights a week to Istanbul.

Destination counts are softer than route lists. ANA said Porto had more than 100 destinations in March 2025, VINCI said more than 120 on 16 March 2026, and ANA said more than 130 on 1 April 2026. None of these totals comes with a definition, and they mix year-round and seasonal routes.

The North American map has changed most. Delta's daily JFK flight from 21 May 2026 is the airline's first to Porto. United flies seasonally from Newark, a route it ran twice daily in summer 2024. TAP serves Newark and Boston, and Air Canada added Montreal in 2025. Azores Airlines launched weekly flights to New York, Boston and Toronto in 2024, though their 2026 schedule could not be confirmed. Our analysis of the US and Spanish markets shows why carriers are adding capacity: American spending in Portugal passed Spanish spending in 2024. No figure is published for the number of American or Brazilian passengers using Porto.

Brazil remains TAP's long-haul core from Porto, through São Paulo and Rio. Azul started Campinas–Porto in June 2025; whether it survived Azul's network cuts into 2026 could not be confirmed. Ethiopian has linked Porto with Addis Ababa since July 2025. No Gulf carrier serves the airport, so Istanbul is its main one-stop gateway to Asia.

Runway, terminal and the 30-million plan

Porto has one runway, 17/35, 3,480 metres long. ANA spent €50 million rebuilding it between July 2024 and December 2025, with night closures for most of that period and one full-day closure on 10 September 2024. The works added a CAT II instrument landing system on runway 35 and were inaugurated on 16 March 2026, the airport's 80th anniversary. VINCI calls it the largest single investment in the airport's history.

The airport is slot-coordinated all year. A report of the anniversary event in Postal gives its declared capacity as 24 movements an hour, rising to 26 by the end of 2026; we could not find the NAV or ANAC declaration behind those figures. On that basis Porto handled 705,591 passengers per declared hourly movement in 2025, against about 950,700 at Lisbon and 778,182 at London Gatwick (derived). Porto works its runway hard for its rating. It is still well short of the pressure our Lisbon airport capacity article measures at Humberto Delgado.

The tighter limit is the building. The terminal expansion that opened in 2006 cost €108 million and was designed for 6 million passengers a year; the European Investment Bank, which lent €168 million, described the project as lifting capacity from 2.7 to 6 million. In 2025 the terminal handled 2.8 times that design figure (derived). No current terminal capacity is published.

On 16 March 2026 ANA presented a masterplan to the government with 14 new boarding gates, four jet bridges, an enlarged terminal, a new baggage system, a cargo terminal and a link to the planned high-speed rail line. The infrastructure minister, Miguel Pinto Luz, described the aim as making Porto a 30-million-passenger airport, 77% above 2025 traffic (derived). No investment total, horizon year, floor area or phasing has been published. A technical group created by Despacho 3294/2026, with ANAC, NAV, ANA, TAP and others, has until 31 December 2026 to define short-, medium- and long-term expansion. Until it reports, 30 million is a target without a costed plan.

The timing matters because Lisbon will not relieve Porto soon. Lisbon's runway gains two movements an hour from 2027 at the earliest, and our new Lisbon airport tracker shows the replacement airport is not expected before the mid-2030s. Porto will keep absorbing growth Lisbon cannot take for at least a decade.

Cheaper than Lisbon, and rising faster

Airport charges help explain where airlines put aircraft. ANA's report on regulated revenue for 2025 shows Porto collected €146,026,081 from 16,934,192 terminal passengers, €8.62 each, against an authorised maximum of €10.06. The Lisbon group collected €14.59 per passenger against €14.65, and Faro €8.59 against €10.12. ANA records the Porto shortfall as a €24.4 million under-recovery; ANAC has not accepted it.

The gap is narrowing. ANAC approved 2026 increases of 2.40% at Porto and Faro and 0.65% at Lisbon. For 2027 ANA has proposed +3.77% at Porto, about €0.34 per passenger, against +0.67% at Lisbon, and ANAC has yet to decide. Every departing passenger also pays Portugal's €2 carbon tax, in force since July 2021, from which flights to Madeira and the Azores are exempt.

Regulated charges are only part of an airline's costs, and incentive deals are not published. The direction is still clear. The airport with spare runway hours is also the cheaper one, and in 2026 it is where airlines chose to grow.

Delays and the border

Porto is more punctual than Lisbon and slightly below the European average. ACI EUROPE's punctuality network put 64.4% of Porto departures within 15 minutes of schedule in 2024 and 67.7% in 2025, against a network average of 70.2% in 2025 and 48.6% at Lisbon. July is the weak month: 56.1% in July 2025. In 2026 Porto beat the average in March and May and fell just short in June.

The EU's Entry/Exit System added queues in 2026. On Sunday 17 May the border police (PSP) reported a maximum wait of 130 minutes at Porto arrivals between 09:00 and 12:00, longer than Lisbon's 110 and Faro's 100. By 31 May the maximum had fallen to 55 minutes for arrivals and 35 for departures. PSP can partly suspend biometric capture when queues grow; no Porto-specific suspension has been reported. The ETIAS travel authorisation is not yet in operation.

Galicia's airport?

Porto is often described as Galicia's real airport. On scale the description holds. In 2025 Santiago de Compostela carried 3,120,759 passengers (−14.3%), A Coruña 1,292,166 (+4.4%) and Vigo 1,114,810 (+5.3%), a combined 5,527,735 (AENA). Porto carried 3.06 times as many (derived). Santiago's fall followed Ryanair's closure of its base there in October 2025, which removed more than a million seats from Galicia while Ryanair kept growing at Porto.

What is missing is any count of Galicians flying from Porto. Neither ANA nor any survey we found publishes the share of Porto passengers who live in Spain. A booking platform lists about 17 daily buses between the airport and Vigo, taking around two hours. The planned Porto–Vigo high-speed line includes a station at the airport and would cut the journey to about an hour, but only its first Portuguese phase, Braga–Valença, has a target date (2030). Our Northern Portugal tourism statistics cover the Spanish market from the accommodation side.

Inside Porto, Metro line E links the airport with the centre in about 27 minutes. It recorded 1,139,539 validations in 2019 and 978,878 in 2022, the last year with a published line figure, about 1.4% of network use. Cargo is a minor business: 37,476 tonnes in 2025, slightly below 2019's 37,845 (Eurostat).

Ten claims about Porto airport, tested

The panel below checks the figures most often repeated about the airport. Two come straight from marketing, one from a newspaper with no source, and one, the 88.2% load factor, from our own planning document.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers heading to the north of Portugal or to Galicia should look at Porto before Lisbon. It now has nonstop service from New York, Newark, Boston and Montreal, more than 70 Ryanair routes and three new Cape Verde links, and its departures run more punctually than Lisbon's (67.7% against 48.6% within 15 minutes in 2025). The weak points are summer delays and passport queues for non-EU arrivals while the Entry/Exit System beds in. The metro takes under half an hour to the centre, and our Porto destination guide covers where to stay once you land.

Tourism businesses and investors should treat Porto as the country's growth gateway for the rest of this decade, with three caveats. The terminal is the binding constraint at 2.8 times its 2006 design figure, and the 30-million masterplan has no cost or date until the government's technical group reports at the end of 2026. Regulated charges are 41% below Lisbon's but rising faster, with +3.77% proposed for 2027. And roughly a third of traffic depends on one airline, Ryanair, on its own figures. The assessment would change if the technical group publishes a funded first phase, if Lisbon's move to 40 movements an hour in 2027 pulls carriers back south, or if TAP's new shareholder cuts Porto long-haul.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures: 16,923,253 passengers in 2025 (Eurostat; ANA 16.94 million), 28.3% above 2019 on 13.6% more flights; 158.9 passengers per flight; 10.3 million passengers in January–July 2026 (+7.1%, 23.8% of national traffic); about two-thirds of national growth in 2026 (derived); €8.62 regulated revenue per passenger against Lisbon's €14.59; 21 new routes for summer 2026. Do not repeat the 88.2% load factor, 'best airport in Europe' as a current title, 30 million as a plan, 130 destinations as a count or Ryanair's 6.5 million. For the series, Porto is the second airport after Lisbon where passengers have clearly outgrown flights, and Funchal remains the only Portuguese airport with a published load factor. Seat counts, airline shares and passenger origins are the airport data Portugal does not publish.