Porto/Leixões Cruise Terminal: Record 223,603 Passengers to November 2025, No Final Count and Turnarounds Up Elevenfold

What the 2025 record does and does not say

The 223,603 figure comes from one release by the Port of Leixões authority (APDL) on 18 December 2025, which Cruise Europe, Seatrade, MedCruise and Cruise Industry News all reproduced. It counts every passenger once per call and covers January to November. It is 18% above the same months of 2024, and the 145 calls match the year before. APDL's own projection for the full year was 148 calls and around 225,000 passengers, which would be 14.9% above the 2024 total of 195,877 (derived). A headline from Transportes & Negócios gives 226,000, but its page would not load for our tools, so we treat it as unverified.

The growth rates need a base. An earlier APDL update put growth to the end of October at nearly 30%, on 216,644 passengers. Both rates compare the same months of 2024, so both can be true. They imply a 2024 base of roughly 167,000 to October and 189,500 to November, which means November 2024 alone carried about 22,000 to 23,000 passengers while November 2025 added only 6,959. Those numbers are derived from rounded rates and carry an error of a couple of thousand. The shape is clear anyway. The first half of 2025 averaged about 16,800 passengers a month, July to October averaged about 28,900, and November fell away. The record was built in summer and September.

The 2024 base has four published values: 195,877 in APDL's annual table, 195,833 on APDL's cruise page, about 196,000 in APDL's January 2025 release and 195,300 in INE's figure as reported by Jornal Económico on 12 May 2026. The spread is 0.3% and changes no growth rate, but a citation should name which one it uses. Against the full 2024 year, the November count is already up 14.2% (derived).

Counting conventions add a second layer. APDL and INE count every passenger once per call, transit included. Eurostat's port-level table counts embarked and disembarked passengers only, so a Eurostat figure for Leixões would be lower and cannot sit beside APDL's. We could not reach Eurostat's table, so every figure here is on the APDL and INE basis.

Thirteen years in one series: a 2018 peak, a 2019 fall and a 2023 breakthrough

APDL's annual table starts in 2013 with 46,620 passengers on 67 calls and reaches 117,096 on 101 calls in 2018. In 2019 the same 101 calls carried 88,696, a fall of 24.3% in the last year before the pandemic (derived). Cruise Europe describes 2018 as the first year the port passed 100,000 passengers. The table does not say it is cruise-only, but its 2019 and 2024 rows match APDL's cruise releases and a 2023 Portus article quoting APDL, and we read it as cruise (our inference).

The 2018 peak stood until 2023. The pandemic took the port to 6,477 passengers on seven calls in 2020 and 8,941 on 22 in 2021. Calls recovered faster than passengers: 112 in 2022 beat the earlier record of 101, while 106,193 passengers stayed 9.3% below 2018 (derived). APDL's January 2023 release and Portus give 108,626 and 108,600 for the same year, and the 2.3% gap with the table is unexplained. Our planning notes said Leixões had grown every year since 2017. It had not. Passengers fell in 2016, 2019 and 2020, and the port set a passenger record only in 2023, with 148,893, 27% above 2018 (derived).

Each year since has been a record, with 195,877 in 2024 and at least 223,603 in 2025. The 2024 total is 121% above 2019 (derived), against 30% for Portugal as a whole on INE's national count of 1,824,952 cruise passengers. Passengers per call tell the same story: 878 in 2019, 1,289 in 2024 and 1,542 in 2025 to November (derived). APDL reports gross tonnage of 8.9 million GT in 2024 and 9.4 million GT to November 2025, up 9% on the same months, which divides to about 58,600 and 64,800 GT per call (derived). Ships are getting bigger, and each call carries more people.

The calendar is lumpy. April 2025 was the busiest month of the first half with 30,266 passengers, and September 2024 the busiest of that year with 30,409. May has the most calls in both years, 28 in 2024 and 25 in the first half of 2025. Leixões is a spring and early-autumn port, which suits the Iberian and Bay of Biscay loops that call there. Compare Madeira, where winter carries the business, in our Madeira cruise statistics.

From stopover to homeport: turnaround passengers up elevenfold

Turnaround is where Leixões differs from the rest of the country. In 2024 the port ran six turnaround operations, two of them by World Explorer, and 2,121 passengers began or ended a cruise there, 1.1% of the total (derived). In 2025 it ran 12 and about 24,000 did, roughly 10.7% of the November total (derived, and mixing a rounded figure with a year-to-date count). That is about eleven times the 2024 figure. Lisbon's turnaround share reached 29.2% in 2025, and the Lisbon cruise port article shows how a port gets there and what it costs.

The 2025 breakdown does not add up cleanly. Cruise Europe says five of the 12 operations carried about 5,000 passengers each, which is 25,000 before the other seven are counted, while the stated total is nearly 24,000. The 5,000 is probably a round figure for embarkations plus disembarkations on a large TUI ship, and the total is an approximation. The 12 operations are counted through November.

Ports chase turnaround because a call that starts or ends a voyage is worth more than one that only passes. Lisbon's rate card, from a Nova SBE study for APL reported by ECO, prices a turnaround passenger at €573 and a transit passenger at €39, a ratio of 14.7 to 1. That is a Lisbon number and cannot be applied to Leixões, where charter passengers fly in, board and fly home, and no source says how many stay a night in Porto. It does explain why APDL publishes turnaround counts in every release, and why the 2,121 in 2024 and the 24,000 in 2025 are the figures to watch.

2026 is the first season dominated by one ship. Mein Schiff 6, a 99,500 gross-ton, 295-metre TUI Cruises vessel, made 11 consecutive Thursday turnarounds from 2 July to 10 September, on itineraries to Bilbao, Le Verdon, A Coruña, Vigo, Gibraltar, Tangier, Cádiz and Lisbon. Cruise Industry News, quoting APDL on 27 September 2026, reports 54,351 passenger movements: 24,387 embarkations, 24,334 disembarkations and 5,630 transit passengers, plus more than 10,000 crew. The headline includes the transit passengers. Embarkations and disembarkations alone come to 48,721, which fits the "almost 50,000" in the same release. In ten weeks one ship handled about twice the port's whole 2025 turnaround traffic, or 4,941 movements per call (derived).

The number of operations is itself contested. NM Matosinhos reported on 20 July that 21 turnarounds were scheduled, up 75% on 12, with 11 by Mein Schiff 6 and ten by smaller luxury ships. Cruise Europe's 23 September update says 20, up 67%. One of the ten smaller operations moved, was cancelled or was recounted. APDL has published no 2026 total for passengers or calls, only that turnaround passengers more than doubled on 2025. For 2027 the same update reports six more TUI turnarounds worth about 30,000 passengers.

Turnaround passengers arrive on weekly charter flights, mostly from German cities. No source names Porto airport or gives flight counts, so the link between the 48,721 Mein Schiff 6 passengers and the airport is an assumption. Our Porto airport statistics cover the scheduled traffic that these charters sit beside.

The mix of nationalities has moved with the turnaround business. The UK supplied 44.1% of passengers in 2023 and 34% in 2024. In the first half of 2025 Germany led with 31%, ahead of the UK at 29% and the US at 20%. Cruise Europe's full-year 2025 text lists the UK first, then Germany and the US, without percentages, so the German lead of the first half did not carry to the year, or the list is not ranked by share.

A cargo port with a 300-metre cruise berth

Leixões is first a cargo port. It handled 13,990,733 tonnes in 2025, down 3% from 14,381,901 tonnes in 2024, and was again the leading port of the north-west Iberian peninsula, ahead of A Coruña at 13,699,881 tonnes, which fell 6% (ECO, 18 March 2026). Cruise has no tonnage, and no source gives its share of APDL's revenue or traffic, so the second economy in this story cannot be sized. It is the reason the cruise terminal sits inside an industrial harbour in Matosinhos, with the Metro Line A, buses and taxis connecting it to Porto. APDL quotes about €15 for a taxi for up to four people.

The terminal's published limits matter more now that ships homeport there. The quay is 340 metres, the berth 300 metres, extendable to 320 metres on request, with a depth of 10 metres and a maximum tidal range of 3.7 metres. The stated maximum ship length is 300 metres and the turnaround capacity of the terminal building is 2,500 passengers, with no limit on transit passengers (APDL, Cruise Europe). Mein Schiff 6 is 295 metres long, so it uses all but 5 metres of the stated limit. A ship over 300 metres is outside the published envelope.

Several facts around the terminal are less firm. Cruise Europe dates the cruise quay to April 2011 and full terminal operation to March 2015, while English Wikipedia gives an inauguration on 23 July 2015 in its text and 23 June in its infobox. A construction cost above €50 million appears only on Wikipedia, with no primary source, and we do not use it. The distance to the centre is 1 kilometre on Cruise Europe's page and about 3 kilometres on APDL's, and neither says to which point. Porto restricted tuk-tuks and excursion coaches in its historic centre in 2024, cutting tuk-tuks to 40 electric vehicles and confining coaches to three car parks (Lusa via ECO, 22 July 2024). The report does not mention cruise ships, so any link to cruise excursions is our inference.

No spend study, a €2 levy without receipts and shore power in 2029

No study of cruise spending in Porto or Matosinhos turned up in Portuguese or English searches. The only per-head Portuguese figure is Madeira's €61.40 per passenger or crew member, from an APRAM study using a 2022 survey of 1,055 visitors, which we examine in the Madeira article. Lisbon's "more than €80 million" reproduces as a rate card, not a measurement. CLIA's national model gives €940 million of output, €410 million of GDP and about 9,800 jobs for 2024 on 1.85 million visits, which is about €222 of GDP per visit (derived), and it is a model for the country, not for a port. A CLIA-cited figure of about €660 per traveller for a seven-day cruise is spending for the whole cruise and does not describe what is spent ashore. The split of passengers between Porto, the Douro, Guimarães, Braga and Aveiro is not published, and no source says whether INE's accommodation statistics capture cruise day-visitors. They are most likely absent, because INE counts paid lodging, but we have not verified it.

Matosinhos has charged a cruise levy since 1 January 2025. Regulamento n.º 1414/2024, published in the Diário da República on 6 December 2024, sets €2.00 per passenger arrival, applied to each passenger disembarking at the terminal, with crew excluded and the terminal operator collecting it. The regulation lists exemptions for residents and for medical and disability cases, and an age threshold of 16 in Article 6, but its text does not make clear whether they apply to cruise passengers. No receipts have been published. If every one of the 223,603 passengers counted to November paid, receipts could not exceed about €447,000 (derived ceiling). The real base is lower, because the levy applies to passengers disembarking, so passengers who only embark sit outside it, and the ceiling is not an estimate. The Azores, which publish receipts, billed €382,479 for 127,493 taxable passengers at €3 in 2025 and had received €266,277, or 69.6%, by May 2026 (derived). Our tourist taxes article covers the overnight levies.

Shore power is planned but not built. The cruise terminal is due to have an onshore power supply from 2029, with a capacity of up to 16 MVA and a first phase of 8 MVA, according to Echo Boomer, on 31 July 2026 and Lusa on 3 August 2026. The contractors are the VINCI Energies companies Omexom and Actemium with APDL. APDL's January 2025 release gave a target of 2030. The company's own estimates are a 70% to 90% cut in carbon dioxide per call and a ship demand of 50 to 70 MWh per call. These are projections. We found no published cost, funding source or measurement of emissions or air quality at Leixões. Lisbon's own project has five different published costs and dates, set out in the Lisbon cruise port article. Portugal's wider ocean-economy accounts, in the ocean economy article, do not separate cruise.

Third of five ports, and smaller than Vigo and A Coruña

On our national table Leixões is third among the five Portuguese ports that publish 2025 figures. Madeira has 746,257 passengers, Lisbon 705,437, Leixões about 225,000, the Azores 157,685 and Portimão 23,996, which sum to about 1,858,000 (derived). Leixões is about 12% of that sum, against 10.7% of INE's national count in 2024. Setúbal and Sines publish no figures.

Per resident, Leixões carries 1.30 passengers per Matosinhos resident on the 2021 census of 172,557 (via Wikipedia, citing INE). The passengers visit Porto, whose census population was 231,800 in 2021 and is quoted at 273,476 for 2025, a jump we have not verified. On those denominators the ratio is 0.96 or 0.82. Lisbon is 1.07, the Azores 0.67 and Madeira 2.88. The denominators and the counting conventions differ, since each passenger is counted once per call, so the ratios describe scale and do not rank pressure.

Across the border, Galicia took about 790,000 passengers in 2025, up 25%, with A Coruña at 59% (more than 465,000 on a record 184 calls) and Vigo at 39% (about 308,000, derived from the share), according to Turismo de Galicia as reported by Ulises Galicia on 18 March 2026. The counting basis is not stated. A Coruña's 184 calls compare with Leixões's 145, and its passengers per call are about 2,500 against 1,542 (derived, bases not comparable). The Douro river, whose 1.39 million passengers in 2025 are six times Leixões's ocean total, is a different product that shares the Porto hinterland.

2026 and 2027: what is scheduled and what is measured

The only 2026 forecast we found is national. The Associação de Portos de Portugal expects 1,138 calls, up 8%, and 1,970,275 passengers, up 6%, across the country (Jornal Económico, 12 May 2026). It gives no figure for Leixões. What exists for the port is a turnaround schedule: 20 or 21 operations in 2026, a doubling of turnaround passengers on APDL's own wording, and six TUI turnarounds in 2027. A total for 2026 will not exist before APDL's January 2027 release.

Five indicators will settle the questions this article leaves open. APDL's full-year 2025 release will turn the projection into a count. INE's 2025 national cruise table, which was not out on 24 October 2026, will give the Leixões figure on INE's basis. The first Matosinhos levy receipts would give the port its first euro figure. The next TUI schedule will show whether the 2027 turnaround programme is smaller than 2026's. And a berth extension or a ship above 300 metres would show whether the 2026 model has outgrown the terminal.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Ships for Porto dock at Leixões in Matosinhos, not in the city. Metro Line A runs from Senhor de Matosinhos station, and APDL quotes about €15 for a taxi for up to four people. In 2026 the Thursday Mein Schiff 6 turnarounds put about 4,900 passenger movements on the quay in a day (derived), so expect the transfers to be busy from July to September. Spring and September are the other busy calls. Our Porto travel guide covers a day in the city.

Tourism businesses and investors. Underwriting Leixões on the 2025 total means underwriting a projection, and the real change is in turnaround and ship size. Turnaround in 2026 depended on one line and one ship, which alone produced 48,721 embarkations and disembarkations, while the 2027 schedule reported so far is six TUI turnarounds and about 30,000 passengers, which is lower (derived, and the schedule is incomplete). The thresholds that would change the assessment are a ship above 300 metres, the 2029 shore power date, a published spend study and levy receipts. The common mistake is to apply Lisbon's rate card to Leixões. Charter passengers arrive and board, and no source gives hotel nights for them in Porto. Our Porto tourism statistics and Norte region article cover the overnight market the ships sit beside.

Journalists and analysts. Safe figures: 223,603 passengers on 145 calls from January to November 2025, up 18% on the same months of 2024 (APDL via Seatrade and Cruise Europe, December 2025); 195,877 passengers in 2024 (APDL annual table); 2,121 turnaround passengers in 2024 and about 24,000 in 2025; 54,351 movements on 11 Mein Schiff 6 turnarounds in 2026, 48,721 of them embarkations or disembarkations; and a €2 Matosinhos levy since 1 January 2025. Do not repeat a 2025 "record year of 225,000" without the word projection, "grown every year since 2017", "54,351 passengers started their cruise", a count of 21 turnarounds without its date, a €50 million terminal cost or any euro impact for Leixões. The series finding is that turnaround share now runs from 29.2% at Lisbon to about 10.7% at Leixões, and that no Portuguese port outside Lisbon has a published study of cruise spending.