Portugal Cruise Statistics 2026: 1.82M Passengers, Nine in Ten Only Passing Through, and No Official 2025 Total

Four counters, four different totals

Cruise passengers in Portugal are counted by at least four bodies and no two counts match. INE publishes the headline series, reproduced by Pordata, and counts every passenger on board once per call. The 2024 total of 1,824,952 splits into 92,976 who embarked, 95,899 who disembarked and 1,636,077 in transit, with or without an excursion ashore. The three parts sum exactly to the total. The port authorities in Lisbon (APL) and Funchal (APRAM) use the same per-call logic, and APRAM reports crew separately.

Eurostat counts differently. Its dataset mar_pa_aa covers cruise passengers embarked and disembarked only, so transit passengers disappear and a turnaround passenger appears twice, once at each end of the voyage. On that basis Eurostat's maritime passenger article reports Portugal up 125.6% in 2024 against 2019, behind Greece at 171.4% and ahead of Poland at 79.9%. INE's own embarked-plus-disembarked series gives 188,875 in 2024 and 84,094 in 2019, a rise of 124.6% by our arithmetic, which is consistent with Eurostat's concept. We could not read Eurostat's port-level values because its API was blocked from our research environment, so every port figure below comes from port authorities, INE through Pordata, or press reproductions of their releases.

CLIA Europe, the industry association, counts 1.85 million passenger visits to Portugal in 2024, made up of 1.64 million in transit, 106,000 embarkations and 104,000 debarkations. That is close to INE but compiled separately. The Azores add a fourth count. The regional ecotaxa, a €3 levy, billed 127,493 taxable passengers in 2025 against 157,685 cruise passengers in the Cruise Atlantic Islands series. Children under ten and residents are exempt, which may explain part of the gap, but the source does not say.

Even INE's ship count is unstable. Jornal Económico, citing INE's main-port release, reports 965 cruise ships in 2024, up 9.9%. Pordata lists 2,133 cruise ships for 2024 and 2,090 for 2025, with no 2025 passenger breakdown. Lisbon's 369 calls are 38.2% of 965, close to the 38.7% INE is quoted as giving, so 965 looks like main-port calls. We cannot reconcile the 2,133 and use neither as a national call total. The panel below tests ten figures in circulation. Three come from our own earlier articles and drafts.

Nine in ten passengers only pass through

INE's series shows how thin the turnaround segment is. Total passengers were 1,404,179 in 2019, fell 84.0% to 224,089 in 2020, and first passed 2019 in 2023 at 1,678,551. The 2024 total is 30.0% above 2019. Transit passengers made up 94.0% of the 2019 total and 89.7% of the 2024 total, so the mix is moving toward turnaround. The movement is uneven. Embarked plus disembarked passengers peaked at 217,845 in 2023 and fell 13.3% in 2024, while transit rose 12.0%.

The difference matters because the two groups spend differently. APL commissioned a survey from Netsonda, with 853 interviews at the Lisbon terminal between 9 April and 23 May 2022 and a margin of error of 3.36%. It found an average of €82 per passenger over the whole stay, about €367 for passengers embarking and about €37 for those in transit. Respondents were 80% in transit, 13% embarking and 7% disembarking. The Nova SBE rates that APL cites for its 2025 estimate are €573 per embarked passenger and €39 per transit passenger, a ratio of 14.7 to 1.

Apply those rates to Lisbon's 2025 figures and the number APL published falls out. 105,900 embarked passengers at €573 give €60.7 million, and 499,211 transit passengers at €39 give €19.5 million, a total of €80.1 million. The headline of more than €80 million is therefore a rate card applied to counts, not a 2025 survey. Embarking passengers are 15.0% of Lisbon's passengers and supply 75.7% of the estimate, by our arithmetic.

Funchal's only published spend survey gives €61.40 per passenger. The Funchal Commercial and Industrial Association (ACIF-CCIM) collected 1,055 questionnaires between 16 April and 23 May 2022 for the Interreg 4PORT project. Its infographic does not say the figure is per day, as it is often quoted, and APRAM applies it to passengers and crew alike, which is how the island reaches its €62.8 million season figure. Our Madeira cruise statistics article shows that 27% of that figure is crew. No spend survey exists for Leixões or the Azores.

Turnaround shares elsewhere are far higher. Barcelona recorded about 2,351,000 embarked and disembarked passengers in 2025, 58% of roughly 4 million movements, according to Seatrade Cruise News on 3 February 2026. Portugal's equivalent in INE's 2024 data is 10.3%. A country with the same number of passengers and Barcelona's mix would have a very different spending profile.

Port by port in 2025

Five ports publish 2025 figures. Madeira recorded 746,257 passengers (APRAM), Lisbon 705,437 (derived from APL's turnaround and transit counts), Leixões about 225,000 (an APDL estimate), the Azores 157,685 and Portimão 23,996. Together they come to about 1,858,000. Setúbal and Sines publish no passenger totals, and the Leixões figure is a projection made on 18 December 2025, so the sum is derived and approximate. On the same basis the five ports handled about 1,854,000 in 2024, which makes 2025 a flat year. Portimão's 2024 base is back-calculated from a +70% headline, at about 14,100.

Madeira. APRAM counted 746,257 passengers in 2025, up 2.4% from 728,604, with 278,185 crew counted separately. Funchal alone appears at 744,699 in the Cruise Atlantic Islands statistics, third among Atlantic ports behind Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1,126,092) and Las Palmas (994,954). It was also the slowest grower in that table. Funchal rose 2.61% while Santa Cruz de Tenerife rose 15.86%, Las Palmas 12.85%, Arrecife 8.72% and Santa Cruz de La Palma 42.98%. The island's cruise passengers equal 2.88 per resident on the Madeira statistics office's year-end 2024 population of 259,440 (derived), the highest of the three regions for which we could compute it.

Momentum returned in 2026. The 2025/26 season, which runs from 1 September to 31 May, closed at 791,707 passengers on 344 calls, up 6.29% from the restated 744,855. The first quarter brought 335,748 passengers (+24.79%) on 129 calls, and the regional statistics office put the first half up 18.5%. APRAM's forecast of 6 and 7 October 2026 is about 820,000 passengers on 349 calls for the calendar year, the first above 800,000. That forecast rests on bookings and is not an outturn. Funchal also has a berth problem. APRAM's president said in 2022 that lack of space forced it to refuse calls, and a 400-metre extension of the Pontinha breakwater costing about €150 million is under study.

Lisbon. Lisbon's own history corrects a common assumption. The port handled 577,603 passengers in 2018, then 571,259 in 2019, down 1%, so 2019 was not a record. The first real record after 2018 came in 2023 with 758,328, followed by 763,752 in 2024. APL published the 2025 detail but no total, and the sum of its turnaround and transit counts is 705,437, down 7.6%. Transit fell 15.6% to 499,211, while turnaround passengers rose to a record 206,226, beating 204,004 in 2023, and embarkations reached a record 105,900.

Turnaround passengers were 29.2% of Lisbon's 2025 passengers against 22.5% in 2024 (derived). The first eight months of 2026 continue the pattern. APL recorded 448,037 passengers for January to August, up 2%, on 220 calls (+6%), with turnaround at 127,194 (+13%) or 28.4% of the total. June set a monthly record of 81,735 passengers, up 53%. January to August is only 63.5% of the 2025 total, so the 2026 outcome is open. Lisbon's 2025 cruise passengers equal 1.07 per resident on INE's 2025 estimate of 658,236 (derived). Our Lisbon tourism statistics article carries the airport ceiling and rental data that frame this traffic.

Leixões. The Porto terminal has grown every year since 2022. Passengers were 95,562 in 2017, 108,626 in 2022, 148,889 in 2023 and 195,877 in 2024, with INE rounding the last to 195,300. For 2025 APDL reported 223,603 passengers on 145 calls to the end of November and expected about 225,000 for the year. A headline of 226,000 exists but we could not open it, and one trade report says the 145 calls match 2024 while APDL's own 2024 count is 152. The turnaround count is the real change. Turnaround passengers rose from 2,121 in 2024 to about 24,000 in 2025, on 12 turnaround operations, five of them by Mein Schiff 6. That is roughly 10.7% of passengers (derived).

The 2026 plan doubles down. Leixões expects 21 turnaround operations, 11 of them weekly Mein Schiff 6 calls on Thursdays from 2 July to 10 September, and more than 50,000 turnaround passengers, about 2,000 boarding and 2,000 leaving per call. No 2026 year-to-date total is published. Our Porto tourism statistics article covers the record airport year that feeds the same hotels.

The Azores. Portos dos Açores' figures, reproduced through the Cruise Atlantic Islands series, show 152,155 passengers on 175 calls in 2024 and 157,685 in 2025 (+3.63%). Terceira's Praia da Vitória handled 27,607, up 10.44%, and Corvo 209. São Miguel took about 63% of passengers in 2022, the last published split (derived), when the archipelago recorded about 128,000 passengers on 200 calls. The islands equal 0.67 cruise passengers per resident on the provisional 2021 census count of 236,440 (derived). The history carries a contradiction. Portos dos Açores reported more than 164,000 passengers disembarking in 2018, while Lusa reporting in 2023 treated 113,000 as the 2018 figure and 128,000 in 2022 as a record. On the first basis 2025 is below 2018. The definitions probably differ and we cannot settle them. There is no port-by-port 2025 table, no turnaround split and no 2026 year-to-date figure. Our Azores tourism statistics article covers the Ryanair exit and the decline in nights.

Portimão and the rest. Portimão handled 23,996 passengers on 56 calls in 2025, up 70% and 40% (APS, 5 February 2026). On 8 August 2026 it passed its 2011 record of 46,263, and reached 48,669 passengers on 48 calls by 10 August. APS forecasts about 90 calls in 2026 and 117 in 2027, in a channel 8 metres deep. Portimão is the only Algarve cruise port with a published count that we found. Setúbal has no passenger totals, but NiT Setúbal reported on 12 October 2026 that a new terminal is expected to take its first ships in 2027, for SeaDream, Ponant and Noble Caledonia. Setúbal had planned only four calls in 2024. Sines, Figueira da Foz, Viana do Castelo, Aveiro and Peniche published no cruise counts that we could find.

What the money figures can and cannot say

Two impact studies dominate the debate, and they do not reconcile. CLIA Europe's report on 2024, published on 18 March 2026, puts the industry's output in Portugal at €940 million, its GDP contribution at €410 million and its jobs at about 9,800. The figures use an Oxford Economics input-output model. Lusa's report of 27 April 2026 presented the €940 million as 2025 data, and the 7% growth in its headline refers to about 80,000 Portuguese cruisers, up 7.3%, not to total passengers. CLIA ranks Portugal tenth and last among the ten largest European markets by output and GDP, and eighth by jobs.

The Lisbon study sits in tension with that. Nova SBE's evaluation, released by APL on 29 October 2024, credits Lisbon alone with €794 million of GDP in 2023, €1.934 billion of production, more than 20,000 jobs, €159 of spend per passenger and €2.29 million of GDP per call. The same series put 2019 at €336 million of GDP and €840 million of production. GDP rose 2.4 times over four years while Lisbon's passengers rose 32.7% (derived), and one port's GDP is 1.9 times CLIA's figure for all of Portugal. The release does not name the client or publish the model, so the two cannot be reconciled from public material.

Port-level revenue claims are thinner. APDL cites an estimated direct revenue of €9 million for Leixões in 2018 and €19.7 million in 2023 with no method. The CLIA PDF was read through a summary, and its Portugal rows should be checked against the document before anyone quotes them. We also derive per-visit figures from CLIA's national numbers below. They are illustrative and rest on CLIA's visit counts, which differ from INE's.

Portugal's GDP per visit sits between Spain's and Greece's. CLIA publishes no turnaround split for these countries, so we cannot test whether homeporting explains the ordering, but Barcelona's 58% turnaround share makes the question worth asking.

Levies and shore power

Four cruise levies exist, and the public record on each is weaker than the press coverage. Lisbon's €2 is collected by APL through the JUL platform and passed to the council. The council expected about €1.2 million a year. Two exact receipt figures for Lisbon, €365,920 for April to December 2024 and €981,493 for 2025, circulate in our own series notes. Exact-figure searches found no source for either, so we do not use them.

Funchal's position is murkier. DN Madeira reported on 10 March 2026 that the sea-arrival tax had raised almost €2 million from more than 1.2 million passengers, without stating the period. DN Madeira said on 29 December 2024 that crew also pay, which conflicts with the exemption in our earlier notes. On 1 October 2026 the Funchal council approved an amended regulation doubling the overnight tourist tax to €4 a night. Funchal Notícias reports that it also applies to passengers arriving by sea, with exemptions for children aged 12 and under, crew, forced diversions and calls where Funchal is the final port. A 30-day consultation follows and the start is given only as January. Neither article states a separate cruise rate or a year, so the claim that cruise passengers pay €4 from 2027 is probable but unconfirmed. Our tourist-tax article will need the same correction.

The Azores ecotaxa shows the collection problem in numbers. Portos dos Açores billed shipping agents €382,479 for 2025 and had received €266,277 by May 2026, 69.6% of the bill (derived), with €116,202 outstanding, equal to 38,734 passengers. Only €5,703 reached the Region in July 2025 and €260,574 in January 2026, and the regional government did not budget the money for 2026. Matosinhos' regulation took effect on 1 January 2025, but we could not read its rate for cruise passengers.

Shore power is planned in several ports and operating in none for cruise ships. Lisbon's first phase costs €20 million, of which €2.7 million had been spent by 22 July 2025, with works begun in 2023 and completion planned for 2027. The second phase is paid by the concessionaires. A CLIA environmental report, as reported on 28 September 2026, lists Lisbon, Leixões, Funchal, Ponta Delgada and Figueira da Foz as planned and none as funded. Funchal has an EU co-financed feasibility study and is seeking funding, with no cost or date. The Azores are studying shore power only for inter-island ferries. Provisional EU rules reported by ESPO in 2023 would require major ports to offer it by 2030, and we did not check the final regulation texts.

The emissions evidence is old. Transport & Environment and Zero ranked Lisbon fifth and Funchal tenth among Europe's top ten ports for cruise pollution on 2022 data, published on 19 June 2023, and put Lisbon's cruise sulphur oxides at about 11 tonnes against 4.5 tonnes from roughly 374,000 registered vehicles. Madeira's government disputed the Funchal result, and T&E cited 96 Funchal calls where APRAM counted 302 in 2022. We found no 2025 ranking.

How Portugal compares

Portugal is a small cruise country with two large transit ports. Its five-port 2025 sum is about 13% of Spain's 14,105,784 and 22% of Greece's 8,415,713, by our arithmetic. Barcelona's 3,999,258 passengers alone are 2.15 times the Portuguese total. The comparators below use different counting bases and several do not state theirs, so read them as scale, not as a league table.

The Atlantic is Portugal's real peer group. The Cruise Atlantic Islands total reached 4,708,190 in 2025, up 12.64% and 46.99% above 2019. Madeira's 746,257 is 15.8% of it and the Azores' 157,685 is 3.3%, while the Canary ports carry about 3.7 million. Funchal's 2.61% growth in 2025 against the Canaries' double digits frames the berth question. Our Madeira against Tenerife comparison covers the visitor side of that competition.

Portugal has no cap on cruise calls or ship size. In everything we found, no Portuguese port limits ship numbers, and the calls for limits come from the NGO Zero in 2020 without a numeric cap. Lisbon's mayor, Carlos Moedas, said in September 2024 that he would remove cruise ships if he could and that the concession is the obstacle. He described it as a 20-year concession, while a 2017 trade report gives 35 years, and we could not settle which is right. Dubrovnik, by contrast, publishes a cap of 4,000 cruise visitors, and Santorini and Mykonos were reported by CruiseMapper to charge €20 a passenger in high season from 1 July 2025, though that report cites no legal instrument.

2026 and what to watch

The Associação de Portos de Portugal forecasts 1,970,275 passengers and 1,138 calls in 2026, up 6% and 8%. The implied 2025 base is about 1.86 million, matching our five-port sum. The first eight months point to a smaller rise at Lisbon, where passengers are up 2%, and larger ones at Funchal, Portimão and Leixões. INE's 2025 passenger breakdown, which Pordata shows as unavailable, will give the first official national total. Setúbal's terminal in 2027 would add a sixth port with a published count, and any funded shore-power contract would be the first for cruise ships in Portugal.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Funchal was the busiest cruise port in the country on 2025 totals and can have four ships in one day. On 1 December 2025 it received four ships carrying 13,033 passengers and 4,335 crew, and at New Year 2025/26 eleven ships carried about 22,000 passengers and 8,000 crew, according to APRAM via DN Madeira. Check the APRAM schedule before visiting the old town on those days. In Lisbon, transit passengers are 71.8% of the 2026 first-half total, so most arrivals are day visitors who return to the ship by evening. Cruise passengers pay a €2 charge in Lisbon and Funchal, and a €3 ecotaxa in the Azores. Our Lisbon travel guide shows how to plan around the crowds.

Tourism businesses and investors. The numbers separate two businesses. Transit passengers spend €37 to €61 per head in the surveys we found, and turnaround passengers €367 to €573, so a port's value tracks its turnaround count more than its total. Lisbon's 29% turnaround share and Leixões' step from about 2,100 to about 24,000 and a planned 50,000 are the growth to underwrite. The thresholds to watch are Lisbon's turnaround share against 30%, whether Mein Schiff 6 returns to Leixões after 2026, Funchal's berth decision and the start of Setúbal in 2027. Do not underwrite on €940 million or €80 million as annual measured figures. The first is a 2024 model output and the second is a rate card.

Journalists and analysts. The safe figures are INE's 1,824,952 passengers in 2024 with 89.7% in transit, Lisbon's 206,226 turnaround and 499,211 transit passengers in 2025, Madeira's 746,257, the Azores' 157,685 and Portimão's 23,996. The figures to avoid are the €940 million as a 2025 number, the €80 million as a measurement, Lisbon's 2019 as a record, the UK's share of Lisbon passengers as 34% or 40% without a caveat, Lisbon's two receipt figures, Funchal's €4 cruise rate as settled, and any national 2025 total. The series finding is that cruise joins the list of segments with no national total, and that its impact studies come from interested parties.