Portugal Golf Industry: 2.41M Rounds, 89 Courses and a €4.2B Impact That Is 35 Times Golf's Direct GDP

Supply: 89 courses, four fewer than in 2019

The figure of 89 courses comes from the EY-Parthenon study as reported by Forbes Portugal on 17 October 2024 and by Diário de Notícias on 16 August 2024. Forbes gives the change from 93 courses in 2019 as a net loss of four: one in the Norte, one in the Centro and two in the Algarve. No source names the courses. Because the figure is a net change, openings and closures cannot be separated. A count of 87 courses for 2022 appeared in DN in February 2023, so the series is not even monotonic, and the counting definition is unstated.

DN adds two structural facts. Most courses are 20 to 40 years old, against a useful life of about 30 years, and about five projects between the Alentejo and the Algarve are stalled by water shortages. The Federação Portuguesa de Golfe's 2023 annual report counts 112 clubs and entities with Handicap Authority at 31 December 2023. That counts organisations and not courses, so it cannot stand in for a course register. No published source splits 9-hole from 18-hole courses, lists holes, or separates resort-owned from club-owned courses.

The round count has the same limit. TravelBI reports 2,412,612 rounds for 2023, up 5% on 2022 and 12% on 2019. Which courses reported, and whether member rounds and 9-hole rounds are counted, is unpublished. CNIG told DN in February 2023 that 2022 had reached 3 million rounds. The census growth rate implies about 2.30 million for 2022 (derived), so the earlier claim did not survive the study that followed it. Dividing the 2023 total by 89 courses gives 27,108 rounds per course. The 2019 equivalent is about 23,163 on 93 courses, which is where the 17% increase comes from. Both ratios use the derived 2019 round count of about 2.15 million, obtained by removing the published 12% growth.

Beyond the Algarve: 917,000 rounds on 51 courses

The census gave the Algarve 62% of rounds, Lisboa 15%, Centro 9%, Norte 7%, Madeira 3%, Alentejo 2% and the Azores 1%. The published shares sum to 99%. Applied to the 2023 total they give the derived round counts in the table above, and they show that the non-Algarve courses together carry about 916,793 rounds. The Algarve's own association counted 1.4 million rounds in 2023, some 96,000 fewer than 62% of the census implies, a discrepancy our Algarve study examines.

Outside the Algarve the market looks different. Forbes Portugal reports that 68% of rounds in the Lisboa region are played by Portuguese players and 81% in the Norte. The national foreign majority is an Algarve and Madeira phenomenon. No source publishes rounds per course by region, and the Centro, Alentejo and Azores splits do not exist at all.

Madeira is the one other region with a second count. The regional statistics office (DRE) counts three regional courses, at Santo da Serra, Palheiro Ferreiro and Porto Santo, and DNoticias reported on 18 July 2026 that they recorded 85,312 rounds in 2025, up 8%, with revenue of about €4.5 million, up 12.9%. In the first half of 2025 the three courses logged 49,673 rounds, up 14.2%, and about 80% of them were played by non-members. The census share of 3% implies roughly 72,378 rounds for 2023 (derived), which fits a path to 85,312 two years later. The Porto Santo course, the island's own, went from 27,588 rounds in 2019 to 12,925 in 2021 and 39,749 in 2025, with Denmark supplying more than 60% of its players. For Madeira as a whole, Danes were about 35% of 2023 rounds and June to August held only 19%. Our Madeira tourism statistics article covers the island's wider demand. The Porto Santo and 2024 to 2025 figures are official statements relayed by regional press, and we treat them as such. Our Porto Santo destination page covers visiting the island.

Supply on the islands is about to change. An industry press release from IAGTO on 5 August 2026 says a new 18-hole course designed by Nick Faldo at Ponta do Pargo is scheduled to open in 2027, that Santo da Serra and Porto Santo plan nine more holes each, and that the islands plan 36 more holes by 2030. These are announcements from a tourism-promotion source and not completed facts. Madeira has 3% of national play, and no source publishes the island's current hole count. The Alentejo and the Azores, at 2% and 1% of rounds, publish no round counts of their own.

Who plays: a record 18,499 federados and a foreign majority

Federated golfers are the one national player series with a primary source. Pordata publishes the Instituto Português do Desporto e Juventude's count of federated practitioners by sport, and the golf column runs from 1996 to 2025. The series climbed from 4,520 in 1996 to a first peak of 15,852 in 2005, fell to 13,825 in 2013, and recovered slowly to 15,519 in 2019. It then rose by 1,673 in 2022 alone and kept rising, to 18,499 in 2025, the highest in the series.

The player base is 19.2% above 2019 and 33.8% above its 2013 low (derived). The Federação's 2023 annual report adds that 15,551 federated golfers held a handicap in 2023, 85.8% of the total, and that 3,175 of them were women, 20.4%. It does not publish a regional breakdown or a count of junior players, and the junior growth it cites (federated under-18s up about 12.5%) comes with no base. The older claim that Portugal lost 4,000 golfers in four years, made in a January 2015 interview, is not borne out by Pordata. The series fell by 561 between 2011 and 2014.

The census describes a different population from the federation. Foreign players are 74% of rounds in DNoticias's account of the study, 74% of "practitioners" in Forbes Portugal's, 85% of rounds in DN's, and DN gave 80% for 2022. At 74% foreign, residents played 627,279 rounds in 2023. At 85% they played 361,892 (both derived). Members account for 31% of rounds in 2023, up from 27% in 2019, which is about 747,910 rounds against 581,612, a rise of 28.6% (derived). No source says how a foreign resident with a club membership is classified, so the member share and the foreign share cannot be reconciled from published numbers. Nationally the United Kingdom is the largest source market, Sweden and Germany each supply 6%, France 4%, and the United States entered the top ten for the first time (Forbes Portugal). The Algarve splits are in our Algarve study.

The seasonal pattern is the golfer's own. Play peaks in March to May and September to November, with October the busiest month, ahead of April and May, according to DNoticias's report on the study. Madeira is the exception, as noted, with a low summer share. No national monthly round series exists, so the national curve is described but not measured.

What the €4.2 billion measures

Five different numbers describe the size of Portuguese golf, and they differ by two orders of magnitude. The table lists them with what each counts.

The +57.4% growth is published, and no source gives the 2019 euro figure. Dividing €4.2 billion by 1.574 implies about €2.67 billion for 2019 (derived). DN's wording that the impact "doubled" since 2019 is wrong against that. Essential Business wrote that the impact "from 2019 to 2023" amounted to €4.2 billion, which reads as a five-year total and contradicts Jornal Económico, Record and Forbes Portugal, which treat it as the 2023 figure. Record's 1.6% of GDP only makes sense for one year. A third wrinkle is that TravelBI prints "16.5%" next to the €603 million of gross value added. Jornal Económico reads it as growth on the previous year, and we follow that reading.

Jobs show the same problem. The study's 110,000 is described as employment without a definition, and CNIG told DN in August 2024 that the industry employed 20,000. The NOVA SBE study, which covers only the property channel, counts about 810 full-time jobs a year. The 2017 Algarve study counted 16,800 jobs in that region alone. Dividing the €2.2 billion of remuneration in the EY summary by 110,000 jobs gives €20,000 each (derived), a plausible wage for hospitality and service work and no help in deciding which job count is right.

Revenue per course contradicts itself. The study gives average turnover of €2.2 million per course, half of it from green and range fees. Across 89 courses that is €195.8 million of turnover and €97.9 million of fee income (derived), well under the €160 million of green-fee revenue CNIG reports for 2023. Either the €2.2 million is an average over a subset of courses or the revenue figure includes something broader. The same revenue data gives a price signal. Green-fee revenue per round works out at about €67 in 2019, €67 in 2022 and €66 in 2023 (derived, using the published growth rates and the €145 million and €154 million revenue figures). If that holds, nominal revenue per round has been flat through a period of general inflation, and the revenue growth came from volume. It is an average over all rounds, including member rounds that pay no green fee, so a rising member share also pulls it down.

The property channel: what the NOVA SBE study adds and does not

A second CNIG-commissioned study, from the Nova School of Business and Economics (coordinators João B. Duarte and Pedro Brinca), was presented at the Golf Business Conference in Funchal in November 2025. It covers 2014 to 2024 and measures golf's link to residential tourism and real estate, using INE, RNET, Confidencial Imobiliário and APR data. Its cumulative figures are €760.5 million of production, €407.9 million of gross value added, €70.2 million of tax and €143.5 million of remuneration. Dividing the production by the eleven years gives the €69.14 million a year that appears in some coverage (derived). It also counts 9,266 accommodation units with golf or near a course in 2024, of which 2,595 were licensed in the previous ten years.

The study gives golf a 12% share of construction in tourist accommodation and resorts, 12% of sales brokerage and 24% of resale brokerage. It reports a price premium of about 20% for properties near courses. ECO, Diário Imobiliário and Idealista attribute 19% to European Tour Destinations, which makes the 19–20% in some summaries a merger of two sources. ECO adds that the premium is largest next to the course and fades with distance. No hedonic model or method statement appeared in the coverage we could read. "Production" is undefined in all of it.

The property channel matters for who the industry is. Golf in Portugal is partly a resort-real-estate business, and course ownership shows it. Arrow Global bought five Vilamoura courses in 2023 and the Monte Rei Golf and Country Club in a transaction disclosed to the competition authority in January 2025 (Idealista, 21 January 2025). The price was not disclosed. No transaction price for a Portuguese golf course has been published in any source we found.

Spain and the prizes: how Portugal's numbers compare

Spain's equivalent study is the second edition of the IE University study for the Real Federación Española de Golf and the Asociación Española de Campos de Golf, with 2022 data, reported by Europa Press on 18 September 2024. It puts the impact of golf in Spain at €14,152 million, total production at €15,937 million, direct spending by golf tourists at €5,872 million, 1.4 million golf tourists (up 17% on 2018) and 132,994 jobs. Portugal's €4.2 billion is about 30% of Spain's headline, but the years differ (2023 against 2022), both figures are gross, and both studies were commissioned by the industry. The jobs figures are close, 110,000 against 132,994 even though Spain's headline is more than three times larger. Portugal publishes no count of golf tourists at all, so the most useful Spanish number, 1.4 million visitors, has no Portuguese counterpart. We could not locate course, rounds or registered-golfer figures for Spain or other comparators from the sources available, and the European Golf Association comparison remains open.

The prizes are easier to verify and more often misreported. World Golf Awards names Portugal "World's Best Golf Destination" in 2014 to 2018 and 2023 to 2025. Other years went to Vietnam (2019 and 2021), Australia (2020) and Scotland (2022). Voting is online, open to golf professionals, tour operators, media and the public, and the nominee with the most votes wins. In 2025 the same body named Madeira "World's Best Emerging Golf Destination", the Els Club Vilamoura "World's Best Private Golf Club", and the Dunas course at Terras da Comporta "Europe's Best Golf Course". The Algarve's own recent title is different: IAGTO named it Golf Destination of the Year for 2020 at the awards held in Marrakech, announced on 17 October 2019, with a vote of about 700 tour operators from 64 countries (Essential Business). Neither body is a juried ranking, and the titles belong to different geographies.

What nobody publishes

The sector is large enough to have a lobby, a federation and two commissioned studies, and still its basic statistics are missing. There is no national round count after 2023. There is no register of courses with holes, ownership and opening year, which is why four closures since 2019 cannot be named. The EY-Parthenon report has never been released, so the multipliers behind the €4.2 billion and the definition of the 110,000 jobs cannot be checked. Turismo de Portugal publishes no count of golf tourists and no comparison of their spending with that of other visitors, so the repeated claim that golfers spend several times more has nothing to rest on. Operators' accounts are not summarised anywhere we could find, there is no published tariff table, and the nationality of players is given only as a few percentages. We could not locate national golf figures for Spain's course count or for the other comparator countries from the sources available, which leaves the benchmark section thinner than we wanted.

The regional gaps matter for investors. The Centro, Alentejo and Azores have shares of 9%, 2% and 1% and no absolute counts or course lists. Madeira has a regional statistics service that counts rounds by course and publishes revenue, and mainland Portugal has nothing equivalent. If the Algarve's tourism association and the national industry body published their counts on one definition, the 96,000-round discrepancy between 62% of the census and the Algarve's own 1.4 million could be resolved in an afternoon.

Ten claims tested

The panel below lists the ten claims about Portuguese golf that we tested against the sources. Nine carry a verdict other than verified, and the tenth, our own planning title, is mislabelled. The underlying figures are mostly real. What fails is the label that travels with them: a gross effect called a total, a job count with no definition, a growth rate called a doubling.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. The average Algarve course carries about 2.2 times the rounds of one elsewhere in Portugal (derived), so the Algarve's October peak is where tee times are scarcest and the rest of the country, on average, is quieter. That average says nothing about any one course, and course-level tee-time data does not exist. Madeira plays year-round, with only 19% of rounds in June to August. Treat the World Golf Awards titles as popular votes. Our Algarve travel guide and Madeira travel guide cover the practicalities.

Tourism businesses and investors. The industry's value is in two places that the €4.2 billion obscures: €603 million of gross value added in the courses and the wider tourism economy, and a property channel that NOVA SBE puts at €760.5 million over eleven years. Underwrite the courses on direct revenue of about €67 a round, flat in nominal terms across 2019, 2022 and 2023, and on a supply base that is mostly 20 to 40 years old against a 30-year useful life. The member share rising from 27% to 31% of rounds reduces fee income per round. Thresholds that would change the assessment are publication of the EY-Parthenon report, a 2024 or 2025 national round count, and a course register that separates openings from closures. Madeira's announced 36 holes by 2030 and the water-stalled projects between the Alentejo and Algarve are the two supply changes to watch. For the wider tourism economy context, see our article on tourism's share of GDP and employment.

Journalists and analysts. The figures safe to cite, with their basis, are 2,412,612 rounds and 89 courses in 2023 (CNIG/EY-Parthenon via TravelBI and Forbes Portugal), 18,499 federated golfers in 2025 (Pordata), €603 million of gross value added and €120 million of direct GDP in 2023, and the 85,312 rounds on three Madeira courses in 2025 (DRE via DNoticias). Do not repeat "€4.2 billion industry" without saying it is a gross effect, "110,000 jobs" without noting CNIG's own 20,000, "doubled since 2019", the 19–20% premium as NOVA SBE's, or the Algarve as "world's best". The series finding this article adds is that a headline impact is often a different quantity from the sector's own value added. We found the same gap in surf tourism economics, where a €23 million event impact turned out to be a gross figure from a commissioned thesis.