Portugal Yacht & Nautical Tourism: About 12,800 Berths, Flat Since 2017, and No Official Revenue Figure

Three sizes for one sector

The largest number comes from the nautical division of ACAP, the Portuguese automobile association, which presented a sector study with EY-Parthenon at the first International Nautical Congress in Mafra. Forbes Portugal reported its headline figures on 6 November 2025: more than 6,000 companies, about 10,000 workers, turnover above €500 million (ECO later gave €556 million), 37 marinas and recreational ports, 42 certified nautical stations and a rank of 12th in Europe. No data year or method was given. The 6,000 companies are not marinas or yards. The official 2022 accounts find 50 marina operators and 78 recreational boat builders, which leaves at least 5,870 firms in categories nobody has named. Most are probably retailers, repairers, charter and tour operators, brokers and schools. That is our reading, and the study may say otherwise.

The official picture comes from INE's Sea Satellite Account, which does not report nautical recreation or boating separately, according to the government's monitoring report on the national ocean strategy. That report falls back on business accounts for 2022. Marinas (activity code 93292) had 50 companies, 261 employees, €30 million of turnover and €12 million of value added. Recreational and sport boat building (code 3012) had 78 companies, 1,473 employees, €126.5 million of turnover and €38.9 million of value added. These are proxies. A marina run by a public body or inside a larger property group may sit in another category.

The marina industry's own association gives a third size. The Associação Portuguesa de Portos de Recreio put marina revenue at about €60 million in 2022, up 19% on 2021, with more than €70 million projected for 2023. That is twice the €30 million in the business accounts. The difference is plausibly scope, since an association study can include public operators and ancillary income, but neither figure has been audited in public and we cannot say which is closer to the truth.

Turismo de Portugal counts something else again: certified Estações Náuticas, local networks of operators that carry a quality label. Its programme page, dated October 2026, lists 54 stations and about 2,285 partners, 1,368 of them (60%) tourism-animation or maritime-tourism operators, agencies, accommodation and similar businesses. It says nautical tourism has a relevant economic impact and gives no figure. Forbes counted 42 stations eleven months earlier, so the network is probably growing, but no document dates the additions. The programme began in 2018 and its portal in July 2020.

The only quantified economic study we found is regional and old. The University of the Algarve's CIITT estimated for the regional development commission in 2009 that nautical tourism in the Algarve produced €70.0 million of direct and indirect value added, 1.48% of the region's total, and supported 2,962 jobs. Boaters spent €85.25 a day in 2007, 63.6% of it on food and drink and none of it on berths or yards. The authors counted about 10,700 boat entries a year into Algarve marinas and at least 35,000 boaters. Seventeen years on, it remains the best-documented estimate of what a yachting visitor does in Portugal.

A berth ceiling that has not moved since 2017

Two studies bracket the supply of berths. PwC's 2018 report on nautical demand, using public data it compiled, counted 12,900 berths in 2017. The Associação Portuguesa de Portos de Recreio study, presented in 2023 by the chief executive of Marina de Vilamoura and reported by Barlavento, counted about 12,800. The methods differ and the two should not be drawn as a clean trend, but they agree that national capacity has not visibly grown in six years while occupancy reached about 90% in the Algarve and Lisbon. ECO's September 2026 headline gives the industry's diagnosis: nautical tourism is growing, but a lack of infrastructure is holding back expansion.

Vilamoura shows how unstable the individual numbers are. Visit Portugal and Postal gave 825 berths in April 2024. The marina marked its 50th anniversary on 23 November 2024 by opening three new pontoons with 68 berths for vessels of 20 to 40 metres, and the sources disagree on whether those are inside the 825. Postal's anniversary story says the marina grew from 612 to 1,000, Yachts & Yachting says it peaked at 1,000, and the regional development commission counted 953 in 2008. Nothing reconciles to a round 1,000. Vilamoura is very likely Portugal's largest marina, though nobody publishes a national ranking. It is far from Europe's largest. Empuriabrava in Catalonia has 5,000 berths, and the five largest Spanish marinas all exceed Vilamoura.

Elsewhere the figures are scattered. Guadiana, at Vila Real de Santo António, reported 356 berths, full occupancy and a waiting list above 150 in an undated municipal statement carried by Postal. Olhão had 299 berths in 2017 under a 35-year concession, with plans for 340 and then 500, and we could not verify that the expansion happened. Madeira's four main marinas add up to 914 berths if Funchal (210), Quinta do Lorde (264), Calheta (up to 300) and Porto Santo (140) are taken from Figaro Nautisme in October 2024. That source is not official and omits Santa Cruz and Machico, but the total sits close to the 1,000 that PwC gave for 2017 and the 1,024 implied by the association's 8% share (derived). Horta, which Figaro Nautisme calls the capital of yachting in the Azores, has about 300 berths and about 1,200 sailing boats a year in a profile with no stated year.

The national totals match within 1%. The regional shares do not.

The Azores fall from 1,900 berths in 2017 to about 1,280 on the association's 10% share, a loss of a third, while the North rises from 1,700 to about 2,940, up 73% (both derived). We found no report of closures or openings on that scale. We read the difference as a change in how the studies assign ports to regions, since the association groups Lisbon and the Centre together and does not mention the Alentejo, and we have not treated either movement as a trend. It does mean that no regional berth figure in circulation can be called official.

Demand data is thinner still. PwC's report used a commercial dataset from Latitude 32 on new check-ins by visiting boats: 16,800 in 2011, 17,300 in 2016 and 21,300 in 2017, a 23% jump in the final year. PwC noted gaps in the dataset and said it estimated missing values. About 77% of check-ins fall between May and September, and the report assumes about 2.75 crew per boat, which implies roughly 58,600 crew arrivals in 2017 (derived, and not unique people). The Algarve took 5,900 check-ins, the Azores 4,300 and Lisbon 3,400. The Azores hold 14.7% of berths and took 20.2% of check-ins, or 2.3 check-ins per berth against 1.1 in Lisbon, which fits islands used as stopovers rather than bases (derived). We found no later year.

How Portugal compares: berths per kilometre of coast

The cleanest cross-border comparison is berths per kilometre of coast, because it needs only a berth count and a coastline. Using the CIA World Factbook coastline for every country, so that the ratios are comparable, Portugal has 7.1 berths per kilometre. Spain has 27.0, on 134,200 berths in 289 marinas at March 2026 according to DBK. France has 51.9, on 252,000 maritime berths in the government's September 2025 nautical roadmap. Italy has 22.2, on about 169,000 berths. Croatia, with a long island coast and a charter-led model, has 3.2 wet berths per kilometre on 18,850 at August 2025, plus 7,360 dry berths. Portugal's density is therefore about a quarter of Spain's, one seventh of France's, a third of Italy's and 2.2 times Croatia's (all derived).

The coastline is the weak point of the method. The CIA figure of 1,793 km includes the islands. The national ocean strategy says about 2,500 km and ACAP says almost 3,000 km. At 2,500 km Portugal falls to 5.1 berths per kilometre. France's government roadmap also cites about 20,000 km of littoral, which would cut its ratio to 12.6. The only safe rule is to state the coastline source every time. Island-heavy coasts also distort density, which is why we show Croatia beside Spain rather than ranking them.

What is counted matters more than the ratio. Croatia's statistics office publishes an annual release on nautical-tourism ports. For 2025 it reported capacity at 31 August, revenue of €194.78 million excluding VAT (up 7.9%), 16,573 permanently moored vessels (down 1.6%) and 198,918 vessels in transit (down 7.3%). That is about €10,300 of revenue per wet berth (derived). Portuguese marina revenue of about €60 million on 12,800 berths is about €4,700 per berth, but that is a 2022 industry figure set against a 2025 official one, so the gap is indicative only. Portugal publishes no equivalent of the transit count.

Boats for hire: the passenger-boat economy

Most visitors meet nautical tourism as passengers rather than as owners, and here some numbers exist. The Douro waterway carried 1,388,646 river-cruise passengers in 2025 on 252 vessels from 113 operators, up 0.8% from 1,377,858 the year before (derived), according to Via Navegável do Douro as reported by ECO. Our Douro Valley analysis sets that against river nights and the port trade. In the Azores the regional government counted 239 maritime-tourism companies in 2025, up from 174 in 2019 (+37%, derived), while animation-tourism companies rose from about 270 to 410. In the Algarve a 2023 CiTUR slide cites 468 maritime-tourism operators from Turismo de Portugal's 2021 data. The national register exists, but we found no open dataset by region, year and activity.

The Azores count is contested. An operators' group, AREAT, said about half of activity in the islands was illegal. The regional government replied on 22 January 2026 with 21 direct inspections of maritime-tourism activity in 2025, no offences and seven complaints, none confirmed. For whale watching, the islands' best-known boat product, our whale-watching analysis found that no passenger count is published at all.

The most visible regulation is at the Benagil caves in Lagoa. A harbour-master notice in force from 10 September 2023 banned canoes, kayaks and boards from entering or leaving six nearby beaches. A second notice, published on 30 July 2024 and in force from 13 August 2024, bans landing on the sand inside the cave and swimming into the caves, requires one guide kayak for every six visitor kayaks and sets fines of up to €216,000 for boat operators. Caps on boats and kayaks and maximum visit times exist, but the reports we could read gave no numbers, and we found no cap on beach visitors. The "2024 Benagil beach limits" that we started with do not exist in that form.

Two accidents show why the rules were written. A maritime-tourism boat sank off Lagoa on 20 February 2023 and 36 people were rescued, four of them children. A tourist boat capsized at the Benagil caves on 23 May 2026 and 12 people were rescued, two with minor injuries. We found no verified count of deaths on Algarve tour boats and do not give one. Further west, the Berlengas islands off Peniche have had a daily cap of 550 visitors since a 2019 ordinance, above the 500 recommended by a University of Aveiro study, after 82,000 visits in 2018. We did not verify the current cap or fee. Our Algarve travel guide covers which operators to use.

Rules, risks and the weather

Recreational boating is governed by Decree-Law 93/2018, in force since 1 January 2019, which reworked the 2004 regime with electronic processing, no inspection for new registrations and longer licence validity. We found no reform since. An industry association is lobbying for a "Simplex Náutica" and a 20-year strategy, which are proposals. According to the Royal Yachting Association's August 2026 guidance, EU skipper licences are recognised, an International Certificate of Competence is generally accepted, Portugal has not adopted the UNECE standard for it, and non-compliance carries a fine of €250 to €2,500. About 6,500 new skipper licences were issued from 2019 to 2022, Barlavento reported in 2023. We could not find a source for the VAT treatment of yacht charter.

Weather and wildlife are the risks skippers raise. Storm Kristin hit on 28 January 2026, and the environment agency logged 749 occurrences and 571 damages across 45 municipalities, with shoreline retreat of up to about 20 metres and a €111 million repair plan. Marinas are not mentioned in that summary and we found no marina damage figures. Iberian orcas sank yachts near Fonte da Telha on 13 September 2025 and about 50 nautical miles off Peniche on 10 October 2025, with five people rescued each time. The only marina fires we found date from 2022, at Vilamoura on 7 March and Olhão on 20 April, with three people affected by smoke at Vilamoura and no casualties at Olhão.

Blue Flag is the one environmental count that covers marinas. The 2025 awards included 18 marinas and 22 eco-tourism boats alongside 404 beaches, a total of 444. In 2026 marinas rose to 21 while beaches fell to 396 and the total to 438, according to ECO and E-konomista. Barlavento reports that six of the 21 marinas are in the Algarve. One report gives 459 for the 2026 total, which does not add up from its components, so we use 438.

Ten claims tested

Ten claims about Portuguese boating circulate widely or entered this research from our own planning. None survives as it is usually stated. The clearest example of a number that depends on definition is the coastline: 1,793 km on the CIA's count, about 2,500 km in the national ocean strategy and almost 3,000 km in the industry study. We also carried a mainland figure of 943 km into the research and found no official source for it. The Atlantic-crossing claim confuses staging with starting, since the ARC rally leaves from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. And "300 days of sun" stays unsourced: Faro records about 2,900 sunshine hours a year in press citing IPMA with no averaging period, and no IPMA series of days of sun turned up. The EEZ claim was already tested in our ocean economy article: 1.7 million km², third in the EU.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Berths are the scarce thing, not water. If you plan to bring or charter a boat between May and September, book a berth early in the Algarve and Lisbon, where occupancy is near 90%, and expect Madeira and the Azores to work as stopovers rather than bases. Check licence rules before you charter. EU licences and the ICC are generally accepted, and the Royal Yachting Association's Portugal page is the best English-language starting point. For a day on the water, the Benagil caves have rules on kayaks, landing and swimming, and a tour boat capsized there in May 2026, so book a licensed operator and ask what the current limits are. Our Cascais travel guide covers the marina town that will host an Ocean Race stopover in 2027.

Tourism businesses and investors. The binding constraint is the supply of berths and sheltered water, not demand: about 12,800 berths, unchanged since 2017, occupancy near 90% and waiting lists such as Guadiana's above 150. That supports pricing power in marinas, with the caveat that nobody publishes tariffs, and it makes concession renewals and expansions, such as Vilamoura's 68 large-yacht berths and Olhão's plans, the events to watch. Anyone underwriting a nautical tourism case on the €500 million industry figure should know that the business accounts show 50 marina companies with €30 million of turnover and 78 boat builders with €126.5 million. Three things would change this reading: a published national count of berths and vessels, a Turismo de Portugal estimate of nautical-tourism spend, and any new marina or extension of several hundred berths.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite with attribution: about 12,800 berths (APPR, 2023) and 12,900 (PwC, 2017); 825 berths at Vilamoura; 21 Blue Flag marinas in 2026; 54 Estações Náuticas (Turismo de Portugal, October 2026); 1,388,646 Douro river passengers in 2025; 239 Azores maritime-tourism companies in 2025. Do not repeat Vilamoura as Europe's largest marina, a 1,000-berth Vilamoura without a year, a Cascais Ocean Race in 2023, 37 marinas, 73,000 registered craft, or a €500 million nautical economy without the words "industry association, method unpublished". The finding this article adds to the series is a gap. The water-based part of Portuguese tourism is counted well where a port or waterway authority sits in the middle, as with river and sea cruises, and badly where owners, charterers and small operators do the sailing. Cascais is confirmed as a stopover for The Ocean Race 2027, which starts from Alicante on 17 January 2027. Its stopover will be the first test of whether anyone publishes an impact figure.