Portugal’s WEF Tourism Rank: 11th of 110, 0.02 Points From the Top 10 and a Goal Nobody Has Published

A different index under the same name

The Forum began ranking tourism in 2007 with the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, known as the TTCI. It published eight editions to 2019, covering between 124 and 141 economies on 14 pillars scored from 1 to 7. In May 2022 it released the Travel & Tourism Development Index 2021, which it called a direct evolution of the TTCI. The press release said the framework and methodology differ and that the 2021 results should not be compared with the 2019 TTCI results. The Forum recalculated 2019 on the new framework so that comparisons could be made inside the new series.

The 2024 edition, published on 21 May 2024, was rebuilt again. It has 17 pillars, 102 indicators and five dimensions, with every indicator normalised to a 1 to 7 scale and pillars taken as simple averages. It covered 119 economies. The Forum’s own methodology text says the changes limit comparability with 2021. The 2026 edition, published on 25 September 2026, keeps that structure and drops nine economies: Barbados, Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, Moldova, Montenegro, Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. It adds none. It also recalculates 2019, 2021 and 2024 “using new adjustments”, with a data cut-off of May 2026. Named data providers include Bloom Consulting, AirDNA, Euromonitor, Tripadvisor, the World Bank and UN Tourism.

Two consequences follow. “Competitiveness” has not been in the index’s name since 2022, so a headline about Portugal’s WEF competitiveness rank describes a retired product. And the only clean comparison is the one the Forum makes itself, between 2026 and its recalculated earlier years. We could obtain no recalculated values for any economy. The nearest we have is a Forbes Portugal commentary by the chief executive of Bloom Consulting, which says Portugal’s 2026 score is 3.1% above its 2024 level. That implies a recalculated 2024 score near 4.76, against the 4.78 published in 2024 (derived; the 3.1% is not confirmed in WEF text we could open). The global average score rose 2.1% in the same period, with 92% of the 110 economies improving, according to the Forum’s partner Zurich.

Nine editions, from 17th to 11th

Portugal has risen in most editions since 2009 but not in a straight line. It was 17th in 2009 and 18th in 2011, both on a score of 5.01. It was 20th in 2013 on a secondary-sourced score that equals the earlier two, which looks like a carried-over value, so the table marks it contested. It reached 15th in 2015, 14th in 2017 on 4.74, and 12th in 2019 on 4.9, which the Government then described as its best classification ever. Those are all Competitiveness Index results on a 14-pillar framework.

The Development Index then restarted the series. For 2021 two secondary sources, Wikipedia and Worldostats, give Portugal 16th with a score near 4.77. The Forum’s own table is an image we could not read, so we show that rank as secondary only. The 2024 edition gave 12th on 4.78 (Hosteltur), and 2026 gives 11th on 4.91. The score gap to tenth place was 0.20 in 2017, about 0.1 in 2019 on rounded scores, 0.16 in 2021, 0.03 in 2024 and 0.02 in 2026. The gap has narrowed in the last two editions, though each is measured against a different tenth-placed economy and a different method.

Read the table as direction. Portugal moved from the high teens to the low teens across the Competitiveness editions, fell back when the index was rebuilt in 2022, and has been in 11th or 12th place in the two most recent editions. No edition has placed it in the top ten.

A one-place rise that is Canada’s fall

The 2024 top eleven were the United States, Spain, Japan, France, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Italy, Switzerland and Canada, in that order, with Portugal 12th. The 2026 top ten are Japan, the United States, Spain, Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Switzerland and Italy. The two lists contain the same economies except Canada, which dropped to 14th with 4.85. Portugal’s gain is therefore the arithmetic of one economy: Canada, which stood one place above Portugal in 2024, now stands three places below it. No other economy that was above Portugal in 2024 is below it now (derived).

Europe dominates the 2026 table. Six of the top ten are European according to Zurich’s summary of the report: Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Italy. Portugal would make seven. Zurich also reports that 92% of the 110 economies improved their score and that the average rose 2.1%, the fastest pace since 2019. The 2026 movement is therefore a rising tide, and an economy that stood still would have lost ground. Portugal’s recalculated rise of about 3.1% sits above that average. Albania was the most improved economy, which shows how far a country can move from a lower start and suggests that the top of the table is more stable than the middle.

The table below sets out the 2026 positions around Portugal. The scores for Australia and China, and for Korea and Singapore, come from the Zurich-hosted copy of the Forum’s report because the WEF’s own Data Explorer would not render. Korea is 12th on 4.90, one hundredth below Portugal, and Singapore is 13th on 4.89. Portugal’s cushion over 12th place is smaller than its gap to 10th.

In September 2025 the Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, said that to reach the top ten Portugal needed to overtake Canada and Switzerland. At 12th that was true, because Canada stood 11th and Switzerland 10th. By 2026 half of that condition has been met. Canada is behind Portugal. Switzerland is 0.06 ahead, and Italy sits between them at 0.02 ahead. From 11th place a single overtaking move is enough.

The Forum’s revisions give a sense of how small 0.02 is. Portugal’s own 2024 score moved by about 0.02 on recalculation, from 4.78 as published to about 4.76 (derived). A gap of that size can open or close through data cleaning, a late statistical release or a change in an indicator’s source. That cuts both ways. It means the top ten is within reach on paper, and it means a rank of 11th or 12th in 2028 would say little more than the rank does today.

The top-10 goal: who said it and where it is not written

The ambition is on the record, and it is consistent. On 22 September 2025, at a ceremony in Coimbra for 37 Linha +Interior tourism projects, Castro Almeida said “Hoje, estamos em 12.º lugar” and that reaching the top ten meant passing Canada and Switzerland (RTP/Lusa). In November 2025 the president of Turismo de Portugal, Carlos Abade, told TTG Media at WTM London: “Our goal is to elevate our ranking and to reach the top 10 within the next three years.” On 8 September 2026 the Secretary of State for Tourism, Pedro Machado, said Portugal was “o 12.º país mais competitivo” and wanted to enter the top ten, without naming the index (Marketeer).

On 28 September 2026, three days after the new edition appeared, Castro Almeida told the VIII Cimeira do Turismo Português that Portugal “ocupa atualmente o 11.º lugar” in the 2026 index and that “queremos ir mais longe: colocar Portugal entre os dez países mais competitivos do mundo no turismo” (Portuguese Government press release). Turismo de Portugal published a matching item the same day, with the same aim and no score. Three officials have therefore stated the goal on at least five occasions in 13 months. Every one of those statements is a speech or a press release.

We looked for the goal in a document. Estratégia Turismo 2035 is, according to Pedro Machado on 22 October 2026, “aprovada e a aguardar apresentação pública”, so nobody outside government can read it. Our companion piece on the 2035 strategy found its €53 billion and 50 million tourist figures in speeches too. We could not retrieve the text of Estratégia Turismo 2027. The only secondary description we found, a 2017 Hosteltur report, gives a qualitative vision with no numeric rank. We did not check the Government Programme directly. The summary is that the goal is a stated ambition, not a published target with a date, a budget or a measurement method.

The timeline also deserves a check. “Within three years” from November 2025 ends in November 2028. The Forum published its index in September 2019, May 2022, May 2024 and September 2026, intervals of 32, 24 and 28 months (derived). The same intervals would put the next edition between September 2028 and May 2029. The Forum has not announced a date that we could find, so this is an extrapolation. On it, the three-year window could contain one more edition only if the Forum publishes at the short end of its pattern.

Four of the seven claims confuse this index with an earlier edition, an earlier name or another ranking, and two of the seven come from our own files. The pattern is useful for anyone writing about this index. The rank changes with each edition, the field changes, the name changed, and the neighbouring rankings that Portuguese media report with it, such as the Global Peace Index, measure something else.

What the index sees and what it leaves out

We could not obtain Portugal’s pillar scores or pillar ranks for 2024 or 2026. The Forum’s Data Explorer and economy profiles load dynamically and returned nothing we could read, and the PDF we found shows pillar results only as global and regional averages. That is a real gap, because the pillars are where a rank turns into a diagnosis. The most recent pillar ranks we could find are from the old framework in 2019, reported by Observador on 4 September 2019: tourist service infrastructure 1st of 140, safety and security 9th, natural and cultural resources 15th, air transport infrastructure 21st, ICT readiness 38th and price competitiveness 95th. These were different pillars on a different method, and we show them as history, not as the current profile.

The Forum’s global finding for 2026 is that price competitiveness fell in about three-quarters of the 110 economies. Portugal’s own price pillar is not available to us, but the hard data point the same way. The Eurostat price index for accommodation services rose 44.1% in Portugal between 2019 and 2025, against 39.8% in Spain, 36.6% in Italy, 27.9% in Greece and 73.6% in Croatia. For restaurants and hotels together the rises were 37.3% in Portugal, 27.3% in Spain, 25.0% in Italy, 27.5% in Greece and 64.5% in Croatia (all derived from Eurostat prc_hicp_aind). Our RevPAR analysis found that hotel rates, deflated by that accommodation index, are 3.1% below 2019. If the Forum scores price the way it scored it in 2019, it is the pillar where Portugal has the most to lose.

Outcomes are the part of the index our series can test most directly. Portugal recorded 89.4 million nights in registered tourist accommodation in 2025 (Eurostat), 15.3% above 2019, and €29.1 billion of travel receipts, up 58.8% on 2019 (Banco de Portugal via Eurostat). Foreign nights grew only 0.6% in 2025, the slowest of the five economies in our benchmark. The Forum’s index mixes outcome measures with enabling conditions, so an economy can hold its rank while its volume growth slows. We could not tell how much of Portugal’s 2026 score gain came from demand outcomes and how much from policy and infrastructure indicators. That split is the most useful number the pillar data would have given us.

Air access is the other measurable constraint. Lisbon handled 36.1 million passengers in 2025 on a declared capacity of 38 movements an hour, and our Lisbon airport capacity article shows passengers up 15.7% on 2019 on only 3.2% more flights. Passenger growth at Lisbon was 1.0% in January to July 2026. ANA schedules the new airport for mid-2037. A top-ten place in 2028 would have to be won with the runway Lisbon has now.

Safety is the pillar Portugal is most often credited with, and the credit often attaches to the wrong index. Portugal is 7th of 163 in the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index 2026, which AICEP reported on 15 June 2026. That is a peace ranking built from conflict, crime and militarisation measures. The Forum’s index has its own safety and security pillar, which we could not read for 2026.

The table below compares the five southern European economies in the benchmark we published earlier with their WEF rank. The ordering by rank nearly follows the ordering by seasonality. It does not follow the earnings per night, and it does not follow price growth. Portugal sells 36.3% of its nights between July and September, against 56.5% in Greece and 67.0% in Croatia, and it earns about €485 per registered foreign night against €180 in Greece (derived). It has 8.3 nights per resident against Greece’s 15.1 and Croatia’s 24.5. The index does not ask whether a destination is crowded or whether a night is well paid. It scores conditions: infrastructure, policy, resources, demand and outcomes.

The comparison supports a cautious reading. A better position in this index is partly a signal of scale, connectivity and breadth of product, which Spain and Italy have in abundance. Portugal’s strengths in the series are different: a flatter year, a high yield per night and moderate pressure on residents. Our Portugal against Greece piece makes the same point on nights and receipts. We offer this as our interpretation of why the rank and the series metrics diverge. The Forum does not state it, and we could not test it without the pillar data.

What could move the score

The mechanics are simple. Portugal needs to gain just over 0.02 points on Italy, or Italy needs to lose as much, to take tenth place on 2026 scores, and it needs to hold its 0.01 lead over South Korea to stay where it is. A score of 4.91 on a 1 to 7 scale rests on 102 indicators, so any single indicator can supply a hundredth. Portugal’s 3.1% rise was faster than the 2.1% global average, which is the encouraging reading if the figure holds.

The levers that other parts of this series measure are price, air capacity and labour. Accommodation prices have risen faster than in three of the four comparator economies. Lisbon’s airport is at its ceiling and the replacement is a decade away. On workers, our seasonality data show the year flattening, which supports stability of demand, and our labour analysis found a vacancy rate of 1.5% in accommodation and food against 2.7% for the EU in 2025, which does not suggest a hard shortage by that measure. None of these tells us how the Forum scores the corresponding pillars, because we could not read them.

Three things are worth tracking before the next edition. The first is whether Estratégia Turismo 2035 is published and whether it contains the goal. The second is the Forum’s Data Explorer, which would show Portugal’s pillar scores once it can be read. The third is the next INE and Eurostat price releases, which show whether accommodation prices keep outrunning those of Spain and Italy.

A fair forecast is that Portugal will remain in the 10th to 14th group in 2028. The group is tight, and Korea, Singapore and Canada are all within 0.06 points of Portugal’s score. Moving into the top ten needs either a clear gain in a pillar the Forum weights heavily, or a loss by Italy or Switzerland. The Government has stated the aim. It has not published the plan that would produce it.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. The rank says little about a trip. What matters is that Portugal sells 27.0% of its nights between November and March, that its national average of 8.3 nights per resident is moderate, and that accommodation prices have risen 44.1% since 2019, so a shoulder-season booking buys the most. Lisbon is the busiest gateway and the slowest to grow because of the runway. Our Lisbon travel guide covers where to stay and how to arrive.

Tourism businesses and investors. A ministerial ambition is not an underwriting assumption. The goal has no published date, budget or metric, and the document that should carry it is unpublished. Marketing copy can say “11th of 110 in the WEF Travel & Tourism Development Index 2026” and should not say top ten. The thresholds to watch are the next edition, which on past intervals appears between September 2028 and May 2029, and the gap to Italy and Switzerland. A change in Portugal’s price pillar would matter most for hotels, because our RevPAR analysis found that price delivered about 87% of the gain since 2019.

Journalists and analysts. The citable figures are 11th of 110, score 4.91, published on 25 September 2026, up from 12th of 119 on 4.78 in May 2024, and two hundredths behind Italy. Cite the Forum’s own page for the rank and say that scores for the full table come from a Zurich-hosted copy of the report. Do not repeat 14th in 2021, 12th as a current rank, the 199 countries, or the 7th that belongs to the Global Peace Index. Do not describe the goal as a strategy target until a strategy text contains it. This is the second ambition in our series, after the 2035 strategy’s €53 billion figure, that rests on speeches and not on a document. Both should be re-tested when Estratégia Turismo 2035 is published.