Can foreigners get grants in Portugal?

Who applies

A company or sole trader established in Portugal, with a Portuguese tax number

Does nationality matter?

No. Ownership matters only for the size of the group (SME status)

When to apply

Before ordering or paying for anything you want funded

How grants are paid

As reimbursement of costs you have already paid

Language

Calls, portals and applications are in Portuguese

Who applies: the company, not you

Every call for applications sets its own list of conditions, but the core is the same across Portugal 2030, the tax credits and the hiring incentives. The applicant has to be:

• Legally established in Portugal, with a Portuguese tax number and, for investment grants, a place of business in the region the call covers.
• Up to date with the Tax Authority and Social Security. That means no overdue debt, or a payment plan that you are keeping to. The check is repeated before each payment, so a missed instalment can stop a transfer.
• Keeping organised accounts, handled by a certified accountant. For a limited company this is the rule anyway.
• The right size for the call. Many calls are reserved for SMEs, and SME status is proved with the electronic SME certificate issued by IAPMEI.
• In a sound financial position, able to show how it will pay its own share of the investment, and not classed as a firm in difficulty.

None of this depends on who owns the company. A Lda. owned by a British couple, a Dutch holding or an American founder is a Portuguese company for these purposes.

The five kinds of support, and they are not all grants

In English, everything tends to be called a grant. In Portugal the differences are large, and they decide your cash flow.

The full catalogue, programme by programme, is in Business grants in Portugal: the full list.

The SME trap for foreign-owned companies

Most calls are for SMEs, and the best rates go to small companies. The EU definition sets three ceilings: fewer than 250 employees, and either turnover of no more than EUR 50 million or a balance sheet of no more than EUR 43 million.

The trap: those figures are not counted for the Portuguese company alone. If another company holds more than 50% of it, the two are linked enterprises and the whole of the owner's staff and turnover is added. If the holding is 25% or more but not more than half, they are partner enterprises and a proportional share is added. A five-person Portuguese subsidiary of a group with 400 employees is a large company in the eyes of the programme.

This matters before you incorporate. Whether the shares are held by you personally, by a small holding or by the operating group changes the answer, and it is much easier to decide that at the start than to restructure later. Ownership by private individuals who are not running other businesses usually leaves the company autonomous. The rules, with examples, are in SME status when the parent is foreign.

Apply first, invest after

State aid has to change what a company does. If you would have made the investment anyway, the aid has no incentive effect, and EU rules treat an investment that has already started as proof of that. So the application must be filed before work on the project starts.

Start of works has a precise meaning: the start of construction, or the first legally binding commitment to order equipment, or any other commitment that makes the investment irreversible, whichever comes first. Buying land and preparatory work, such as permits and feasibility studies, do not count as a start.

In practice: a signed purchase order, a deposit paid to a supplier or a construction contract signed before the application date can remove that cost from the project, and in some calls can sink the whole application. Quotes, plans, licences and a business plan are fine. If you are about to sign something, ask first.

Grants are paid as reimbursements

An approved grant is a promise to refund a percentage of eligible costs, not money in the bank. The usual sequence is: you pay the supplier, you file a payment claim with the invoice and the proof of payment, the authority checks it, and the refund arrives. Some programmes allow advances, often against a bank guarantee.

Two consequences. You need the cash, or a bridge loan, to carry the investment until the refunds arrive. And you need the rest of the money from the start: a grant covers a share of the eligible costs, never the whole project, so the company has to show where its own contribution comes from.

What grants do not pay for

• Anything ordered or paid before the application. See above.
• Buying land or an existing building. Excluded or tightly capped in most calls. The programmes fund what you build, install and do, not the purchase of the property.
• Day to day running costs, such as rent, stock and ordinary salaries, outside the specific hiring and R&D schemes.
• VAT, whenever the company can recover it.
• Second-hand equipment, in most investment calls.
• Cars and other assets not tied to the productive activity.

Each call publishes its own list of eligible and ineligible costs, and the details change from call to call. Reading that list against your budget is a large part of what we do in the Eligibility Analysis.

Everything official is in Portuguese

The calls, the regulations, the application forms and the portals are published in Portuguese only, and applications must be written in Portuguese. Some programme sites have an English section, but the calls themselves are in Portuguese.

We work with you in English: emails, the video call, the written analyses and the proposal. We write and file the application in Portuguese, and you receive an English summary of what was filed. See how we work.

Larger investments

Larger projects have one more route. An investment project with at least EUR 3 million of qualifying investment can negotiate contractual tax benefits with the state. The application goes to IAPMEI, the public agency for SMEs, or to AICEP, the trade and investment agency, when the project is large enough for the contractual investment regime. The regime runs until 31 December 2027, and the benefits can last up to 10 years from the end of the project. Below that threshold, the route is the open calls and the tax credits described on this site.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

The official texts are in Portuguese. The figures on this page were checked against them.

• European Commission: SME definition (checked 18 September 2026)
• European Commission: User guide to the SME definition (checked 19 September 2026)
• Investment Tax Code (CFI), article 2 (contractual tax benefits), as amended by Law 12/2022 (checked 19 September 2026)
• Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014, General Block Exemption Regulation: incentive effect and the definition of start of works