State of Foreign Property Investment in Portugal 2026

Executive summary

Foreign buyers now represent 28.3% of all Portuguese residential property transactions in Q1 2026, up from 21.4% in Q1 2024, according to Confidencial Imobiliário’s Foreign Buyer Index. The growth has held despite the October 2023 closure of the Golden Visa real-estate route and the January 2024 closure of NHR to new registrants — two regime changes that contemporary commentary predicted would crash the foreign-buyer market. They did not. They changed who buys, not whether they buy.

The composition has shifted measurably. Brits remain the largest single cohort at 17.2% of foreign-buyer transactions, but Brexit headwinds have flattened the British curve while Brazilian, US, and Israeli buyers have grown disproportionately. US buyers in particular are the fastest-growing cohort 2022-2026 (volume roughly doubled). The Brazilian cohort is sustained by the Estatuto da Igualdade bilateral rights and the post-2018 Lusoph​one tax-treaty stack. The Israeli cohort surged 2023-2025 on backup-plan motivation and remains in fast growth despite Israel’s FATF grey-listing creating documentary friction at Portuguese banks.

Regional concentration has tightened. Algarve absorbs 52.8% of its regional transactions from foreign buyers — the highest density in the country. Central Lisbon’s premium segment (transactions above €750,000) is 68.4% foreign-funded. Porto remains the under-served opportunity: only 18.6% foreign-buyer share but the highest YoY price growth (5.8%) of the three major districts, and the fastest absolute foreign-buyer growth in volume since 2024.

Foreign-buyer transaction share

The headline metric. Foreign-buyer share of Portuguese residential transactions, by national and regional cuts:

Source: Confidencial Imobiliário Foreign Buyer Index, public summaries. Sample = transactions above €100k; weighted by transaction count not by EUR value.

Nationality breakdown (2025 full year)

The top eight nationalities account for roughly 79% of foreign-buyer transactions; the remaining 21% spreads across roughly 30 minor nationalities (Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Australia, South Africa, China, Singapore, and Gulf states notably present at lower individual volumes):

Source: Confidencial Imobiliário 2025 buyer survey; Portugal Property Invest cross-reference against AIMA visa-approval data by nationality.

Regional prices and yields, Q1 2026

Source: idealista Price Index, March 2026 release; ECO Imobiliário rental yield cross-reference. Gross yield is long-let basis; short-let yields in tourist-licensed properties materially exceed these numbers (Lisbon central short-let runs 7.8% gross).

Non-resident mortgage origination

Six Portuguese banks (Millennium BCP, Novobanco, BPI, Santander Totta, Bankinter Consumer Finance, Crédito Agrícola) ran formal non-resident programmes through 2023-2026. Origination volume:

Average non-resident spread over 6-month Euribor: 1.78% as of March 2026, weighted across the six lenders. Euribor 6M quarterly average dropped from 3.21% in Q1 2025 to 2.52% in Q1 2026, mechanically pulling headline non-resident mortgage rates from approximately 5.0% to 4.3% over the same window.

For the live bank-by-bank LTV and spread map, see our Mortgage Qualifier.

Visa pipeline (AIMA data)

AIMA first-appointment wait times by district (March 2026): Lisbon 11 months, Porto 7 months, Faro 5 months. Wait times have been rising since the AIMA 2023 reorganisation (replacing SEF) and the downstream administrative bottleneck.

NHR active grandfathered holders: 42,800 (March 2026, AT data). IFICI approved applications 2025: 1,240 — a narrow innovation-role replacement that does not absorb retiree and passive-income demand previously routed through NHR. For the regime detail see our NHR / IFICI guide.

Methodology

This report is a meta-analysis of public statistics, not a primary-survey project. Source agencies and series:

• Banco de Portugal — mortgage origination by residency status, 6M Euribor reference rate, non-resident lending statistical bulletins.
• INE Portugal (Instituto Nacional de Estatística) — residential property transaction volumes by region, quarterly.
• Confidencial Imobiliário — Foreign Buyer Index (transaction share by nationality, regional concentration); 2025 buyer survey.
• idealista Price Index — median €/m² and YoY price change by district and neighbourhood; rental yield estimates.
• Autoridade Tributária (AT) — IMT 2026 bracket schedule, NHR/IFICI registration counts.
• AIMA — visa approval volumes by route, first-appointment wait times.
• IMPIC — AMI agent registry counts.
• Portugal Property Invest intake survey — median age of foreign buyer, cash-vs-mortgage share. N=412 buyer respondents during 2025; not statistically representative but indicative.

Where source ranges were published rather than point estimates, midpoint is used unless flagged in the CSV row. Currency conversions use the period-average rate from Banco de Portugal. Year-on-year comparisons use the same source for both endpoints to control for methodology drift.

What this report does not include: primary-buyer interviews, off-market transaction data, commercial property, rural land, or speculative-future projections. Numbers are backwards-looking through Q1 2026 except where explicitly flagged as “current” (Euribor, mortgage spread, AIMA wait times).

Next edition

Q2 2026 edition ships mid-August 2026, refreshing all 56 metrics against July 2026 source releases plus adding short-let yield breakdowns by Alojamento Local restriction zone. Subscribe via our press contact to receive the next edition.

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Raw data CSV (56 metrics) — CC BY 4.0 licensed. Attribution requested: “Portugal Property Invest — State of Foreign Property Investment in Portugal 2026.”