How Public Holidays Work in Portugal

Portugal recognises 13 mandatory national public holidays under the Código do Trabalho, a mix of civil commemorations such as Freedom Day and Republic Day and Catholic feasts including Corpus Christi, Assumption, All Saints, and the Immaculate Conception. On top of these, every municipality designates one local holiday, usually its patron saint's day, and Carnival Tuesday (Terça-feira de Carnaval) is widely observed but left to the discretion of local authorities and individual employers rather than fixed in law.

The Portuguese calendar carries a distinctive recent history. During the financial crisis and bailout, four public holidays were suspended from 2013 to 2016 as an austerity measure: Corpus Christi, Republic Day on 5 October, All Saints on 1 November, and the Restoration of Independence on 1 December. All four were reinstated from 2016 onward, and the full list of 13 has applied ever since, so any older payroll calendar should be checked against the restored set.

A key rule for planners is that public holidays falling on a Saturday or Sunday are simply lost, with no substitute weekday granted unless a collective agreement or company policy provides one. Because several Portuguese holidays sit on fixed dates, the number of effective days off swings from year to year, and employees often use annual leave to bridge (fazer ponte) a midweek holiday into a longer break.

For payroll, public holidays are paid non-working days at full salary. Work performed on a holiday requires prior agreement and is compensated with a 100 percent pay premium or a compensatory rest day. HR teams must also track the variable municipal holiday for each employee's workplace, since it differs by location, and factor holidays into the mandatory Subsídio de Férias and Subsídio de Natal that already shape the Portuguese annual pay cycle.