Between 2014 and 2024, the number of researchers working in Portugal, measured in full-time equivalents, increased by 68.2%. It was one of the strongest increases in the European Union, ahead of countries including Sweden and Belgium.
Spending on research and development has moved in the same direction. As a share of GDP, Portuguese R&D expenditure increased by 0.43 percentage points over the decade. Germany, by comparison, added 0.31 points. Only a small group of EU countries recorded larger gains.
These are not the figures normally associated with Portugal abroad. The country is still more easily recognised for tourism, its climate and a handful of traditional export industries. Changes in laboratories, engineering departments and technology companies tend to attract less attention.
They are becoming harder to ignore in the trade figures. Portugal exported almost €4.1 billion in high-technology goods in 2025, a new record. In the first six months of 2026, exports reached close to €2.2 billion, up 1.6% from the same period a year earlier, with telecommunications responsible for most of the increase.
A 1.6% rise is modest, particularly when total Portuguese exports increased at a similar pace. The longer view is more interesting. Portugal now has substantially more people working in research than it did ten years ago, a higher share of its economy being spent on R&D, and a growing stream of technically sophisticated products being sold abroad.
Portugal’s familiar image has not disappeared. There is simply more happening behind it than that image tends to suggest.
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