Ten years of Startup Portugal, and we’re just getting started

Lisbon, September 2026.

In 2016, Lisbon hosted its first Web Summit and Portugal launched a National Entrepreneurship Strategy. Out of that moment came Startup Portugal. A decade later, the ecosystem we set out to support looks very different from the one we found in 2016.

So before we get on with the next decade, we wanted to stop for a moment, look at what these ten years actually produced, and say where we want to go.

2016-2021: laying the ground

The early years were about building foundations. Startup Portugal was launched in 2016, in Porto, as a public-interest association to coordinate Portugal’s entrepreneurship policy and give a scattered ecosystem some shared structure. It was a year of firsts: the first Startup Voucher call to back new founders, the launch of RNi – Portugal Incubators, the first edition of Road 2 Web Summit, and the first mission abroad, which took Portuguese startups to Brazil.

From there, the pace picked up. In 2018, the project was reinforced with a National Strategy for Entrepreneurship, and the international missions multiplied, from Las Vegas and Austin to Helsinki and Toronto. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the response was quick: the One Stop Shop opened as a single point of entry for founders, backed by new studies, webinars, and hands-on support to keep companies moving. By 2021, Portugal was being cited as a benchmark for the Startup Nations Standard, and we had marked our first five years and opened a new strategic cycle.

2021-2026: proof at scale

The second half of the decade is where the numbers started to tell the story.

In 2023, Startup Portugal was one of the main drivers behind the Startup Law, which introduced a tax regime for stock options and created the first clear legal definition of a startup in the European Union. That definition is what now lets us measure the ecosystem with real precision, through our Portugal’s Startup Ecosystem Report, which counts more than 5,000 active startups in the country.

Alongside the policy work came the programs. Web Summit has now been in Lisbon for ten years, and Road 2 Web Summit has already prepared and taken more than 1,000 startups to the event. Business Abroad keeps supporting Portuguese startups at the world’s major tech events, helping them expand across different geographies. The One Stop Shop simplifies the ecosystem’s first point of contact and has helped more than 8,750 founders and other players over its six years of activity. And we created SIM Conference (Startups & Investment Matching), now in its third edition, with the most recent bringing more than 4,000 investors, founders, and partners to Porto.

Ten years, in numbers

• 5,091 active startups, 70% of them founded in the last five years
• More than 28,000 jobs, with salaries 81% above the national average
• €2.856 billion in revenue, roughly 1% of Portugal’s GDP, and €1.571 billion in exports
• 8 unicorns with Portuguese DNA: Farfetch (2018), OutSystems (2018), Talkdesk (2018), Feedzai (2021), Remote (2021), Sword Health (2021), Anchorage Digital (2021), Tekever (2025)
• 808 projects supported through Vouchers for Startups and Vouchers for Incubators and Accelerators, worth €31.4 million in direct support
• 320+ startups backed by Business Abroad, across nearly every continent

“The result is overwhelmingly positive. Ten years ago, we weren’t even talking about Portuguese unicorns.”

Alexandre Santos, President of Startup Portugal

The next ten years

The plan for the next decade is simple to say and hard to do: keep promoting Portuguese entrepreneurship and consolidate what the ecosystem has built. That means stronger companies, better conditions for founders to grow without having to leave the country, and, of course, more startups.

We’ve set two clear goals for the coming years. We want to see at least eight more unicorns with Portuguese DNA. And we want startups to reach 5% of national GDP, around five times the weight they carry today. Both are ambitious, and getting there means staying honest about what still holds founders back, from access to financing to the everyday friction of doing business here.

Our Manifesto

We put it in writing: ten commitments for the next decade, each one built on the work of the last ten years. This is where we stand, and what we’re holding ourselves to.

Read the full manifesto