Portuguese residents made a total of 5.6 million tourism trips between January and March 2026, an increase of 7% compared to the same period in 2025, new data from Statistics Portugal (INE) has revealed.
According to the data, this growth followed on from a 13.2% year-on-year increase recorded in the final quarter of 2025.
Domestic travel remained the dominant form of tourism, accounting for 4.6 million trips, or 83.4% of all travel. However, the rate of growth slowed to 3.4%, compared with 12.8% in the previous quarter, INE noted.
International travel
By contrast, international travel accelerated significantly. Portuguese residents made 923,800 trips abroad during the quarter, a 30% increase from a year earlier. Overseas travel represented 16.6% of all tourist trips, up from the corresponding period in 2025.
According to INE, visiting relatives and friends remained the most common reason for travelling. These trips accounted for 2.4 million journeys, representing 43.7% of all travel, an increase of 2.8 percentage points compared with the first quarter of 2025.
Leisure, recreation and holidays were the second-largest travel category, accounting for 2.3 million trips, or 41.1% of the total. This represented a slight increase (+0.3 percentage points) year on year.
Accommodation types
Residents spent most overnight stays in private accommodation. Free private accommodation, such as staying with family or friends, accounted for 58.6% of all overnight stays during the quarter, equivalent to 9 million nights.
Hotels and equivalent establishments remained the second most popular accommodation type, accounting for 30.3% of overnight stays, or approximately 4.7 million nights.
The use of the internet to plan travel also continued to increase. Online booking or trip planning was used in 29.2% of all journeys, up 2.1 percentage points compared with the first quarter of 2025.
Internet use remained substantially higher for international travel than domestic trips. More than seven in ten overseas trips (71.8%) were planned online, although this represented a decline of 4.4 percentage points from a year earlier. For domestic travel, online planning increased to 20.7% of trips, up 1.4 percentage points.
Statistics Portugal noted that the quarterly results may have been influenced by calendar effects, particularly the timing of Carnival and Easter, which can affect monthly travel patterns from one year to the next. Read more here.
