Portugal's statistics office revises five-year emigration to 782,248 people

What the revised figures show

The Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) has revised its emigration estimates, and the new series puts departures far above earlier counts. For 2021 to 2024 the figure rose from 124,000 to more than 600,000 people. Adding 2025 brings the five-year total to 782,248 people, according to the INE figures reported on 5 November 2026. The INE counts as an emigrant anyone who leaves Portugal for at least one year, and its calculation rests on administrative data. Under that method the 2021 to 2025 total more than doubles the figure previously published by the Observatório da Emigração.

Why the numbers differ

The Observatório da Emigração had estimated that departures settled at 60,000 to 70,000 a year, reaching at most 350,000 over five years. The two bodies count departures differently, so the gap reflects method rather than error. An automatically generated transcript of an Observador programme, which warns it may contain errors, says the Observatório counted only people of Portuguese nationality, while the INE counts both Portuguese citizens and foreigners.

Observatório da Emigração (maximum)350,000

INE revised figure782,248

Observatório da Emigração (maximum)

350000 people

INE revised figure

782248 people

Data from the article text

Parliamentary reaction

Carlos Pereira, a deputy from the Socialist Party (PS), announced in the Assembleia da República that his group will ask for a parliamentary hearing of the INE's leadership. He called the repeated revisions a "bastante grave" problem and said the request will be filed after the debate on the 2027 State Budget (OE2027) ends. Pereira said the PS accepts how the INE calculates inflows into the country, but warned that unstable figures could lead to public policies out of step with reality.

“We thought things had stabilised, but a new revision of the migration balance has now appeared.”

Pereira also pointed to young people leaving, citing data for 2024 and 2025 showing about 90,000 people aged 20 to 40 emigrating each year. He said the PS wants to understand what is at stake with the statistics, and he noted that the statistics office is an independent authority.

What remains open

The PS request has not yet been filed, since Pereira tied it to the end of the OE2027 budget process. His age-group figure covers only 2024 and 2025, while the INE total runs from 2021 to 2025. The revisions have also changed the 2021 to 2024 count from 124,000 to more than 600,000, a shift that the parliamentary hearing is meant to clarify.