Lisbon’s new Luís de Camões airport: €7.9–8.9bn cost, 2035 opening target, 20-minute rail link to city centre
Portugal’s long-awaited new airport took a concrete step forward on Wednesday as operator ANA presented the first images and technical details of the Luís de Camões Airport in Alcochete, with a price tag of up to €8.9 billion and a target opening from 2035.
More than 50 years after the first discussions, Lisbon's new airport is finally taking shape. On Wednesday, airport operator ANA presented the technical report and the first images of the Aeroporto Luís de Camões, to be built at the Campo de Tiro de Alcochete. The project is the country's largest infrastructure undertaking in decades.
Cost and timeline
The investment is estimated at between €7.9 billion and €8.9 billion, at 2024 prices, excluding the cost of road and rail access links, which remain the state's responsibility. The range updates the €8.5 billion figure from ANA's 2025 preliminary report. A financial plan from the concessionaire is due in January 2027.
On the schedule, the government and ANA are not yet fully aligned. The interactive timeline published by the Institute for Mobility and Transport (IMT) shows construction starting in 2029, finishing at the end of 2033, with 2034 reserved for testing and certification, and the airport opening from 2035. ANA's own technical report, however, points to a mid-2037 inauguration, describing it as a "demanding but realistic" calendar. The company says it is looking for "opportunities to optimise the project schedule" and that an earlier opening depends on wrapping up the necessary agreements sooner than the government's deadline of 17 April 2029. The Ministry of Infrastructure told Observador that both sides are working to bring all deadlines forward so that the airport can open from 2035.
- Construction begins at the Alcochete site
- Construction completed, testing and certification phase starts
- High-speed rail link and airport station open; dedicated testing year
- Airport opens to passengers (government target)
- ANA's base-case opening date in technical report, with possible anticipation
Rail and road connections
The airport will be served by a high-speed rail shuttle reaching central Lisbon in about 20 minutes. The link will run through a 5-kilometre tunnel and use the planned third Tagus crossing between Chelas and Barreiro, tying into the future Lisbon–Madrid high-speed line. The station will have four lines and three platforms, with long-distance connections to several regions and a roughly 30-minute reduction in travel times to the Algarve and Alentejo. Officials estimate 20 million passengers per year will use rail services to and from the airport.
On the road side, the plan includes 250 kilometres of new highways and the requalification of another 50 kilometres of existing roads. Key interventions involve links from national roads 4, 10 and 119, the connection of the A33 to the A12 and A13, and the IC13 between the airport, Ponte de Sor and Alter do Chão. The network is designed to handle an estimated 65,000 light vehicles and about 2,000 heavy vehicles per day.
What the airport will look like
The Luís de Camões airport and its supporting airport city will occupy 6,500 hectares across the municipalities of Benavente and Montijo, affecting 11 municipalities in total. On opening day it will have two runways, 64 boarding gates, 72 contact boarding bridges and a passenger terminal of roughly 500,000 square metres. Initial capacity is set at 56 million passengers per year, with room to expand to 85 million.
We dreamed for 50 years of a new airport and today we are making it happen.
Transparency concerns
Maria do Rosário Partidário, the former president of the independent technical commission that evaluated the airport options, urged the government to match the transparency of the earlier evaluation phase. She noted that the commission's materials are still available online, but that the current process lacks the same openness.
Transparency is precisely about understanding what is happening, who is deciding what and how decisions are being made. It is enough that this information is systematically made available to citizens, which, by the looks of it, is not happening. Do you know what is included in the budget? I don't.
Next steps
The environmental impact study will be submitted to the Portuguese Environment Agency by the end of July 2026. The technical report now allows the project to move into the preliminary studies, or "basic design", and the architectural deepening phase. ANA's CEO Thierry Ligonnière stressed that the document was delivered "within the deadlines set out in the concession contract, to the exact day" and is the third report in the process, following the initial report and the stakeholder consultation document.
