Minimum wage in mainland Portugal for 2026

Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025, of 29 December, sets the retribuição mínima mensal garantida (RMMG) at €920 from 1 January 2026 for mainland Portugal. The previous figure was €870. The increase is €50, about 5.7 percent. This page uses the decree for the amount and the date. The Diário da República detail used here for the move from €870 to €920 is the preamble of Despacho n.º 233-A/2026, which also fixes the 2026 minimum existence at €12,880 and says that update protects the rise in the minimum wage.

Fourteen times €920 is €12,880 exactly. That identity is why the despacho can point at one number and mean both the tax shield and a full year of the new minimum when a holiday subsidy and a Christmas subsidy each equal one month. It is not, by itself, a promise that every private contract pays fourteen times. The rest of this page separates the monthly legal minimum, the subsidies, the islands, and the tax arithmetic that people mistake for a payslip.

The legal minimum is a monthly base

The RMMG is a floor on the pay for the normal period of work. It is not a package you can assemble from extras until the payslip prints €920. A line that shows €920 including a meal allowance is below the minimum, because the meal allowance is not a substitute for the base. The meal allowance guide explains when that amount is exempt and when the excess becomes pay. Portaria n.º 51-B/2026/1 updated the meal allowance of public-administration workers to €6.15 a day, with effect from 1 January 2026. That diploma moves a daily meal amount. It does not move the RMMG, and it does not let an employer reach €920 by folding meals into the base.

What counts toward the minimum is, in the ordinary case, the base pay for normal work. Overtime is pay for time outside that period. A meal allowance inside the exempt limit is not remuneration you can use to 'reach' €920. Most refunds of expenses the worker incurred for the employer are not remuneration either. If the base for the normal period is under €920, the contract is under the mainland minimum even when the payslip total, with those extras, looks larger.

Holiday subsidy, Christmas subsidy, and the figure of €12,880

A holiday subsidy is legally due. The Labour Code gives an employee a subsidy matching the holiday period. A Christmas subsidy is also a Labour Code right for someone on a contrato de trabalho: article 263 sets it at one month of remuneration, paid by 15 December, and proportional in the year of hiring, exit, or a suspension for a reason that concerns the worker. The holiday and Christmas pay guide walks through both. Fourteen times €920 is the ordinary full year when each subsidy equals one month of base pay. It is not a payment owed to a freelancer, and it is not owed in full in a year you only worked part of. The public sector has a parallel subsidy, often paid in November.

So €12,880 is the ordinary full year of an employment contract at the new minimum, when each subsidy equals one month of the €920 base. It is also the figure the minimum existence was built to protect. Do not multiply by 14 if you were hired mid-year (both subsidies are then proportional) or if you are not an employee. The monthly test of the minimum is still the €920 base, not the annual total.

Duodécimos do not change the floor

Paying the subsidies in twelfths changes the month in which cash arrives. It does not turn a meal allowance into base pay, and it does not lower the monthly RMMG. A contract that spreads a real holiday subsidy across the year can still be compliant. A contract that relabels part of a €920 total as meal allowance, or as a refund, is not.

Islands, and a public-sector figure that is not the RMMG

The Azores and Madeira set their own minimum wages. Those regional minima are often higher than the mainland RMMG. This page does not state a 2026 island amount, because inventing one would be worse than sending you to the regional decree. Check the decree of the region where you work before you compare a contract with €920.

Do not import a separate public-sector minimum that circulated in the news as a government proposal for the State's own pay scale. That proposal, whatever number was attached to it in a headline, is a different instrument from the RMMG. The mainland private-sector floor in Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025 is €920. The public employment relationship has its own remuneration rules. Quoting a proposed public scale as if it had replaced the RMMG mixes two laws.

Social security, the bracket, and why the bracket is not the bill

Employee social security on €920 is €920 × 0.11 = €101.20 for that payment. The employee social security guide is the rate in the general regime. If the year really does contain 14 payments of €920, annual employee social security in the illustration is €101.20 × 14 = €1,416.80, and annual gross is €12,880.

The bracket sketch then subtracts the specific-deduction floor, not the contribution, because €1,416.80 is below €4,587.09. Taxable income is €12,880 − €4,587.09 = €8,292.91. That amount is still inside the first mainland band, up to €8,342, where the rate is 12.5 percent and the parcela is zero. €8,292.91 × 0.10 = €829.291, and €8,292.91 × 0.025 = €207.32275, so €8,292.91 × 0.125 = €1,036.61375, which rounds to €1,036.61 for the year. Shared across 14 payments, (€12,880 − €1,416.80 − €1,036.61) / 14 = €744.76. The IRS brackets guide is the scale. The withholding tables and the minimum existence exist so that a worker on this wage is not left with the €1,036.61 bill.

The calculator's net at €920 is not a payslip

The SalarioBox employee calculator does not apply the minimum existence, and it does not apply the €4,587.09 specific-deduction floor. At €920 it therefore runs a simpler path than both the statute and the withholding tables. Whatever net it prints is not a model payslip for the minimum wage. Use the gross-to-net guide if you want the bracket path written out for higher salaries, and keep the first row of that table under the same warning you have just read.

• Test the monthly base for normal work against €920. Do not test the payslip total.
• Keep meal allowance, overtime and expense refunds out of that test. The meal guide and the social-security guide say what those amounts are for.
• Count both the holiday subsidy and the Christmas subsidy as due on an employment contract, proportional in a partial year. A freelancer is outside those articles.
• Treat €12,880 as the minimum existence and as 14 × €920 when both subsidies equal one month of base pay.
• If you work in the Azores or Madeira, replace €920 with the regional decree before you do any of the above.