Portugal Employment Contracts: What the Law Requires in 2026

An open-ended contract does not have to be, but almost everything around it does. The Código do Trabalho sets no special form for an ordinary employment contract, so a verbal agreement can be valid. Fixed-term contracts are the exception: they must be in writing and must name the parties, the job and the pay, the place and hours of work, the start date, the term itself and the specific facts that justify using a term at all.

In practice every employer in Portugal puts the contract in writing, because the same content has to be handed to the employee in writing within days of the start in any event, and because a written document is the only sensible record of what was agreed on pay, place of work and duties.

Collective agreements shape the document as well. The applicable instrumento de regulamentacao coletiva follows the employer’s own registered activity rather than the employee’s job title, and an agreement may depart from the Código do Trabalho only in the employee’s favour on matters such as maximum working time, minimum rest, holidays, pay guarantees and termination. An individual contract can improve on the agreement that applies, and cannot go below it.

Two administrative steps belong to the same moment. The employer files the comunicação de admissão with Segurança Social before the employee starts work, and the employee needs a NIF from the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira and a NISS from Segurança Social before payroll can run.

The employer owes the employee written information on at least 18 items, split across two deadlines. The core terms are due by day seven after the contract starts, and the rest within one month.

• By day seven: the identity of both parties, the place of work, the job and its description, the start date and any term, the pay and how it is paid, the working hours, and the probation period
• Within a month: training rights, social protection, the compensation fund, and the rules behind any algorithm or artificial intelligence used to take decisions that affect the employee

The information can be given on paper or electronically, and the employer has to keep proof that it was delivered. Failing to give it is a serious offence under the Código do Trabalho, with a fine that scales to the employer’s turnover and degree of fault.

One omission carries its own penalty. If the probation information is not given on time, the parties are presumed to have excluded probation altogether, so an employer that forgets the paperwork in week one loses the right to end the contract on probation terms in month three.

Probation on an open-ended contract is 90 days as standard, 180 days for technically complex or highly responsible roles, roles that need special qualifications, positions of trust, first-job seekers and the long-term unemployed, and 240 days for directors and senior managers. On a fixed-term contract it is 30 days where the contract runs for six months or more, and 15 days where it is shorter.

Either side can end the contract during probation without giving a reason and without paying compensation. Notice is the qualification: after more than 60 days of probation the employer gives seven days’ notice, and after more than 120 days it gives 30 days. Where notice is not worked, it is paid instead.

Two reporting duties attach to probation exits. Ending the probation of an employee who is pregnant, has recently given birth, is breastfeeding, is on parental leave or holds carer status means notifying CITE within five working days. Ending the probation of a first-job seeker or a long-term unemployed person has to be reported to ACT within 15 days.

Time already served counts against probation. A previous fixed-term or temporary agency contract, a services contract or a traineeship with the same employer reduces it or removes it, and for a first-job seeker a fixed-term contract of 90 days or more with any employer has the same effect. A written agreement or a collective agreement can shorten probation, and using it abusively makes the termination unlawful.

A contract with a fixed end date (termo certo) can run for two years at most, including up to three renewals, and the renewals together cannot last longer than the initial period. The document has to state the concrete facts that justify the term, and a contract of under six months is available only for a short list of grounds in the Código do Trabalho. A contract with an open end date (termo incerto), which runs until a defined event is over, can last four years.

Earlier engagements count towards those limits. A previous fixed-term contract, an agency assignment or a services contract covering the same post with the same employer or another company in its group is added to the total, which is what stops one role being filled through a chain of short contracts.

Notice at the end of the term is short but compulsory. On a fixed-end-date contract the employer gives 15 days and the employee gives 8 days. On an open-end-date contract the employer gives 7, 30 or 60 days, according to whether the contract has lasted up to six months, between six months and two years, or more than two years.

Letting a fixed-term contract expire is not cost-free: it triggers compensation of 24 days of base pay and seniority payments for each full year of service. The sums and the procedures for every other way a contract can end are set out in our guide to terminating employment in Portugal.

Normal working time is capped at 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. Overtime is paid at a premium and is limited both daily and annually, with the premium rising once the employee passes 100 hours of overtime in the year.

• Up to 100 hours a year: 25% extra for the first hour on a working day, 37.5% for each hour after that, and 50% on a weekly rest day or public holiday
• Above 100 hours a year: 50% for the first hour, 75% for each further hour, and 100% on a rest day or public holiday
• Daily limit of 2 hours on a normal working day, or the normal daily hours on a rest day or holiday
• Annual limit of 175 hours in micro and small companies and 150 hours in medium and large ones, or 80 hours for part-time staff and 130 by written agreement; a collective agreement can lift the full-time limits to 200 hours

Compensatory rest follows overtime that cuts into daily rest: the hours lost are given back as paid rest within the next three working days, and work on a mandatory weekly rest day earns one paid day off in the same window. Night work, which runs from 22:00 to 07:00 unless a collective agreement sets a different period, carries a 25% premium.

Going over the annual overtime limit is a very serious offence, so the contract and the internal rules should say how overtime is authorised and recorded rather than leaving it to custom. Working hours are also one of the items that has to be in the employee’s written information by day seven, which makes the schedule a contractual matter from the start.

The provider drafts and signs the contract as the legal employer, files the admission notice, issues the written information inside the statutory deadlines and runs payroll on the Portuguese calendar of 14 payments a year. Employer of Record Portugal does that through its own Portuguese company, so the employee holds a Portuguese contract governed by the Código do Trabalho rather than a consultancy agreement that would sit badly with how the work is actually done.

The client keeps the parts that matter to it: who is hired, what they do, what they are paid and when the role ends. What moves to us is the drafting, the deadlines and the record-keeping.

• The right contract type and term, with the justification written in where a term is used
• The probation band that matches the role, set before the offer goes out
• Written information issued by day seven and completed within the month
• Working time, overtime rules and leave stated in the document rather than assumed
• Proof of delivery kept for every item the law requires

Contracts are usually ready within hours, and onboarding typically takes one to two days for EU nationals once the details are in. The fee is a flat €499 per employee per month, set out in full on our pricing page. If the role will be performed from home, the written agreement that telework requires is covered in our guide to remote work in Portugal, and the difference between an employee and a contractor is set out in our guide to employee misclassification.