Portugal Sick Leave Rules 2026: Who Pays and How Much

Segurança Social pays, and the employer pays nothing by law. Sickness absence is a justified absence under the Código do Trabalho, and where the employee is covered by the state sickness scheme the employer owes no pay for the days lost. The benefit, the subsidio de doenca, is paid by the Instituto da Segurança Social straight to the employee.

Two qualifications sit around that rule. A collective agreement, the contract or a written company policy can promise a top-up, and once promised it binds the employer. And the benefit is calculated on reference pay recorded with Segurança Social rather than on this month’s payslip, so an employee on sick leave almost never receives what they would have earned at their desk.

The employment relationship carries on throughout. Annual leave in Portugal does not depend on attendance, so the 22 working days a year keep accruing while the employee is away, and the Christmas subsidy is pro-rated for any period in which the contract is suspended. The published rules on eligibility and rates sit in the practical guide on the Segurança Social site.

Because the sickness benefit carries a three-day waiting period for employees. Days one to three attract no state benefit and no statutory pay from the employer, so a short absence is normally unpaid unless something in a collective agreement or a company policy fills the gap.

The waiting period is waived in three situations: admission to hospital, day surgery, and tuberculosis. In each of those the benefit runs from the first day of the absence.

The practical effect is that a one or two-day absence in Portugal costs the employee money and costs the employer nothing beyond the disruption of covering the work. Employers that want to remove that effect tend to do it deliberately, by writing a top-up into the contract and putting a figure for it in the payroll budget, rather than paying case by case.

The benefit is a percentage of reference pay that rises the longer the absence lasts. The 2026 rates are 55% for absences of up to 30 days, 60% from day 31 to day 90, 70% from day 91 to day 365, and 75% beyond a year.

Two adjustments change those figures.

• The 55% and 60% rates rise by five percentage points where reference pay is €500 or less, where the employee has three or more dependent children, or where a dependant receives a disability supplement
• The maximum period an employee can draw the benefit is 1,095 days

Eligibility is tested twice. The employee needs six months of contributions, which do not have to be consecutive, and a work record showing at least 12 days of work within the first four of the six months before the absence starts. Someone in their first weeks of employment in Portugal can therefore fall outside the scheme altogether, which is worth flagging to a new joiner who is moving from a system with company sick pay.

A long absence steps through the bands as it runs, so a six-month absence is paid at three different rates in sequence rather than at one average rate. An absence of 45 days, for instance, is paid at 55% of reference pay for the first 30 days and at 60% for the remaining 15. The bands apply to the days that fall inside them rather than to the absence as a whole.

An employee can declare a short illness themselves through the SNS 24 digital service, on their word of honour and without seeing a doctor. The declaration covers up to three consecutive days and can be used at most twice in a calendar year. It has worked that way since 1 May 2023, and the limits are the same in 2026.

Because those days sit inside the three-day waiting period, a self-declaration produces no pay. What it produces is protection at work: the absence is justified, so it cannot be treated as unjustified absence for disciplinary purposes or docked as unauthorised leave.

For the employer, the record matters as much as the payment. A self-declared absence is still an absence that has to be logged, with the dates and the form of justification kept together, which settles later questions about whether it was justified and feeds the annual reporting an employer files on its workforce. Managers who see a pattern of self-declared days around weekends should deal with it through the normal absence process rather than by refusing the declaration, which the employee is entitled to make.

Anything longer, or a third short absence in the same year, needs certification through the health service. Employers sometimes assume the allowance has been widened, because a labour reform bill discussed during 2026 touched on how self-declarations are policed. Parliament rejected that bill in June 2026 and none of it became law, so the position stands at three consecutive days, twice a year.

In cash terms, very little. The employer’s real costs are administrative, plus a small number of health-related absences that the Código do Trabalho does make payable by the employer.

• Up to three consecutive days a month, at full pay, for an employee with disabling pain from endometriosis or adenomyosis
• Any top-up promised by a collective agreement, the contract or an established written policy
• Cover for the absent employee, which is the cost that actually bites in a small team
• Holiday that keeps building up while the employee is away

The paid endometriosis and adenomyosis absence was added to the Código do Trabalho in 2025. It is an employer cost rather than a state benefit, so it belongs in the payroll plan alongside the meal allowance and the 14 payments a year.

Collective agreements deserve more attention than most incoming employers give them, because the agreement that applies follows the employer’s own registered activity rather than the employee’s job title. An agreement can improve on the Code but cannot fall below it on pay guarantees, so a sick-pay top-up written into one is binding on the employer for as long as the agreement applies.

The provider is the legal employer, so it records the absence, adjusts the month’s payroll, keeps the contributions and declarations in order, and tells the client what the invoice will look like. Employer of Record Portugal employs staff through its own Portuguese company, which means the sickness rules described here apply to the contract as written rather than to a freelance arrangement that offers the employee no cover at all.

What the client does is short.

• Tell us the first day of absence and how it has been justified
• Agree any top-up before it is promised to the employee
• Plan cover for the role, because the contract continues throughout
• Expect the payslip to change for as long as the state benefit is running

Everything from the certificate to the payslip sits with us, and the monthly cost stays at the same flat €499 per employee. For a new hire, contracts are usually ready within hours and onboarding typically takes one to two days for EU nationals once we have the details.

Sick pay is one line in a wider set of monthly obligations. Our guide to Portuguese payroll covers the 14 payments a year and the reporting deadlines, our guide to social security and pensions in Portugal explains the contributions that fund this benefit, and if you are comparing providers our page on the best EOR provider in Portugal sets out what to ask before you sign.