Government to unfreeze university tuition fees from 2027, citing reinforced student support
Portugal's universities will see tuition fees rise with inflation from the next academic year, after the Government confirmed plans to end a six-year freeze on the amounts students pay. Under the State Budget proposal for 2027, the maximum annual fee for undergraduate degrees will be adjusted from €697 — where it has remained since 2020 — to reflect the consumer price index.
The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, defended the decision during a visit to Viseu, arguing that bolstered social support for students would absorb any increase. "What matters is social action," the minister told journalists. "If that effect existed — of pushing students away — we obviously wouldn't make this move."
Social support model aims to match rising costs
The Government's argument rests on a new model for social action in higher education, which ties grants and subsidies to the real cost of studying. Funding for social support has already risen from €70M to €100M annually, with the budget aimed at students on lower incomes.
For the current academic year, specific measures are already in place or being phased in:
• A new "Incentive Grant" worth €1,075, paid automatically to first-year students who were beneficiaries of the lowest family allowance bracket.
• Funding for student residences increased by more than 20%, with the monthly subsidy per bed rising from €134 to €161.
• The Government says there are now 14,000 more beds available in university residences than previously.
Fernando Alexandre said that when tuition fees rise, grants would rise to match. "When the fee increases, the scholarship increases, and so that effect is neutral for the student," he stated. The minister added that the freeze, which has remained in place since 2020, generated inequality, arguing that those who do not go to university should not effectively subsidise the studies of those who do.
Student associations plan October protest
Student organisations have rejected the Government's reasoning. Five student associations from institutions in Lisboa have called a demonstration for 21 October at 17:00 outside the Government's headquarters at Campus XXI.
The Movement of Student Associations (MAE), which brings together academic groups from across the country, said the issue goes beyond small financial increases. In a statement, the movement argued that tuition fees have a "symbolic value" and that higher education should be "progressively free."
"It is not about discussing whether the increase will be a few euros or a certain percentage," the MAE statement read. "It is about the principle behind this unfreezing."
The Federação Académica de Lisboa (FAL), whose president Pedro Neto Monteiro acknowledged the increase was not "considerable," said students disagree with the principle of raising fees at a time when housing, food and transport costs already strain family budgets.
Call for limits on master's degree fees
The Federação Académica do Porto (FAP) has separately called for clear limits on tuition fees for master's degrees. While undergraduate fees are capped and linked to inflation, the proposal for 2027/2028 treats master's courses differently.
According to FAP, only master's degrees "indispensable to professional activity" — such as those regulated by professional orders — will fall under the same inflation-linked cap. Other master's programmes would be set by institutions based on the "real cost of training," with no defined legal ceiling.
"No student should be forced to give up progressing in their studies because they cannot pay," said FAP president Francisco Porto Fernandes. The federation warned that tuition for master's degrees in public universities already varies widely, typically ranging from €750 to €5,000 per year.
Background: Fees frozen since 2016
Tuition fees in Portugal's public universities have been a political battleground for a decade. The freeze was first approved in 2016 under a proposal by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), with the maximum fee dropping from €1,067.85 to its current level of €697 by 2020.
The Government attempted to unfreeze fees in the 2026 budget, but the opposition blocked the move, approving a Socialist Party (PS) proposal to keep the €697 cap. The same fate could befall the current proposal, as the parliament debates the State Budget for 2027.
