Portugal's Cinema Crisis: Five Cities Now Without Theaters as Government Vows Reform by 2027

The Portugal Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual has acknowledged that its support framework for film exhibition is outdated and needs substantial reform

The Portugal Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual (ICA) has publicly admitted that current funding structures for cinema distribution and exhibition are failing to address the country's accelerating theater closures, a crisis that has left five district capitals without regular commercial cinema and more than half of all municipalities without any film screening infrastructure. ICA President Luís Chaby Vaz announced plans to overhaul financial support mechanisms and called for mandatory training programs for cinema programmers as part of a comprehensive response to an industry in freefall.

Why This Matters

• 450 cinema screens remain operational as of January 2026—down 112 screens from the previous year following the Cineplace insolvency and NOS Lusomundo closures

• Five district capitals now lack commercial cinema: Beja, Bragança, Guarda, Portalegre, and Viana do Castelo have zero regular screening facilities

• Average ticket prices have risen from €4.19 in 2004 to €6.47 in 2025, while attendance plummeted to just 10.8 million viewers—the lowest figure outside pandemic years since 2004

• 163 of Portugal's 308 municipalities (53%) have no cinema sessions, exposing severe regional inequality in cultural access

What This Means for Residents

For anyone living outside Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas, accessing cinema has become increasingly difficult—and in some regions, impossible. The closure wave means residents in Bragança, Guarda, Portalegre, Beja, and Viana do Castelo must now travel to neighboring districts to watch films on the big screen. Leiria temporarily joined this list after recent flooding damaged the Cinema City complex and Cineplace locations shuttered.

The economic pressure is tangible: while a cinema ticket cost the equivalent of roughly 1.5% of the monthly minimum wage in 2004, that proportion has grown as wages stagnated relative to entertainment costs. Chaby Vaz emphasized this during the public consultation held at Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon, stating: "The problem is not the ticket price itself, but what it represents in the pockets of the Portuguese."

For municipal governments, the ICA president's remarks signal an expectation that local authorities will need to identify and activate alternative screening venues—repurposing auditoriums, cultural centers, and civic spaces that currently sit idle or underutilized.

Government Response Takes Shape

The Portugal Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport convened the public hearing following months of industry consultations initiated by a working group announced in November 2025 by Minister Margarida Balseiro Lopes. That task force, which includes the General Inspectorate of Cultural Activities and the ICA, examined three years of cinema desaffection requests and closure patterns.

Chaby Vaz's diagnosis identified several structural weaknesses:

• Market concentration: A small number of large exhibitors and distributors dominate the landscape, limiting diversity and regional coverage

• Inadequate municipal programming capacity: Most town councils lack specialized teams to curate and schedule cinema sessions in public venues

• Outdated subsidy models: Current ICA support mechanisms were designed for a different exhibition ecosystem and require "refreshing to become more effective"

• Lack of comprehensive audience data: No recent market study exists to identify who watches cinema in Portugal, their preferences, or barriers to attendance

The ICA chief proposed an ambitious target: ensure every municipality has cinema exhibition by 2027. Achieving that goal would require activating 163 additional screening locations across the country within roughly 18 months.

The Private Sector Collapse

Portugal's exhibition crisis accelerated dramatically through late 2025 and early 2026 as multiple operators withdrew from the market simultaneously. The Cineplace chain entered insolvency proceedings, closing all its locations nationwide. NOS Lusomundo Cinemas, the market leader, shuttered several underperforming sites. In Vila Nova de Gaia, the Arrábida Shopping complex—which housed the country's largest cinema venue operated by UCI—received authorization to convert nine of its 20 screens to non-cinema use.

These closures reflect a broader structural shift. The multiplex model that dominated Portuguese exhibition for two decades depends on shopping center foot traffic and blockbuster releases. As streaming platforms fragment audiences and retail patterns change, the commercial viability of 15-to-20-screen complexes has eroded, particularly outside the largest urban markets.

"Private exhibition is legitimate, but it does not solve the problems," Chaby Vaz stated. "The State must provide a complementary response to these market characteristics."

Territorial Inequality and Cultural Access

The consultation highlighted a growing urban-rural divide in cultural infrastructure. While Lisbon and Porto maintain robust exhibition networks, vast swaths of the interior and north have become cinema deserts. More than half of Portuguese municipalities lack any regular film screening, creating what Chaby Vaz termed an unacceptable geographic inequality.

The ICA president called for municipal governments to audit their existing cultural spaces and identify underutilized venues that could host cinema programming. Many towns possess auditoriums, cultural centers, and renovated cineteatros that rarely or never screen films due to lack of programming expertise, distribution relationships, or technical capacity.

Américo Rodrigues, Director-General of Arts, presented a separate diagnostic on the Portuguese Network of Theaters and Cineteatros during the session, examining how these heritage venues could be activated for regular film exhibition.

Industry Perspectives

The public hearing included participation from multiple stakeholder groups. Fernando Ventura represented the Association of Cinema Companies; Carla Pinto spoke for the Portuguese Association of Shopping Centers; and Carla Chambel, president of the Portuguese Film Academy, contributed perspectives from the production community. Independent exhibitor Américo Santos from Cinema Trindade in Porto—one of the few surviving single-screen theaters—and film critic João Lopes rounded out the panel.

This diverse group reflects the complex ecosystem that must be coordinated to reverse the exhibition decline: producers who need screens to reach audiences, shopping center operators balancing cinema against alternative retail uses, independent exhibitors struggling to compete with streaming, and cultural advocates concerned about preserving cinema as a communal experience.

Audience Collapse Since 2004

The stark attendance figures underscore the urgency. In 2004, Portuguese cinemas sold 17.1 million tickets—a benchmark year when the ICA began systematically tracking exhibition statistics. By 2025, that number had plummeted to 10.8 million admissions, representing a 37% decline over two decades (excluding pandemic years 2020-2022, when closures artificially depressed figures).

This collapse occurred despite Portugal's population remaining relatively stable and the country experiencing significant economic growth and tourism expansion during the same period. The data suggests fundamental shifts in how Portuguese residents consume audiovisual content, with streaming platforms, social media, and gaming competing for leisure time and disposable income.

Chaby Vaz emphasized the need for comprehensive market research to understand current audience behaviors, preferences, and barriers—data that would inform both subsidy redesign and programming strategies.

Reform Timeline and Next Steps

Minister Margarida Balseiro Lopes announced in December 2025 that the working group would deliver conclusions by the end of the first quarter of 2026—meaning concrete policy proposals should emerge within weeks. The ICA president's public acknowledgment that support systems need "refreshing" suggests legislative or regulatory changes are being drafted to adjust funding criteria, eligibility requirements, and disbursement mechanisms.

Potential reforms could include:

• Targeted subsidies for exhibition in underserved municipalities, creating financial incentives for operators willing to serve smaller markets

• Municipal capacity-building programs to train local government staff in cinema programming, projection technology, and audience development

• Partnerships between the ICA and local authorities to co-fund equipment upgrades and technical infrastructure in existing public venues

• Revised distribution support to ensure films reach beyond major urban centers

• Tax incentives or reduced licensing fees for exhibitors operating in cinema-deficient regions

The ambitious 2027 target for universal municipal coverage would require rapid policy implementation and significant financial commitment—both from central government and local authorities.

Cultural Heritage at Stake

Beyond the economic and accessibility dimensions, the exhibition crisis threatens Portugal's cinema culture itself. Communal film viewing in dedicated theaters represents a distinct cultural practice separate from home streaming. The disappearance of cinemas from district capitals and smaller towns risks creating generational gaps, where younger residents grow up without access to large-screen exhibition or the social rituals surrounding cinema-going.

The participation of Cinemateca Portuguesa Director Rui Machado in the consultation signals recognition that preserving exhibition infrastructure connects to broader questions of film heritage and cultural memory. As commercial circuits contract, the burden of maintaining diverse, quality programming increasingly falls on public institutions, independent operators, and municipal authorities—groups that lack the resources and expertise of the vanished commercial chains.

The Portugal Government's acknowledgment that market forces alone cannot sustain national cinema infrastructure marks a significant policy shift, one that could reshape cultural funding priorities for years to come. Whether the proposed reforms can reverse two decades of audience decline and geographic contraction remains to be seen—but the alternative is a Portugal where cinema becomes exclusively an urban, elite experience, inaccessible to the majority of the population.