Sport: The promise Portugal has yet to fulfill

Welcome, National Sports Development Plan (PNDD): may this be the moment when Portugal stops living off its potential and finally begins to live up to it.

In the 2023/24 season, professional football in Portugal generated €1.073 billion in revenue, contributed €662 million to GDP, delivered €268 million to the State, and supported more than 4,400 jobs. In Spain, LaLiga has recently surpassed €5.4 billion in revenue. Football is the king of sports, but it is only part of the problem—and the opportunity.

In Portugal, sport goes far beyond competition. It stands as a space of identity, cohesion, and participation, from schools to local clubs, from community associations to high performance. Even so, there remains a clear gap between that promise and reality. Sport continues to be more celebrated than practiced, when today it is a matter of equality, public health, and collective responsibility.

It is precisely within this gap that the PNDD emerges. Approved by Council of Ministers Resolution no. 54/2026, it is the first structured national plan for the sector, with a horizon extending to 2036. It starts from a long-delayed truth: sport can no longer be treated as a peripheral issue, dependent on families’ efforts, the resilience of clubs, or the exceptional merit of athletes and professionals. Given its social, educational, and public relevance, it must be assumed as a true priority of the State.

The plan acknowledges that Portugal remains below European standards of sports participation, with high levels of physical inactivity, territorial and gender inequalities, and still insufficient inclusion of people with disabilities. Hence the ambition to make Portugal an active and healthy nation, where sport is effectively a right for all.

To achieve this, the PNDD is structured around six strategic pillars: education, society, training and high performance, facilities, governance, and funding. These pillars are translated into 44 measures. More than setting out intentions, the plan seeks to organize the sector, align its stakeholders, and subject its implementation to monitoring and evaluation.

Schools are the starting point, because it is there that habits are formed, sedentary behavior is challenged, and access to sports practice is expanded. But the ambition does not end within school walls: the goal is for sport to accompany people throughout their lives, connected to health, work, communities, and inclusion.

One of the decisive aspects lies in infrastructure. Without proper sports halls, swimming pools, tracks, or fields, this ambition will fail. Here too, a crucial question arises: whether access to sport will continue to depend on one’s postcode or finally become more balanced across the entire territory. Governance and funding must also be addressed—without them, the plan will not be fulfilled.

At its core, the PNDD represents an opportunity for Portugal to stop merely managing its sporting potential and finally begin to realize it.