Portugal Average Sunny Days per Year (2026 Data)

Portugal's sunshine reputation comes with a number everyone repeats - 300 days a year - and an official record nobody quotes. The country's own meteorological service counted the sun for decades, and its station fichas answer the question precisely: Faro records 180 days a year with at least 80% of possible sunshine, plus just 9 fully sunless days, and 3,044 hours of total sunshine¹. Lisbon runs 133.6 sunny days against 18 sunless ones¹.

This page counts Portuguese sunshine the way IPMA's own fichas do - hours per month, sunny-day frequencies, station by station from the Algarve to Tras-os-Montes and out to Madeira - and then checks the claims against the numbers, including the famous 300-day figure and Portugal's place in the European sunshine ranking².

What counts as a sunny day?

Before counting, a definition - because "sunny" is not a legal term. The number of sunny days in Portugal per year has no single official statistic; what IPMA's fichas count is the frequency of days by their sunshine share. A day with at least 80% of the possible sunshine counts as fully sunny here; the opposite extreme, a day with 0% sunshine, is a sunless day¹. On those official bands, Faro averages 180 sunny days and 9 sunless days a year, and Lisbon 133.6 sunny days against 18 fully grey ones¹.

The monthly line below shows when the grey days happen: December and January, where Lisbon still averages 3.7 and 2.1 sunless days, are the only months that regularly deliver a completely clouded day. From June to September a fully sunless day essentially does not exist - 0.2 per month or fewer in both cities¹.

So how many sunny days should you budget for? At the official thresholds: roughly one day in three is fully sunny in Lisbon across a year, one day in two in the Algarve, and the sunless days cluster tightly in the four darker months - which is why a January city break feels like a gamble and a September one never does².

Portugal sunshine hours per year: the annual curve

Hours tell the sunshine story more precisely than day counts, and the national totals run from about 2,057 (Funchal, Madeira) to 3,044 (Faro) across the stations with official records¹. The monthly curve is the same everywhere - a deep December-January trough, a long summer plateau above 290 hours - but the level shifts with the coast and the interior, as the four-station chart shows.

Lisbon sits in the middle: 2,669.1 hours a year, with a July peak of 331.4 hours and a December low of 119.2¹. Faro, the national champion, records 3,044.4 hours with July at 360.6. The line chart above adds Beja (2,742.9 hours a year) and the northern interior at Braganca (2,520.0), whose springs turn sunny fast but whose winters drag the annual total down¹.

The Lisbon column chart makes the same point for planners: every month from May to September delivers more than 260 hours - that is five months of essentially reliable sun - while even the greyest month, December, averages about 4 hours of sunshine a day¹. The full monthly tables for Lisbon and Faro sit below the chart, and the district ranking follows in the next section.

The station spread within one country is the second thing the numbers teach. Faro's annual total (3,044.4 hours) exceeds Lisbon's by 375 hours - five extra sunny weeks - while Braganca, five degrees of latitude further north and 690 metres higher, gives up another 524 hours against Faro. Altitude and the Atlantic coast both tax the sunshine budget: every coastal station from Setubal north stays under 2,650 hours a year, and the interior Serra stations Sunshine hours also have the stability that money series lack: an hour of sun is an hour of sun, measured by the same sensor family across decades, so the 1971-2000 normals stay directly comparable even though they predate the current climate period. They are, in one honest sentence, the only official monthly sunshine numbers Portugal has - which is exactly why this page uses them rather than newer model estimates¹.would sit lower still if their fichas carried sunshine tables¹.

Sunshine hours, station by station

Ranked by year, the sunshine map of Portugal has a clear geography. The southern interior and the Algarve dominate: Faro 3,044 hours, Beja 2,743, Evora 2,715, Setubal 2,626, Portalegre 2,658 - all within a two-hour drive of a winter beach¹. The northern interior trails: Viseu 2,407, Vila Real 2,389, Braganca 2,520, with the Serra stations cooler and greyer still¹.

The most counterintuitive number on the page belongs to an island: Funchal, on Madeira, records just 2,057 hours a year - Portugal's warmest station but nowhere near its sunniest, because the marine cloud that keeps the island green also keeps the sun off its coast¹. Madeira is the proof that warmth and sunshine are different measurements.

The map below colours every district with an official sunshine record; six districts (Braga, Guarda, Leiria, Porto, Santarem and the Azores) had no sunshine-recording station in 1971-2000 and appear as no data - IPMA simply never published those numbers, and this page will not invent them¹.

Portugal vs Europe: the sunshine ranking

Against Europe, Portugal's numbers are elite. In the published sunshine-duration table, Faro ranks 2nd among 22 major European cities - behind only Seville's 3,279 hours - while Lisbon's 2,669 hours beat Rome, Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin and Dublin³. The sunshine hours per year Germany vs Portugal contrast is the widest of the set: Berlin manages 1,626 hours against Lisbon's 2,669 - Portugal out-suns the German capital by 64%³. City pairs make the abstract concrete: Lisbon collects roughly the sunshine of Athens minus a cloud, Porto trades annual hours almost evenly with Rome, and a Faro winter (December's 159.0 hours) out-suns a Hamburg summer month in half the days³.

The The average sunny days per year Portugal Spain comparison settles only at the extremes: Madrid's 2,769 hours beat Lisbon's69, but Faro (3,044) out-suns Madrid outright, and Porto (2,468) sits within 125 hours of Barcelona (2,591)³. Portugal's south coast is, by the published numbers, among the two or three sunniest places in continental Europe³.

One honesty note runs under this whole section: the European table is an encyclopedia compilation whose values are attributed to each country's met service - DWD for Berlin, the Met Office for London, AEMET for Madrid - so the Portuguese figures come from IPMA itself and the foreign ones from their own national services, A second caveat is the baseline. Portugal's figures here are 1971-2000 normals; several northern cities' published values are older or use different averaging windows, and sunshine duration sensors were upgraded across Europe in the 1980s. Treat the northern European totals as ballparks with error bars of a hundred hours or so - the conclusion survives, since the gap between Faro and Dublin is 1,591 hours, nearly ten times any plausible sensor effect².

What the comparison is good for is the shape, not the digit: Portugal's coastal south joins Seville, Athens and Madrid in Europe's sunshine premier league, its capital out-suns every capital north of the Alps, and even cloudiest-coast Porto collects more annual sun than Rome or Barcelona manage in a bad year³.with compilation caveats³.

Lisbon, the Algarve and the 300-day claim

Sunny days per year, Lisbon, Portugal

The answer: 133.6 days a year with at least 80% of possible sunshine, plus 18 fully sunless ones - a city where roughly four days in ten carry nearly full sun¹. In hours, the sunshine hours per year Lisbon Portugal figure is 2,669.1 - about 7.3 hours a day averaged across the whole year¹.

Sunny days per year, Algarve, Portugal

The Algarve answer is stronger still: Faro counts 180 days at the 80% sunshine threshold and only 9 grey ones, with 3,044 hours of total sunshine¹. The sunshine hours per year Algarve Portugal totals run higher still along the eastern coast - Tavira at 3,176.9 hours and Portimao at 3,018.8, July alone delivering 395 hours there - and the lagos Portugal sunshine hours per year question lands in the same range, on the same coast, though Lagos itself has no station³.

The claims, checked

Two famous numbers deserve their audit. The Portugal 300 days of sunshine per year claim appears only in marketing: no official IPMA source counts 300 sunny days anywhere in the country, and the strict official count for the Algarve is 180 days at the 80% threshold. The Portugal 3000 hours of sunshine per year claim, by contrast, is true - for the Algarve coast, where Faro's official 3,044.4 hours clears the bar¹. For the whole country, the defensible national statement is simpler: between 2,057 and 3,044 hours of sunshine a year depending on the station, with the south coast the sunniest².

Why does the 300-day claim survive every fact-check? Because it compresses three defensible numbers into one indefensible one: the Algarve has about 300 days a year with SOME direct sun (the fichas' own bands show only 9 fully sunless days), about 180 days at the 80% threshold, and 3,044 hours of total sunshine - and marketing squashed all three into "300 sunny days". Say 3,000 hours instead and you are quoting the official record rather than a rounding of a rounding².

The claim also hides the west-east gradient. Sagres, on the battered southwest corner, sits under Atlantic cloud for much of the spring; Tavira, an hour's drive east, posts the highest July figure in the country at 395.3 hours. The Algarve is one coast in name and two in sunshine - which is exactly why station tables beat slogans³.

When to chase the sun: the practical calendar

Lay the three data families - hours, sunny-day frequencies and the seasonal shares - over a calendar and the year sorts into three tiers. The premium tier is June to September: Lisbon collects 295.7 to 331.4 hours a month, fully sunless days essentially vanish from the record, and even the Atlantic north (Porto's coast, 877 summer hours) plays along¹. The value tier is March to May and October: 190-260 hours a month in Lisbon, warm afternoons, and sunshine-day frequencies that still clear 7-11 days a month in the capital¹. The wildcard tier is November to February, when Lisbon averages 119-150 hours and Faro 159-182 - winter sun is real, it just carries the year's only meaningful chance of a fully grey day.

The district map adds the geographic fine print to that calendar. Winter sun-seekers should start south (Faro 3,044 hours a year) or in the southern interior (Beja 2,743), not on the northern coast - and if the choice is Madeira versus the mainland for a winter week, the fichas give the honest answer: Madeira wins on temperature (20.0 C annual mean), the mainland south wins on sunshine (Faro 3,044 hours against Funchal's 2,057)¹.

Conclusions

1. Portugal's official sunshine numbers are excellent but specific: Faro records 3,044 hours a year and 180 days at the 80%-sunshine threshold, against Lisbon's 2,669 hours and 133.6 sunny days¹.
2. The famous "300 days of sunshine" claim has no official basis - the honest version is 3,000 hours on the Algarve coast, which the Faro record confirms¹.
3. Sunshine has a geography: the southern interior and Algarve (2,600-3,044 hours) out-sun the northern interior (2,389-2,520), and Madeira is warm but not sunny at 2,057 hours¹.
4. Against Europe, Portugal plays in the top tier: Faro is 2nd among 22 major cities, Lisbon out-suns Rome by 196 hours and London by more than 1,000³.
5. The seasonal split is the practical takeaway: summer carries 35.6% of Lisbon's annual sunshine and the June-September stretch has essentially no sunless days, while December and January hold the only real grey-day risk¹.
6. Choose by station, not by slogan: the Algarve coast spans 3,019-3,177 hours across its published stations, Madeira trades sunshine for warmth at 2,057 hours, and the difference between Faro and Braganca - 524 hours a year - is larger than the gap between Rome and London¹.