Portugal Raises the Direct-Award Ceiling for Works to €150,000 and Invite-Only Consultations to €1 Million from 1 October

Portugal's public procurement is slow, over-documented and partly out of date. That is the Government's own diagnosis in the preamble of Decree-Law No. 177/2026 (Decreto-Lei n.º 177/2026), published in the Diário da República on 4 September 2026. It is the seventeenth amendment to the Public Contracts Code (Código dos Contratos Públicos) and enters into force on 1 October.

Quick answer: the law raises the ceilings under which a public buyer may skip an open tender and invite one supplier (ajuste direto) or at least three (consulta prévia). For works, the invite-only ceiling goes from €150,000 to €1 million. Below the EU thresholds, buyers also get a "flexible" open procedure with three-day challenge windows, and they no longer have to set a base price. From October, a larger share of contracts can legally be awarded through invitation-only procedures instead of an advertised open tender.

The law in five numbers

• €150,000 is the new ceiling for direct award of works, up from €30,000; €75,000 for goods and services, up from €20,000
• €1,000,000 is the new ceiling for prior consultation (at least three invitees) in works, up from €150,000; €130,000 for goods and services, up from €75,000
• €2,000,000 is the cap for a "special prior consultation" with at least five invitees in EU-funded, housing, health, digital and minister-designated projects; the contract must also be below the applicable EU threshold, so it matters mainly for works, whose EU threshold is €5,404,000
• 3 days is the window for administrative challenges, and for comments on the preliminary report, under the new flexible open procedure
• 1 October 2026 is when the new rules start for newly started procedures; a tender published on 30 September runs to the end under the old Code, save for the new contract-modification and dispute-resolution rules, which apply at once

What changes for a supplier

The biggest change is where the line between advertised and invitation-only buying now sits. In a consulta prévia the buyer directly invites at least three entities of its choosing; in an ajuste direto it invites one (article 112). From 1 October they can be used up to these estimated contract values (old figures per the Government's infographic; new ones in articles 19 to 21).

Two safeguards travel with the higher ceilings. For works and for goods and services, article 113 bars a buyer from inviting a supplier once the contracts awarded to it through these procedures, in the current and two previous financial years, add up to the same limits. Special prior consultation has its own cumulative rule (article 127-C). And every contract signed after a consulta prévia or ajuste direto must be published on the public contracts portal (Portal BASE) before the buyer can pay (article 127).

Under new articles 161-A to 161-E a buyer may adopt a "flexible open procedure" and "drop or include any rules or formalities" that serve simplification, efficiency or speed, including capacity requirements checked at proposal stage and a phased evaluation with a minimum technical score. Comments on the preliminary report can be cut to three days, and administrative challenges and the decisions on them move to three days. Minimum submission deadlines are untouched: articles 135 and 136 are not among the amended articles, so six days (14 for works) nationally and 30 days for EU-advertised tenders still apply.

Buyers gain two new ways to walk away. Under article 79 they may decide not to award when no proposal reached the minimum score set in the programme, or, with no base price set, when they find all prices unacceptable against the market. The base price is no longer mandatory: the Government's briefing says the new "estimated contract value" removes the obligation to fix a maximum admissible price.

For scale: the EU thresholds for 2026 and 2027 are €5,404,000 for works, €140,000 for central-government supplies and services and €216,000 for other contracting authorities (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2152). Portugal's new €130,000 services ceiling therefore sits €10,000 under the central-government EU figure. That comparison is ours; the Government says only that the limits stay "always below the thresholds of the European Directive".

Which rules apply to a tender already running

Article 10 of the decree applies the amendments to procedures started after 1 October and to the contracts that result from them, with two exceptions that reach running procedures and live contracts at once: the new rules on modifying a contract, and the new arbitration and conciliation rules. Article 7 fixes the article 113 look-back at the current and two previous financial years.

What the Government says, and what critics say

The Government's case is speed. Gonçalo Saraiva Matias, Ministro Adjunto e da Reforma do Estado, called it "a fundamental reform, of the greatest importance, one more battle won in a wider war against bureaucracy" when the Council of Ministers first approved it on 16 April; the old thresholds "were very low and did not allow decision-makers to contract within reasonable values". The Council of Ministers approved the final version on 25 June and President António José Seguro promulgated it on 28 August.

The doubts are about control. JN called it "one of the most polemical and profound changes to the public procurement regime in recent years". Among the lawyers ECO consulted, Pedro Neves de Sousa of Dower Law Firm said raising the thresholds "does not in itself represent an increase in the risks of corruption or undue favouritism", but that "simplifying and cutting bureaucracy does not mean removing accountability". Ricardo Maia Magalhães of Cerejeira Namora, Marinho Falcão supports the higher thresholds but says it is "impossible to dissociate the increase in the margin of choice from possible risks in the fight against corruption", and that such reforms deserve approval only "when properly compensated by a significant strengthening of internal and external oversight". On works, he expects the end of prior design review to mean "errors and omissions are only detected during execution", and he calls the end of the mandatory base price "two points of serious concern". Two other lawyers ECO quoted, Ana Filipa Urbano and Luís Graça Nunes, called the update necessary and direct award a lawful, regulated procedure. ECO's own reading: without a tender launched beforehand, information about what is being contracted arrives later and is harder for firms to follow.

What is still open

The Azores have their own procurement regime (Regional Legislative Decree 27/2015/A, last updated in 2017) that predates prior consultation as a stand-alone national procedure; the regional section of the Court of Auditors (Tribunal de Contas) said in 2024 it needs updating. Diário dos Açores says the open question is whether the national €1 million works ceiling operates automatically in the region; the decree says only that the regional governments were consulted.

The separate Court of Auditors law, which would exempt contracts up to €10 million from the prior visa that today applies above €750,000, was carried over to the parliamentary session resuming in September. Also open: uptake of the flexible procedure, and what the EU's current review of its procurement directives, which Maia Magalhães flags, will require Portugal to change again.

What to do now

• Bidding on a tender published before 1 October? It runs under the old Code to the end, except for contract-modification and dispute rules.
• Tender programme mentions the "regime de flexibilização do concurso público"? Read it for capacity checks at proposal stage, a minimum technical score, and three-day windows for comments and challenges.
• No base price in the documents? Price from your own market evidence; article 79 lets the buyer reject all bids as out of line with the market.

Open Tendly to see which Portuguese tenders match your company today, or let a Strategist expert watch the market as the new rules take effect.