Cultural patronage reformed: cultural entity and initiative titles, uplift of up to 150% and an overall 1% cap
Decree-Law No. 167/2026 of 17 August, adopted under the legislative authorisation of Law No. 28/2026 of 15 June, amends Articles 61, 62, 62-A and 62-B of the Tax Benefits Statute and creates the National Patronage Platform, entering into force on the day after publication. The amendment to Article 61 expressly defines donations in kind — delivery of goods, temporary secondment of employees and provision of services falling within the patron ordinary activity — and lays down valuation rules, a matter of relevance for those donating works of art or services to museums and foundations. Article 62-B introduces a system of prior recognition based on the cultural entity title, valid for five years, and the cultural initiative title, granted by order of the member of Government responsible for culture, on the opinion of the Office for Cultural Strategy, Planning and Evaluation, with eligible fields including visual, digital and multimedia arts, graphic arts and printmaking and tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The uplifts are revised to 140% as a rule and 150% for multiannual contracts setting objectives and amounts, but donations may no longer exceed, in aggregate, 1% of turnover from sales or services. It is further required that assets acquired or generated under supported initiatives remain dedicated to the cultural purposes underlying the title. Ref.: Decree-Law No. 167/2026, Official Gazette No. 158/2026, Series I, of 17/08/2026, pp. 56-63.
Círculo Eça de Queiroz building in the course of classification: immediate effects for the building, its contents and its neighbours
By notice of the President of the Board of Património Cultural, I.P., of 13 August 2026, the opening, by order of 1 July 2026, of the procedure for national classification of the Círculo Eça de Queiroz building, at Largo Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro 4 and Rua Serpa Pinto 16, parish of Santa Maria Maior, Lisbon, was made public. The act was taken under Article 9(2) of Decree-Law No. 309/2009 of 23 October, and the building is now “in the course of classification” under Article 25(5) of Law No. 107/2001 of 8 September. It is worth noting that the procedure expressly covers the integrated movable heritage, meaning that items which, taken alone, could circulate on the market now follow the regime of the building. The notice states that the building and those located within the general protection zone — 50 metres from its outer limits — become subject, in particular, to Articles 32, 34, 36, 37, 42, 43 and 45 of that Law, which entails the duty to notify any sale, the pre-emption right of public bodies and constraints on works. For owners and heirs of neighbouring buildings, the effect is immediate and does not depend on the outcome of the procedure. Ref.: Notice No. 201/2026, Official Gazette No. 160/2026, Series II, of 19/08/2026, p. 183.
MiCA register: a single provider based in Portugal and 167 foreign entities operating here under freedom to provide services
In the version of the MiCA interim register published by ESMA with a last-update date of 21 August 2026, the file on crypto-asset service providers contains 335 entries, of which only one has Portugal as home Member State: Bison Bank, S.A., authorised on 19 May 2026 by the Bank of Portugal with the involvement of the securities regulator. By contrast, 167 providers authorised in other Member States — chiefly Germany, France, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Malta — have notified their intention to provide services in Portugal under the European passport, so most of the offering available to residents in Portugal is supervised by foreign authorities. The register is organised under Articles 109 and 110 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. For providers operating under the transitional regime of Article 143(3) of MiCA, that period ended on 1 July 2026, ESMA having issued a public statement on 23 June making clear that unauthorised providers must immediately cease onboarding new clients and confine their activity to what is strictly necessary for an orderly wind-down of positions. Ref.: ESMA MiCA interim register, “Crypto-asset service providers” file, update of 21/08/2026.
Tax reporting of crypto-assets: annual return by 31 May and fines of up to 22,500 euros
Law No. 26/2026 of 3 June transposes Directive (EU) 2023/2226 (DAC8) and Directive (EU) 2025/872 (DAC9), establishing the national framework for the automatic and reciprocal exchange of information on crypto-assets in line with the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework. The instrument gives new wording to Article 124-A of the Personal Income Tax Code, which now requires reporting crypto-asset service providers to comply with the due diligence requirements of Decree-Law No. 61/2013 of 10 May and its Annex III, and to report to the Tax Authority information on users resident for tax purposes in national territory. The report must be made by 31 May each year in respect of the previous calendar year. Under Article 15, the law takes effect from 1 January 2026, placing the first substantive report in May 2027, in respect of 2026. On the sanctions side, the general tax offences regime now punishes failure to file the registration return and the report with a fine of 2,000 to 22,500 euros and omissions or inaccuracies with a fine of 500 to 11,250 euros. For retail investors, it means that transactions carried out on covered platforms will reach the Tax Authority automatically. Ref.: Law No. 26/2026, Official Gazette No. 107/2026, Series I, of 03/06/2026, Articles 1, 3 and 15.
Tax Authority sets out the income tax treatment of staking, crypto-to-crypto swaps and automated trading programs
In a binding ruling in case No. 28122, by order of 16 March 2026 of the Deputy Director-General for Tax Management — Income Taxes, the Tax Authority addressed the treatment of three types of crypto-asset transactions carried out by a resident individual. As to mere purchase and holding, it held that disposal for consideration gives rise to a Schedule G capital gain under Article 10(1)(k) of the Personal Income Tax Code where the consideration does not take the form of crypto-assets, the gain being excluded from tax if the holding period is 365 days or more. As to staking and the deposit of crypto-assets in liquidity protocols, it classified the rewards as Schedule E investment income, while accepting that, where paid in crypto-assets, taxation is deferred to the disposal of the crypto-assets received. On resale exclusively for crypto-assets, it reiterated that Article 10(20) prevents taxation while the consideration takes the form of crypto-assets. It further held that the use of automated trading programs does not in itself alter the treatment, provided they serve only to improve the execution of the taxpayer own transactions. The ruling notes that an organised business structure, habitual dealing and provision of services to third parties would lead to Schedule B. Ref.: binding ruling, doctrinal record, case No. 28122, order of 16/03/2026.
AI Act: what has applied since 2 August and what has been put off to December 2027
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 has a phased timetable and that timetable was changed at the end of July. Since 2 February 2025 the general provisions and the prohibited practices have applied, and since 2 August 2025 the rules on general-purpose AI models, governance and the penalties chapter. The general date of application remained 2 August 2026, from which point the transparency obligations of Article 50 apply — informing people that they are interacting with an AI system and marking artificially generated content. What changed was the deadline for high-risk systems: Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of 8 July 2026, published in the Official Journal on 24 July and in force since 27 July, gave new wording to Article 113 and moved the obligations of Chapter III, Sections 1 to 3, to 2 December 2027 for Annex III systems and to 2 August 2028 for those in Annex I. In Portugal, the domestic framework remains unfinished. For anyone using AI in day-to-day work, the practical reading is short: the postponement concerns the heavy duties of those placing high-risk systems on the market, not the prohibitions or the transparency duties, which already bind. Ref.: Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 113, as worded by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (OJ L, 2026/1744, of 24/07/2026); Council of Ministers Resolution No. 2/2026 of 8 January.
Six judgments that do not exist: Guimarães Court of Appeal refers the case to the Bar Association
In a criminal appeal decided on 10 February 2026, the Guimarães Court of Appeal found that the appellant pleadings identified and quoted passages from six purported judgments of higher courts which were not published in the source cited or anywhere else and which, as regards those attributed to that very Court of Appeal, had never existed — as the court established by consulting the Citius system. The judgment records a less obvious detail: two Constitutional Court decisions cited do exist, but one deals with tax law and the other with employment law, and neither contains the passages attributed to them. The court described the situation as wholly unacceptable, dismissed the appeal, ordered the appellant to pay costs with 5 units of account in court fees and directed that a copy of the judgment be sent to the Bar Association. The technical explanation is mundane and worth stating without drama: a language model does not consult a case-law database, it generates statistically plausible text, and so produces case numbers, dates and headnotes with the exact look of a genuine citation and no real counterpart. Checking a citation is a matter of minutes rather than of trust. Ref.: Guimarães Court of Appeal, 10/02/2026, case No. 986/23.7GAFAF.G1, Reporting Judge Cristina Xavier da Fonseca.
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