Lisbon Strikes: What Still Runs, and What Your Ticket Is Worth

Article 534 sets the notice: a union must warn the employer and the Direção-Geral do Emprego e das Relações de Trabalho, DGERT, at least five working days before a strike starts, and at least ten working days where article 537 applies. Article 537 is the minimum-services rule — in sectors that meet essential social needs, transport among them, the workforce must keep a minimum service running and provide the staff to do it. The two articles together are why a Lisbon strike is a dated, timed, published object a week or more before it happens, and why the headline "Portugal strike today" is never news to the operators.

What the law does not fix is how much the minimum is. That is negotiated first, and when the company and the unions disagree it goes to an arbitration court under the Conselho Económico e Social. The court's decisions are the fact that shapes a Lisbon strike day: for the CP railway, Carris and, in the June 2026 general strike, most other operators, it fixed a minimum; for the Metropolitano de Lisboa it fixed nothing, in the partial strikes of 9 and 11 September 2025, again for 9 and 14 April 2026, and again on 3 June 2026.

The Metro company appealed a non-fixing decision in December 2025 and said so on its own site. Until that changes, treat a metro strike as a full closure and everything else as a reduced timetable.

The one habit that saves the day

A filed strike is not a held strike. The Menzies ground-handling stoppages announced for 31 December 2025 and 1 January 2026 were called off after an agreement with the shareholders, according to the Lusa news agency; partial strikes get merged, moved and withdrawn right up to the day. So read the notice when you book, read it again the evening before, and read the operator's homepage on the morning.

The operator is the only party that knows how many people actually walked out.

Two gaps worth naming. Carris publishes its strike arrangements as news items rather than on the service-alterations page, and on 29 August 2026 that page listed only ordinary works — the Graça funicular's temporary closure of 24 July and its return on 2 August — so a Carris strike has to be found in the news feed, not the alterations list. And on the ferries, our two sources disagree: the operators' own June 2026 notices show Transtejo with minimum services fixed, while the Lisbon daily Público reported that Metro and Transtejo were the only two without.

We print the disagreement rather than pick a side; on a ferry day, ttsl.pt/avisos is the reading that counts.

Metro: assume it is shut

The Metro's own release for the 9 April 2026 strike is the template. Service ended at 23:00 on 8 April and resumed at 06:30 on 10 April; the same pattern repeated for 14 April, closing at 23:00 on the 13th and reopening at 06:30 on the 15th. The company "defended the fixing of minimum services" and the arbitration court "decided not to decree any minimum services for train circulation during the strike periods".

No alternative was suggested beyond following the official channels. The practical reading: a 24-hour metro strike costs you the evening before as well, and the red line from the airport is inside it. The notice itself went up the day before the first date, which is why the Metro's greve archive is the page to bookmark, not a news site.

Carris: buses and trams to a minimum, and the 15E is the one to know

Carris runs the buses, tram 28, tram 15E to Belém, the night network and — since it reopened in late April 2026 — the Graça funicular; the Glória, Bica and Lavra funiculars and the Santa Justa lift have been closed since the 3 September 2025 derailment whatever the calendar says, with replacement buses 51E, 22B and 19B on the ordinary tariff. On a Carris strike day the court-fixed minimum applies, and the notice names which lines. For a visitor the line that matters is the 15E: it is the flat route to Belém when the metro is down, and its new articulated trams, in service since late 2024, are 100% low-floor with a ramp.

Plan Belém by 15E or on foot along the river, and treat tram 28 as a bonus — it runs to a minimum, and a minimum on a 1930s tram is a long wait on a steep street.

CP: the trains that keep running are listed by name

CP publishes a minimum-services document for each strike, and for the 3 June 2026 general strike it stated that minimum services had been fixed for the Alfa Pendular and Intercidades, the Regional and InterRegional services, and the urban networks of Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon, "which you can consult in detail in the notice on the site". The Lisbon urban network is the Sintra line from Rossio and Oriente and the Cascais line from Cais do Sodré, so on a CP strike day both still run, thinly. CP did not print how many Sintra or Cascais trains that minimum amounted to in the article we read, so no figure is invented here; the notice on cp.pt for the strike in question is the only place the count exists.

Fertagus and the ferries

Fertagus, the private operator over the 25 de Abril bridge to Pragal and Setúbal, is a separate company with its own notices; it is not part of CP's minimum-services document and its site prints the €1.90 Lisboa–Pragal fare, not a strike pattern. The Cais do Sodré–Cacilhas ferry is Transtejo Soflusa, and the record on its minimum services is contested between the operators' notices and the press. The Cristo Rei trip is the one that hangs on both — ferry, then bus 101 — so on a strike day it is the trip to drop first.

CP's strike rule covers five services by name — Alfa Pendular, Intercidades, Internacional, InterRegional and Regional — and for a train cancelled by the strike it offers "a refund of the full value of the ticket purchased, or its free exchange for another train of the same category and the same class". The deadlines are the part people miss. Online, through the Pós-Venda area of cp.pt or the MyCP app, a refund or exchange is possible only "up to 15 minutes before the departure of the train at the origin station".

At a ticket office the claim can be made before or after the travel date, "up to 10 days after the end of the strike". There is also an online form, "Reembolso por Atraso ou Supressão", which CP warns answers more slowly.

The version nobody prints

A zapping balance or an unused 24-hour ticket on a navegante card is not refunded for a strike by any rule we could find, and the operators publish none. The saving grace is that a 24-hour ticket only starts counting at first validation, so if the strike is announced before you have touched in, hold the card and use the day later. A ticket bought on board a tram is valid only in that vehicle, so it is the one fare a strike can genuinely waste; on a strike day pay with the card.

The €35.70 Lisboa–Porto Alfa Pendular ticket is the one worth a claim, and the 15-minute online cut-off is the trap: once the train is officially cancelled the app route may already be closed to you, so go to a ticket office and take the ten days.

The stoppage that filled a winter of headlines was not the airport's staff but its ground handler. The metalworkers' union SIMA filed a strike notice at Menzies, the former Groundforce, covering all Portuguese airports from 3 September 2025 to 2 January 2026 — 76 chosen days that fell on long weekends, Christmas and New Year rather than every day. Minimum services were ordered for the December dates, and the 31 December–1 January walkout was called off after an agreement between the unions and the Menzies and TAP shareholders, per Lusa.

That is the shape of an airport strike here: partial, date-targeted, and regularly settled late. On 29 August 2026 we found no filed airport notice for the autumn, but the same union has filed rolling notices twice in two years, so check before a long-weekend flight.

What a handling strike does to your flight

Ground handling is baggage, check-in and aircraft turnaround, so the visible effect is delay and a queue of cancellations concentrated on the airlines that use that handler; the metro red line, Carris 744 and 783 and the taxis all run as normal, so getting to the airport is not the problem — the airport is. The compensation rule is Regulation (EC) 261/2004: a cancelled or badly delayed flight earns €250 to €600 unless the airline shows "extraordinary circumstances". The Court of Justice held in 2021, in case C-28/20, that a strike by the airline's own staff is not extraordinary; a strike by a third party such as a ground handler or air-traffic control usually is.

So a Menzies strike normally means rebooking and care — meals, a hotel — but not cash; a TAP crew strike may mean both. Either way the airline must rebook or refund, and the app is the fastest place to accept a new flight before the phone queue forms.

The airport itself, on a metro strike day

A metro strike is the airport problem most visitors actually meet, because it removes the red line. The alternatives all run: Carris 744 between Restauradores and Moscavide serves the Aeroporto stop on the ordinary €2.30 on-board fare, roughly 07:00 to 21:30 on the August timetable; taxis and the app cars queue outside arrivals as usual, and the private airport transfer is a fixed price booked ahead, which on a strike morning is worth more than it costs. Give a 07:00 flight the 744 or a car, not the hope of a metro that has been shut since 23:00.

Belém Tower has run on timed slots since it reopened on 27 May 2026, and neither its page nor the MMP ticket shop publishes what happens to a slot you miss. That silence is the finding: not one Lisbon official shop prints a grace period for a late visitor, so a strike that strands you across town is, on paper, a lost €15. The one published tolerance is at Quinta da Regaleira, one hour either side of the slot; Pena Palace publishes the opposite, zero tolerance, and the 30-minute uphill walk from gate to palace door is inside that.

What to actually do

Book the Belém slot for the afternoon and the Sintra slot for a day you reach by coach rather than train. If the strike is announced after you have booked, write to the shop before the slot time, not after — MMP tickets are sold through a third-party platform, and a request before the hour is the only version that has ever worked for anyone. On the day, the Belém Tower tickets page and the Pena Palace tickets page carry the official contacts; the Jerónimos cloister sells a plain entry ticket with no slot, which on a strike week is the safer purchase of the two Belém monuments.

Sintra — go by coach, not by train

The Sintra train from Rossio is a CP urban service, so on a CP strike day it runs to a minimum nobody publishes in advance. The full Sintra day with Pena, Cascais and Cabo da Roca and the Pena ticket inside it is a private minibus from Lisbon at €85, and the half-day version with Pena tickets is €80; both carry the palace slot the strike would otherwise cost you. The self-guided version and its €2.55 single fare are on the Sintra day trip page.

Cascais — go, or walk the coast instead

The Cascais line from Cais do Sodré is the other CP urban line, and a minimum is still a train every so often; a €5.10 return is not much to risk. If the count is thin, Belém by 15E and the riverside walk to Algés give you the water without a timetable. The Cascais page has the train and the beaches.

Porto — postpone it

A €35.70 Alfa Pendular ticket is refundable in full when the strike cancels it, but a day trip to Porto on a minimum timetable is a gamble on the return, which is the leg that matters. The Porto, Óbidos and Nazaré coach day at €110 is a private operator and does not care; the Porto page has the train timings for another day.

Fátima, Évora, Arrábida — go, they never touched a railway

The Fátima, Batalha, Nazaré and Óbidos day, the Évora and megaliths day and the Arrábida and Sesimbra day with wine are all coach or minibus from a Lisbon meeting point, and the only strike that reaches them is one at the meeting point's metro station. Walk there. The full list is on day trips from Lisbon.

Lisbon is a compact city with an expensive geography: the flat Baixa is a ten-minute walk end to end, but the castle sits 100 metres above it and Bairro Alto on the other side, and the funiculars that used to solve that have been closed since September 2025. On a strike day that is what you are actually managing. Taxis and Bolt and Uber cars are not unionised in any way a notice touches; expect surge pricing on the app cars once the metro shuts, and a queue at Rossio.

The ordinary fares are on Lisbon public transport.

The route that ignores all of it: Rossio to the Sé along Rua Augusta and up through Alfama to the castle is a 25-minute climb; back down through Graça to the Panteão and the Feira da Ladra, then along the river to Praça do Comércio, is an afternoon. The Lisbon in one day itinerary is exactly this and uses no transport until Belém, which the 15E covers. If the climb is the problem, the private tuk-tuk with hotel pickup is €130 for the vehicle and the electric-bike hills tour is €25 a head — both listed by private operators, both free to cancel up to 24 hours before, and neither on any union's notice.

The mistake that outlasts the strike

Buying tram tickets on board. The €3.30 on-board tram fare is valid only in that vehicle, so if a strike-day tram terminates short — which a minimum-service tram does — the fare is gone. The €0.50 navegante card with zapping credit at €1.72 a ride is valid on the next tram, the next bus and the metro when it reopens.

Buy it at any metro machine before the strike, and it also covers the replacement buses for the closed funiculars.