Portugal’s preparations for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are set to receive an improved cash injection after the government approved a €30 million support package, representing a 30% jump compared to the previous Olympic Games.
The announcement came after a cabinet meeting dedicated entirely to sport, held at the Jamor High Performance Centre in Cruz Quebrada. Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said the government will transfer the full four-year Olympic budget by the end of 2025, adding that “without funding, real preparation simply isn’t possible.”
The Paralympic and Deaflympic teams are also getting significant boosts: €12 million for Paralympic athletes (up 30%) and €3 million for the Deaflympic programme (a 70% increase).
“Without this, we won’t be able to cheer afterwards, to have the country waiting for the results that raise our feeling of being Portuguese and of considering ourselves equal to being the best in the world, as we often are,” Montenegro told reporters.
Alongside the Olympic budget, the cabinet approved the National Sports Development Plan, worth €130 million. “The investment we are making is, frankly, unparalleled in our democratic history,” the PM said.
The plan, coordinated by Culture, Youth and Sport Minister Margarida Balseiro Lopes, involved contributions from over 150 sports organisations and personalities and several ministries.
Montenegro likened sports to a “a school of values”, where “you learn to have good days of joy, of achieving results, but you also learn to deal with frustration, to deal with failure”, even drawing parallels with the situation in the country.
“It’s often with a spirit of sacrifice, with team spirit, with a spirit of mutual help, with a sense of ambition and perseverance that you can go further in sport. And it is also often with this spirit that a country can leverage itself to be more developed, to be able to go ahead with its project of creating more wealth so that it can then be fairer,” he said.
The approved plan aims to increase the practice of sport, boost investment in school sports and upgrade sports facilities. It also aims to promote “well-being, inclusion, and competitiveness” while reducing obesity, “particularly child obesity”, by getting children involved in sports early and making sure they remain active in their adult life. Increasing women’s participation in sport, creating more opportunities for people with disabilities, and bringing national investment in sports more in line with the European average are also among the objectives highlighted by Montenegro.
