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Training Hours

Portuguese law grants 40 training hours a year and pays for the ones you never got. Enter your contract and the hours you received.

Pay means base pay plus seniority payments and regular supplements, excluding meal and travel allowances and commissions, which is the criterion of the labour authority simulator. The months only reduce the entitlement on a fixed-term contract. Count at most four previous years: with the current one that is the five-year window.

Hours missing this year
40 h
Due if the contract ends
€1,107.69
This year entitlement40 h
Hours already met0 h
Previous years entitlement160 h
Missing in previous years120 h
Missing across the 5-year window160 h
Total entitlement in the window200 h
Value of one hour€6.92
Value of this year hours€276.92
Social Security (11 %)€121.85
After Social Security€985.84

The window is five years because article 131(6) gives two years for the training to be delivered and article 132(6) gives the hours credit three more years of life. It is the same window the labour authority asks for in its training-credits simulator.

The amount is pay, under article 132(2), so category-A income tax applies on top of the 11 % Social Security share. Income tax is not computed here because it depends on your bracket.

The statutory figures are floors: a collective agreement may give more hours, and article 131(9) allows the regime to be adapted. The Azores and Madeira regimes and the public sector are out of scope.

Forty hours a year, and the sentence almost everyone reads backwards

Article 131(2) of the Portuguese Labour Code says a worker is entitled, in each year, to a minimum of forty hours of continuing training or, being hired on a fixed term of three months or more, to a minimum number of hours proportional to the duration of the contract in that year. Notice where the proportion is attached: to the words being hired on a fixed term, and to nothing else. A permanent contract carries no proportion in the article at all, so the literal reading gives the full forty hours in every civil year, including the year the person was hired. Someone starting in November on a permanent contract is owed forty hours for that year; someone starting in July on a six-month fixed term is owed twenty. It is counter-intuitive, it is what the text says, and it is why this calculator only reduces the entitlement when the contract is fixed-term. Some employers prorate the hiring year of a permanent contract anyway, and the page flags that difference rather than hiding it. Below three months the fixed-term contract falls outside the sentence entirely: the law sets no minimum for it, and the calculator returns zero with a warning instead of inventing a rule the article does not contain.

What counts as training given, and the offset nobody knows about

Paragraph 4 of the same article settles a question most published tables never even raise: for the purpose of complying with paragraph 2, the hours of time off for attending classes and for sitting assessments under the working-student regime are taken into account, as are absences within a process for the recognition, validation and certification of competences. That means those hours discharge the employer duty exactly as a course the company organised would. A working student who took twenty hours off for classes and exams has already had twenty of their forty hours satisfied, and the company only owes the remaining twenty. That is why the calculator has a separate field for them: counting them as zero overstates what you are owed, and it is the mistake most often seen. Outside paragraph 4, the training must be delivered by the employer, by a certified training body or by a recognised education establishment, and it gives rise to a certificate and an entry in the Individual Competences Record, under paragraph 3.

The hours do not die at year end: there are two clocks

The idea that training hours expire on 31 December is false, and it is what makes people understate what they are owed. Article 131(6) lets the employer bring forward by up to two years or, where the training plan provides for it, defer for the same period the delivery of the annual training, imputing the training carried out to the oldest outstanding obligation. Article 132(1) picks up what is left: hours not secured by the employer by the end of the two years following their accrual are converted into an hours credit of equal size, for training at the worker own initiative. That credit carries a right to pay and counts as effective service time (paragraph 2), is used with ten days notice to the employer (paragraph 3), is always imputed to the oldest credit first (paragraph 5) and only lapses three years after it was constituted (paragraph 6). Two clocks in sequence, then: the deferral one and the credit-validity one. The window used in this calculator is five years, which is exactly what the Portuguese labour authority asks for in its own training-credits simulator, whose only hours input is the number of hours delivered in the last five years.

What the missing hours are worth when the contract ends

Article 134 is short and it is what turns this into an amount: when the employment contract ends, the worker is entitled to receive the pay corresponding to the annual minimum training hours that were not provided, or to the training hours credit held at the date of termination. Note that the article does not distinguish the reason for the ending: it applies to dismissal, to expiry and equally to resignation by the worker, just as the end-of-contract credits of article 245 do. The hour is priced by the article 271 formula, the same one the hourly-rate calculator uses, that is the monthly pay multiplied by twelve and divided by fifty-two times the normal weekly working period. The pay feeding that formula is, following the criterion of the labour authority own simulator, the base pay plus seniority payments plus regular periodic supplements, and it excludes travel allowances, meal, transport and representation allowances, and commissions. Because the credit carries a right to pay, the amount is category-A employment income: the calculator deducts the 11 % employee Social Security share and flags the income tax, which depends on each person bracket and is not guessed.

Worked example

A worker on a permanent contract, 40 weekly hours and 1,200 € of monthly pay, who had no training at all this year and only 40 hours across the previous four years. This year entitlement is 40 hours and none was met, so 40 hours are missing. Across the previous four years the entitlement added up to 160 hours and the company delivered 40, so 120 are missing. That is 160 hours missing inside the five-year window, against a ceiling of 200. The hour is worth 6.92 €, by the article 271 formula, so this year 40 hours are worth 276.92 € and the total due on termination, under article 134, is 1,107.69 €. After the 11 % Social Security deduction that leaves 985.84 € before income tax. Note the order of magnitude: almost a month of salary, for training that never happened.

Frequently asked questions

How many training hours am I entitled to per year in Portugal?
Forty hours in each year, under article 131(2) of the Labour Code. On a fixed-term contract of at least three months the minimum is proportional to the duration of the contract in that year, so six months give twenty hours. On a fixed term shorter than three months the law sets no minimum at all. Watch the number: until 1 October 2019 it was thirty-five hours, and a great deal of published material, institutional sources included, still carries the old figure.
Do unused training hours expire at the end of the year?
No. The employer still has two years to deliver them (article 131(6)) and, once that period is over, the hours convert into an hours credit of equal size for training at the worker own initiative (article 132(1)). That credit only lapses three years after it was constituted (article 132(6)). This is why a claim reaches back several years, and why the labour authority simulator asks for the hours of the last five years.
Does the company have to pay for the training it never gave me?
When the contract ends, yes. Article 134 gives the worker the right to receive the pay corresponding to the training hours that were not provided, or to the hours credit held at the date of termination. It applies to any ending, including where it is the worker who resigns. While the contract is running, what exists is the right to the training and to the hours credit, not a payment.
Do working-student classes count as training?
They do, and they reduce what the company owes you. Article 131(4) requires that, for compliance with the annual minimum, the hours of time off for attending classes and sitting assessments under the working-student regime be taken into account, as well as absences within a recognition, validation and certification of competences process. That is why the calculator has a separate field for them.
Is it 35 or 40 hours of mandatory training?
Forty. The original wording of Law 7/2009 said thirty-five hours and Law 93/2019 of 4 September replaced that figure with forty. That law came into force on the first working day of the month following its publication, that is 1 October 2019. The old number still circulates on training providers pages and even in institutional communication, which explains the confusion.
Is the amount I receive for training hours taxed?
It is. Article 132(2) says the hours credit carries a right to pay, so it is employment income: the 11 % employee Social Security share and category-A income tax apply. The calculator deducts Social Security and flags the income tax without computing it, because it depends on your bracket and on the rest of your annual income.

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Author: Thorben Rasmus Idel · Reviewed by: Nahar Geva · Last reviewed: 2026-09-02