Portugal runs free state Portuguese courses (PLA) for anyone over 16. They cost nothing and certify you to the level accepted for residency and citizenship.
Is there a free Portuguese course in Portugal?
Yes. The Portuguese state runs free language courses for adults, called Português Língua de Acolhimento (PLA). They are open to anyone aged sixteen or over whose first language is not Portuguese, they cost nothing, and finishing one with a pass gives you a certified level on the European scale, from A1 up to B2. That certificate is accepted as language proof in a citizenship application, which is why the places fill up.
A neighbour had to tell us. So if this is the first you are hearing of it, you are exactly where we were, and here is everything we wish someone had said sooner.We did not know these existed for far too long.
The best kept practical secret in the country
That is not my phrase for effect. It is genuinely how it feels. There is a fully funded, state-run route to learning the language, certified and recognised, and yet almost nobody arriving here seems to know about it, and I have not met a single person who found it through an official welcome of any kind. It travels by word of mouth, neighbour to neighbour, which is a strange way for a national programme to reach people, but it is the way it reached us.
The courses have had a few names over the years, so if you go looking you may see the older ones: Português para Falantes de Outras Línguas, and before that Português para Todos. The current name is Português Língua de Acolhimento, usually shortened to PLA. They are established in law and run nationally.
Where they run, and how little it takes to enrol
They run in three kinds of place: state schools, the vocational training centres of the IEFP, and the Centros Qualifica. You find your nearest one and, in our experience, you go in person, because that has worked faster than the websites every single time.
At the IEFP centre we went to, they took our details, asked whether we would rather study in person or online, and said they would be in touch in September. There was no test. There was no fee. There was no document to sign. Ten minutes, and we were on the list.Putting your name down is close to nothing.
Demand has grown sharply, from around twenty-two thousand enrolments in 2020/21 to more than fifty-six thousand by 2025 — so the places do fill, which is the reason not to leave it.
Why an A2 certificate matters more than it looks
A pass at A2 level is accepted as your proof of Portuguese for permanent residence and for citizenship. For anyone here on the ten-year path to a passport, that single certificate is one of the documents at the end of the road, and getting it free through a state course rather than paying privately for the exam preparation is not a small saving.The certificate is not only a nice thing to have on the wall.
Do it in your first year
This is the part I feel most strongly about, and it is not about the language being hard.
You can run a whole practical life here on about two hundred words. The shopping, the school run, the good mornings, all of it works on transactional language that arrives quickly and feels like progress. The trouble is that it stops at the edge of a real conversation and will not grow into one on its own. And if you wait, a life will quietly assemble itself around the gap. The shopping and the school and the neighbours all get managed without the language, and one day you notice you have been living slightly outside the place you live.
So do it early. Not in your third year, when the gap has set. In your first, when it is still just a gap.
Course names, providers and the certification accepted for residency and citizenship are set by the state and change over time, and the above was current in 2026. Check the current position with the IEFP, a Centro Qualifica, or your nearest school before you rely on it.
Learning where the free course was is one of dozens of things that took us far longer to find than it should have. The book gathers all of them, in the order a move actually happens, with the story alongside the practical part: Moving to Portugal: The Honest Version. It is our real family and our real road, not another guide. https://aterraliberty.com/book
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