We pick up the story with the birth of the Republic in 1910 to look at the modern history of Portugal. For earlier centuries see the short history of Portugal, and for the key dates the historical timeline.
The First Republic and the Estado Novo
The Republic proclaimed on 5 October 1910 brought secular and democratic reforms, but the parliamentary regime proved unable to calm the political and social chaos or fix the public finances: in sixteen years there were forty-five governments, amid bombings, strikes and attempted coups. On 28 May 1926 a military revolt overthrew the Republic and brought General Óscar Carmona to power, President from 1926 to 1951. In 1928 António de Oliveira Salazar joined the government as finance minister and from 1932, as head of government, established the so-called Estado Novo, a dictatorship continued by his successor Marcelo Caetano (1968-1974).
Salazar's regime rested on a single party, censorship, the PIDE political police and an alliance with the Church and large landowners, under the motto "God, Fatherland and Family". The country stayed neutral in the Second World War and joined NATO and the United Nations, but remained poor and backward, and in the 1960s hundreds of thousands of Portuguese emigrated, mainly to France. From 1961 the regime fought a long and costly colonial war in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique to avoid granting the colonies independence.
The Carnation Revolution
The dictatorship was brought down by the army on 25 April 1974 in the Carnation Revolution, an almost bloodless coup organised by the Armed Forces Movement: crowds poured into the streets and placed red carnations in the soldiers' rifle barrels. A military junta led by General António de Spínola, backed by the anti-fascist parties, took over, followed in the presidency by General Francisco da Costa Gomes. Then came the PREC, the "ongoing revolutionary process": banks and large industries were nationalised, land reform began in the Alentejo and the colonies were granted independence, while about half a million retornados came back from Africa. After the attempted far-left coup of 25 November 1975 the moderates prevailed, and in 1976 the democratic Constitution was approved.
Democracy and Europe
Mário Soares's Socialist Party, the largest party in the 1976 election, governed first alone and then in coalition with the CDS, but could not revive the economy. After a series of governments appointed by the President, the 1979 snap election was won by the Democratic Alliance, a centre-right coalition led by the Social Democrat Francisco Sá Carneiro, who became Prime Minister in early 1980 but died in a plane crash in December that year; he was succeeded by Francisco Pinto Balsemão, who resigned at the end of 1982 after poor local election results. The 1983 snap election brought a coalition of Socialists and Social Democrats, the "Bloco Central", led by Soares, which had to deal with another IMF programme. It was Soares who in June 1985 signed the treaty of accession to the EEC, in force from 1 January 1986; the following year he was elected President.
There followed the long period of governments under Aníbal Cavaco Silva (1985-1995), with two absolute majorities. Abroad, Portugal played an active part in the EEC, relations with Spain grew ever closer and in 1987 the agreement with China on the return of Macau, which took place in 1999, was signed. At home, the 1989 constitutional revision removed Marxist-inspired provisions and the irreversibility of nationalisations, opening the way to privatisation, revision of the land reform and more flexible labour laws, while EU funds paid for motorways and infrastructure.
In the 1994 European elections the Socialists narrowly beat the Social Democrats; in early 1995 Cavaco Silva announced he would not run again, and in the October general election António Guterres's Socialists defeated the PSD. The Socialists also won the 1996 presidential election, with Jorge Sampaio, and the local elections the following year. In 1998 Lisbon hosted Expo and the country qualified for Economic and Monetary Union, adopting the euro from 1999; that same year Guterres won another election. In December 2001, after an unexpected Socialist defeat in local elections, Guterres resigned, and the 2002 snap election was won by José Manuel Durão Barroso's PSD, which formed a centre-right government with the People's Party.
From the Stability Pact to the debt crisis
In 2002 Portugal was the first country against which the EU opened an excessive deficit procedure: to get back within the Stability Pact limits the government cut spending and privatised in energy and transport. In July 2004 Durão Barroso stepped down to become President of the European Commission and was replaced, without new elections, by Pedro Santana Lopes; President Sampaio dissolved Parliament a few months later. In the February 2005 election José Sócrates's Socialists won an absolute majority for the first time. His reform programme (liberalisation, public administration cuts, school reform, legalising abortion, higher VAT, deficit reduction) was unpopular but improved the public accounts, as described on the page on the economy up to 2007.
In the January 2006 presidential election the moderate Aníbal Cavaco Silva, a former Prime Minister, won in the first round; he was re-elected in January 2011. Two months later Sócrates, by then heading a minority government, resigned after Parliament rejected his deficit-reduction plan, and the country had to request an international bailout. The June election was won by the PSD (38.7%), led by Pedro Passos Coelho, while the PS stopped at 28%. The years of austerity and the Troika followed, described on the page on the economic crisis.
Portugal today
From 2015 the Socialist António Costa led the country for eight years, first with outside support from the left-wing parties, the so-called geringonça, then with an absolute majority won in 2022: years of economic recovery, a tourism boom and the first budget surplus of the democratic era, but also the pandemic and the terrible fires of 2017. In 2016 Portugal won the European football championship and António Guterres was elected UN Secretary-General; Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, hugely popular, became President and was re-elected in 2021.
In November 2023 Costa resigned after being mentioned in a judicial investigation. The 2024 election and the 2025 snap election were won by Luís Montenegro's Democratic Alliance, while André Ventura's radical-right Chega party grew to become the second party, ending the traditional two-party system. In 2024 the country celebrated fifty years since the Carnation Revolution, and in February 2026 the former Socialist leader António José Seguro was elected President. The details of recent elections are on the page on elections in Portugal.
For Portugal today, see Portugal today, immigration and Portuguese emigration.