Students to march on parliament against tuition fee rises on 18 November, the day budget voting begins
Student associations and federations from across the country are calling for a national march on Wednesday 18 November: protesters will gather at 14:30 in Largo do Carmo in Lisbon and march from there to parliament. That day, parliament begins several days of article-by-article voting on the 2027 budget (Notícias ao Minuto).
The students oppose plans to start raising tuition fees at state universities — propinas — again from the 2027/2028 academic year. Fees have been frozen since 2020: for bachelor's degrees, short vocational CTeSP courses and the master's degrees required to practise a profession, they are capped at €697 a year. Under the draft budget, the cap would rise in line with average inflation for 2026, calculated excluding housing.
The government also tried to unfreeze fees a year ago, but during the vote on the 2026 budget the opposition passed a Socialist Party (PS) amendment that kept them at €697. The PS is again proposing a freeze, along with a cap of €2,500 a year for other master's degrees.
A month ago, more than a hundred students protested outside the government building in Lisbon. Fee rises were halted in 2016, when fees had reached €1,067.85 a year; they were then cut several times and have been held at €697 since the 2020/2021 academic year.
