Portugal increasingly hearing ‘patter of tiny feet’

After years of demographic doldrums, Portugal is finally getting to hear the increasingly louder patter of tiny feet.

The country recorded 87,130 births in 2025 –  3,071 more than in 2024 (+3.7%), marking a return to the upward trend that had paused the previous year, with the Northern region accounting for almost half of the national increase, according to data released by INE Statistics Portugal today.

INE’s “Birth Statistics” shows that the increase recorded in 2025 reverses the decline observed between 2023 and 2024 and resumes the growth trend seen since 2022.

The data highlights the increase in the proportion of births to mothers of foreign nationality from 26.3 per cent in 2024 to 28.8 per cent in 2025 – with foreign mothers residing mainly in municipalities in the Algarve and Greater Lisbon.

“The group of foreign nationalities most represented remained the same as in the previous year, increasing their share of total births, with Brazil standing out (10.5% of total births in 2025),” it notes.

Of the total births in 2025, 99.7% (86,869) were to mothers residing in the country and 0.3% (261) to mothers residing abroad – proportions similar to those of the last two years.

The data shows that the number of births increased in all regions of the country between 2024 and 2025, except for the Autonomous Region of Madeira, which had a 3.3% decrease.

In the remaining regions, INE highlights increases of almost 6% in the North and around 5% in the Centre, Setúbal Peninsula and the Autonomous Region of the Azores.

“Combining the number of births and the relative annual change in births in each region, we can conclude that the Northern region contributed almost half (1.8 percentage points) to the 3.7% increase in the number of births in Portugal in 2025,” says the Birth Statistics report.

The Northern region recorded the highest number of births among women resident in the country (29.8%), followed by Greater Lisbon (25.6%), the Central region (13.7%), the Setúbal Peninsula (9.7%) and the Oeste and Tejo Valley region (7.7%).

The data also reveal that, over the last 20 years, the age of women giving birth has increased: between 2003 and 2025, the proportion of births to parents aged 35 or over rose from 17.2% to 32.0%.

In 2025, the proportion of births with two or more babies increased with mothers’ age: 40.4% of multiple births were to mothers aged 35 or over, whilst the proportion of single births in the same age group was 31.9%.

For 92.5% of single births, the mothers had a pregnancy lasting more than 37 weeks, whilst for twin births, that proportion was 37.9%. In this type of birth, the pregnancy lasted 32-36 weeks in 52.6% of cases.

According to the data, hospitals have performed an increasing proportion of dystocic births (involving instrumental interventions such as forceps and vacuum extraction, or caesarean section), accounting for more than half of all births since 2009.

“In particular, the number of caesarean sections rose, between 1999 and 2024, from 27.1% to 38.6% of births taking place in hospitals,” INE notes.

Last year, 98.5% of births took place in a hospital and 1% at the mother’s home, with the remaining 0.5% occurring in other locations.

Almost all births (99%) had a doctor (72.3%) or a midwife (26.7%) in attendance.

Source: LUSA