Overview
Portugal regulates civilian firearms through the Regime Jurídico das Armas e Munições (Legal Regime for Weapons and Ammunition), enacted as Lei n.º 5/2006, de 23 de fevereiro. According to the official Diário da República record, this statute has been amended several times, most recently by Lei n.º 50/2019, de 24 de julho — its sixth amendment — which transposed EU Directive (UE) 2017/853 into Portuguese law. Readers relying on the newest provisions should note that the substantive framework described here reflects the law as amended through 2019; later technical changes may exist and should be checked against the consolidated text.
As a member of the European Union, Portugal operates within the EU firearms-directive framework, under which civilian access to firearms is treated as a licensed activity rather than a right. According to Lei n.º 5/2006, weapons and ammunition are sorted into classes — commonly identified as A, B, B1, C, D, E, F and G — graded by their danger, mechanism and intended use. Class A comprises prohibited weapons (armas proibidas), which civilians generally may not acquire or possess; the remaining classes are accessible to qualifying private citizens only under a corresponding licence and subject to registration.
The issuing and supervising authority is the Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP), through its weapons and explosives department, as confirmed by the Portuguese government service portal (gov.pt). The PSP processes licence applications, maintains the firearms register, and enforces the administrative rules of the regime. Applications may be filed online through the PSP's SERO/SEROnline platform or in person at PSP weapons offices.
Civilian firearms use in Portugal centres on three broad purposes: personal defence (classes B and B1), hunting (classes C and D), and sport and recreational shooting, alongside narrower categories for less-lethal defence weapons (class E) and for collectors, historical re-enactors and certain edged or martial-arts implements (class F). Each purpose maps to a specific licença de uso e porte de arma (use-and-carry licence) with its own eligibility test.
According to Lei n.º 5/2006, lawful possession depends on both a valid licence for the relevant class and formal registration of the firearm — the manifesto — so that each weapon is recorded to its holder. The law also fixes duties of safe storage, limits on the number of firearms a licence holder may keep, and controls on the acquisition of ammunition. The 2019 amendment tightened several of these controls in line with the EU directive, including provisions affecting semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines. Because the regime is licence- and registration-based throughout, Portugal is generally characterised as a restrictive-permissive jurisdiction: firearms are broadly obtainable by law-abiding adults who meet the conditions, but never without prior authorisation, vetting and record-keeping.
Ownership & licensing
Under Lei n.º 5/2006, civilian ownership of firearms is permitted only to holders of the appropriate licence, issued by the PSP. According to the government service portal (gov.pt), any person who wishes to acquire, hold, use or carry a firearm must first obtain a licença de uso e porte de arma for the relevant weapon class, and each firearm must be individually registered (manifesto) with the PSP.
The principal civilian licence types correspond to the weapon classes. A class B licence covers certain defence and sporting firearms; guidance describes it as available to applicants who meet stringent conditions, and it permits the holder to keep a limited number of firearms drawn from classes B and B1. A class B1 licence authorises a personal-defence handgun but, according to practitioner guidance summarising the regime, is granted sparingly and requires the applicant to demonstrate a genuine justifying reason — a professional need or specific circumstances of personal or property defence. Class C and class D licences serve hunting and permit a substantially larger inventory of long guns. Class E covers less-lethal defence weapons, and class F covers collectors, historical re-enactors and related uses.
Eligibility criteria are common across licence types. According to the description of the licensing process, an applicant must generally be at least 18 years old — with hunting-related class D accessible from 16 with parental consent — hold no relevant criminal record, and demonstrate physical and psychological fitness for firearms use through a medical/psychological certificate. Applicants must also complete a technical and civic training course covering legislation, firearm identification, safety rules and first aid, and pass an examination that, according to published guidance, combines a multiple-choice theory test, a weapon-and-ammunition recognition test, and a practical shooting test. Renewals require periodic re-training or re-testing.
The justifying-reason requirement is central to the defence licences. Whereas hunting and sport licences flow from membership of the relevant activity (a hunting licence, club membership or federation affiliation), the personal-defence handgun licence (B1) obliges the applicant to prove necessity, which the PSP assesses individually. This makes defensive handgun ownership comparatively uncommon in Portugal relative to hunting and sport ownership.
Registration is integral to lawful ownership. According to Lei n.º 5/2006, every firearm a civilian holds must be entered on the PSP register in the holder's name; transfers between private parties are channelled through authorised procedures so the register stays current. The law also imposes safe-storage duties, caps on the number of firearms and quantity of ammunition a holder may possess by class, and rules on lending or ceding weapons. The 2019 amendment (Lei n.º 50/2019), transposing EU Directive 2017/853, revised aspects of classification, deactivation and magazine controls; the precise numerical thresholds it introduced are set out in the amended statutory text and are not restated here as verified figures.
Carry & transport
In Portugal the concepts of uso (use) and porte (carry) are bound into the licence itself: the standard civilian authorisation is a licença de uso e porte de arma, so the right to carry is defined by the licence class rather than by a separate carry permit. According to Lei n.º 5/2006 and the PSP licensing framework, what a holder may carry, and in what circumstances, depends on the class of licence and the class of weapon.
General open carry of firearms in public is not a feature of the Portuguese regime. There is no broad entitlement for civilians to bear firearms openly in everyday public settings; carriage is instead tied to a lawful purpose recognised by the licence. The class B1 personal-defence licence authorises the holder to carry a handgun for defence — in practice a concealed carry — but, as noted, that licence is granted only on proof of a justifying reason and is comparatively rare. Sport and hunting licences authorise carriage that is functional to the activity: a hunter may carry and use a shotgun or rifle while lawfully hunting, and a sport shooter may carry a firearm to and at an authorised range, but these authorisations do not extend to general carriage around town.
Because of this structure, Portugal is best described as having no general open-carry regime and a permit-bound concealed-carry regime limited to defence-licence holders. Where a licence does not authorise carriage for a particular context, the firearm must be transported, not carried ready for use.
According to Lei n.º 5/2006, transport of firearms outside the situations for which carriage is authorised must follow safe-transport rules. In general terms, this means the firearm is moved unloaded and secured, separately from a state of immediate readiness, and only for legitimate reasons such as travel to a hunting ground, a range, a gunsmith, or in connection with sale or registration. The holder must be able to show the corresponding licence and registration document on request. Carrying or transporting a firearm without the licence appropriate to that weapon and context exposes the person to the criminal and administrative sanctions of the regime.
The law also restricts carriage in sensitive locations and circumstances — for example around certain public events, and while under the influence of alcohol or other substances — and treats carrying a firearm during the commission of another offence as an aggravating factor. The precise conditions, prohibited places and any blood-alcohol thresholds are specified in the statute and its regulations; where this article cannot verify an exact figure or subsection it describes the rule qualitatively rather than stating an unverified specific. Holders should treat any movement of a firearm outside an expressly authorised carry context as transport subject to the safe-transport conditions, and confirm the current requirements with the PSP, which administers and enforces them.
Travel & import
Portugal's rules on bringing firearms into and out of the country reflect both Lei n.º 5/2006 and its position within the European Union's harmonised firearms framework, reinforced by the 2019 transposition of EU Directive 2017/853. According to the statute, the acquisition, importation, exportation and transfer of weapons and ammunition are regulated activities requiring authorisation, and the PSP is the competent national authority for the associated permits and documents.
For movement within the European Union, the relevant instrument is the European Firearms Pass (EFP), a document issued to a lawful firearm owner that records the firearms concerned and accompanies them on travel between member states — typically for hunting or sport shooting. According to the EU firearms-directive framework that Portugal implements, a traveller generally needs the EFP plus, depending on the destination and the weapon class, prior authorisation or an invitation/justification (such as a hunting invitation or a shooting-competition entry) from the state being visited. A resident of Portugal taking firearms abroad, and a visitor bringing firearms into Portugal, each work through this EU documentation together with the PSP's national controls.
For movement from outside the EU, importation into Portugal requires prior authorisation and compliance with the class rules of Lei n.º 5/2006: a weapon that would fall into a prohibited class cannot be imported for civilian ownership, and importable weapons must be matched to a valid licence and entered on the register. Ammunition is likewise controlled, with acquisition and import tied to the holder's licence and class.
Visitors and non-residents wishing to bring firearms into Portugal — for example for a hunting trip or a competition — should expect to present identification, the firearms' documentation, the European Firearms Pass where applicable, and evidence of the purpose of the visit, and to obtain any temporary authorisation the PSP requires. According to the general structure of the regime, temporary importation for a specific sporting or hunting purpose is treated differently from permanent importation for ownership, but both are authorisation-based.
Because the detailed procedures, permitted quantities and any temporary-import validity periods are set by the PSP and by EU-level rules that are periodically updated, exact operational specifics are not restated here as verified figures. Travellers are directed to the PSP and, for cross-border EU travel, to the European Firearms Pass procedure, before moving any firearm across a border. Airlines, customs and transit-country rules add further requirements that sit outside Lei n.º 5/2006 itself. The unifying principle, according to the statute, is that no firearm crosses the Portuguese border for civilian purposes without prior authorisation, class-compliance and registration, and that prohibited-class weapons remain outside the scope of civilian import entirely.
Hunting & sport shooting
Hunting and sport shooting are the most established routes to lawful firearm ownership in Portugal, and Lei n.º 5/2006 provides dedicated licence classes for both. According to the regime and the government service portal (gov.pt), hunting firearms fall chiefly within classes C and D, and access to them runs through a class C or class D use-and-carry licence issued by the PSP.
The hunting licences are notable for the larger inventories they allow. According to practitioner guidance summarising the regime, a class C licence permits the holder to keep a substantial number of long guns drawn from the hunting-related classes, reflecting the practical reality that hunters own several shotguns and rifles suited to different quarry and seasons. A class D licence is the entry-level hunting authorisation and, as noted, is accessible from 16 years of age with parental consent, whereas the general minimum age for firearms licences is 18. Holding a firearms licence is distinct from holding a hunting licence (the carta/licença de caça) issued under the hunting laws: a hunter needs the firearms licence to possess and carry the gun and the separate hunting authorisation to hunt, together with landowner or hunting-zone permissions.
Sport shooting is pursued through the club and federation structure. According to the regime, sport shooters obtain the licence class appropriate to their discipline — often a class B licence for pistols and certain rifles used competitively — and their eligibility is supported by membership of an authorised shooting club and affiliation with the relevant national federation. Access to firearms for sport is generally conditioned on demonstrated, ongoing participation, and the firearms are kept and transported under the same registration, safe-storage and safe-transport rules that apply to all civilian owners.
Across both activities, the standard eligibility conditions apply: minimum age, no relevant criminal record, medical and psychological fitness, completion of the technical-and-civic training course, and passing the associated examination, which — according to published guidance — includes theory, weapon-and-ammunition recognition and a practical shooting component. Renewal requires periodic re-training or re-assessment, and the firearm remains subject to registration (manifesto).
The 2019 amendment (Lei n.º 50/2019), transposing EU Directive 2017/853, affected sport and hunting owners chiefly through revised classification and magazine controls and rules on semi-automatic firearms; certain configurations that had been available were moved into more restricted or prohibited treatment, while established hunting and sporting arms remained available under licence. The precise capacity thresholds and configuration criteria are set out in the amended statute and are not stated here as verified figures. In practice, hunting and sport shooting remain the mainstream, well-supported avenues for civilian firearm ownership in Portugal, structured around club and federation membership, PSP licensing and full registration.
Penalties
Lei n.º 5/2006 backs the licensing and registration regime with a graded system of sanctions that runs from administrative fines for lesser breaches to criminal imprisonment for the most serious weapons offences. According to the statute, its penal chapter — centred on the offence of detenção de arma proibida e crime cometido com arma (possession of a prohibited weapon and crime committed with a weapon), commonly cited as Article 86 — distinguishes offences by the class of weapon involved and by the nature of the conduct.
In general terms, and consistent with the class-based structure of the law, the heaviest penalties attach to prohibited, military, automatic and comparably dangerous weapons and to explosives, while the possession of licensable-class weapons (such as classes B, B1, C and D) without the required authorisation carries lower, though still potentially custodial, penalties. According to the regime, penalties for unlawful possession scale with the severity of the conduct and the danger of the weapon, ranging from fines expressed in day-units (dias de multa) up to multi-year terms of imprisonment for the gravest offences. Public legal sources reviewed for this article reported differing exact figures for the various sub-paragraphs of the possession offence; because those specific prison ranges and fine figures could not be verified against the primary statutory text during research, they are described here qualitatively rather than stated as precise numbers.
Beyond simple unlawful possession, the law treats carrying or using a firearm in connection with another crime as an aggravating circumstance, increasing the penalty applicable to that underlying offence. According to Lei n.º 5/2006, the regime also criminalises related conduct such as unlawful manufacture, transformation or modification of firearms (for example converting a firearm to make it more concealable or more dangerous), trafficking, and dealing outside the authorised commercial framework, with penalties set according to the seriousness of the activity.
A separate tier of administrative offences (contraordenações) covers breaches that do not rise to the level of a crime — for instance lapses in registration, storage, documentation or the conditions of a licence — and is enforced through fines and, where appropriate, seizure of the weapon and suspension or revocation of the licence by the PSP. Revocation and prohibition from holding a licence can follow both administrative breaches and criminal convictions, and unlawfully held or prohibited weapons are subject to seizure and forfeiture.
Because the exact imprisonment ranges, fine quanta and subsection attributions vary across the article's many paragraphs and have been subject to amendment, this article deliberately avoids stating specific figures it could not confirm against the primary source in this research session. Readers needing the precise penalty for a given weapon class or conduct should consult the current consolidated text of Lei n.º 5/2006 (Article 86 and the surrounding penal provisions) on the official Diário da República, or seek qualified legal advice, since the applicable term depends closely on the weapon class and the specific circumstances.
Sources
- Lei n.º 50/2019, de 24 de julho — sixth amendment to Lei n.º 5/2006, transposing EU Directive (UE) 2017/853 (Diário da República) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Lei n.º 5/2006, de 23 de fevereiro — Regime Jurídico das Armas e Munições, consolidated text (Diário da República) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Pedir o licenciamento de armas — official government service portal (gov.pt) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Lei n.º 5/2006 — consolidated articulated text, Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa (PGDL) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- How to obtain a firearm licence (LUPA) in Portugal — Cinergética guide (accessed 2026-07-17)