Lisbon City Council enjoys sold accounts in 2025

Lisbon closed the (election) year of 2025 with a positive budget balance of €142.3 million, almost six times higher than the €24.6 million recorded in 2024, in a year in which the city council reinforced its tax and tourism revenue, and presented a net result of €63.2 million, after having presented a loss of €9.9 million in the previous year.

“The great challenge we face, and which continues to be the main priority of this executive, is the strengthening and defence of housing programmes and the improvement of our public spaces,” states Carlos Moedas, in a written response to the online business daily ECO/Local Online. The capital’s city council achieves these results with strong revenue growth, but also with a further increase in debt and liabilities.

The municipality’s accounts for 2025 — the year of municipal elections in which Moedas won again — still have to be approved by the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, in a meeting scheduled for April 21.

The indicators are clearly positive for 2025. The budget balance, which in municipal accounts is the first barometer of financial robustness and execution, is almost six times higher than the previous year.

At the same time, the municipality presents a current balance of €212.3 million and a negative capital balance of €178.6 million, which means that it managed to finance 68.2% of capital expenditure with current resources, reinforcing the capacity for self-financing investment.

“These are important results that demonstrate responsible, balanced, secure and reliable management in the largest municipality in the country,” adds the mayor in this statement.

The second strong sign is in the net result. After closing 2024 still in the red, with €-9.9 million, Lisbon now presents a positive net result of €63.2 million, an improvement of €73.1 million.

EBITDA rises to €176.7 million, 67.2% more than in 2024, suggesting that the improvement is not only budgetary or treasury-related, but also economic. Even so, the executive summary itself attributes this evolution to the significant growth in revenue, especially tax revenue, and only a relative containment of expenditure.

In the summary of the 2025 results growth in real estate prices ultimately represents an added value for the municipality, with the IMT (Municipal Property Transfer Tax) recovering from the 2024 drop, reaching €313.2 million, an increase of over 10%. The IMI (Municipal Property Tax) reached €143.1 million (+4%) and the municipal surcharge €138.1 million (+12.4%). Above these two, the component of fees, fines and penalties reached €159.4 million.

In 2025, tax revenues amounted to €613.1 million, an annual growth of over 10% compared to €554 million in 2024. In this category, taxes alone account for 47.7% of the total revenue of €1,2Bn.

Source: ECO Online; Credits: CML