Legal 500 Litigation 2026

GFDL Advogados contributes the Portugal chapter to the Legal 500 Litigation Comparative Guide 2026

GFDL Advogados is once again the contributing firm for the Portugal chapter of the Legal 500 Litigation Country Comparative Guide, now live in its 9th edition. The chapter was written by Rodrigue Devillet Lima (Partner), Catarina Andrade Miranda (Associate) and Carolina Mateus Monteiro (Junior Associate).

The guide is a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction Q&A used by in-house counsel and foreign law firms to compare litigation frameworks across markets. The Portugal chapter answers 26 questions on the practical side of litigating before the Portuguese courts, including:

• how the court system is organised and how long proceedings actually take;
• limitation periods, pre-action practice and service of process, including on defendants abroad;
• interim remedies and the requirements for injunctive relief;
• documentary disclosure, witness and expert evidence;
• appeals, costs recovery and the enforcement of foreign judgments;
• Portugal’s collective redress framework, including the opt-out ação popular and the transposition of the EU Representative Actions Directive.

The chapter closes with our assessment of where commercial disputes in Portugal are heading over the next five years: litigation arising from the recent changes to the Golden Visa and nationality regimes, ESG claims under the CSRD and CSDDD, and disputes driven by the EU AI Act, the GDPR and cybersecurity incidents.

The full chapter is available on the Legal 500 website here,.