Minimum wage (RMMG)

The guaranteed minimum monthly wage

The RMMG — retribuição mínima mensal garantida — is the lowest pay an employer may lawfully give for full-time work. For 2026 it is 920,00 € a month, set by decree with effect from the first of January. Because pay in Portugal runs across fourteen instalments, that monthly figure works out at 12 880,00 € over the year — the same amount used as the annual minimum of existence in the tax rules.

The minimum is stated per month, not per hour, but a legal hourly equivalent follows from the standard full-time week: about 5,31 € an hour. It is a reference point rather than the way most contracts are written, since full-time pay in Portugal is quoted monthly.

Take-home pay at the minimum

At the minimum wage the deductions are unusually simple. The IRS withheld at source is zero: the minimum sits in the 0% band of the withholding table, protected by the minimum-of-existence rule, so no income tax comes off. That leaves only the employee’s social-security share of 11%. In other words, net pay at the minimum wage is simply the gross minus that single social-security slice — there is no tax to subtract on top. It is the one salary level where the two big deductions collapse into one.

The minimum is also the reason the 0% band exists where it does: the withholding tables are drawn so that a minimum-wage earner keeps the whole of their pay bar the social-security contribution, and the tables are re-issued each year partly to protect that guarantee when the minimum rises.

A rising floor

The minimum wage in Portugal has climbed steadily, and the 2026 figure is the latest step. A further phased increase for the following years has been agreed through social dialogue between the government, employers and unions, so the floor is expected to keep rising toward the end of the decade. We deliberately do not quote the future targets as hard numbers here, because they are commitments rather than enacted rates — the calculator uses the value in force. That value follows the decree-law cited on this page; the floor is reset each year, so a recent uprating may not be here yet, and it has not been through our final sign-off — the binding amount is the one in the published decree.

If your pay is at or near the minimum, the calculator on the home page will show the whole picture: the gross, the single social-security deduction, the zero income-tax line and the resulting net. It is the clearest illustration of how the Portuguese payslip is put together.

The full content of this page is still being written.