UK → PORTUGAL Removals to Portugal from the UK

GOV.UK says that to bring household goods into Portugal you may need a baggage certificate, a document from the Portuguese Consulate General in London. On a move with us you do not need one. Your goods clear French customs on the way south, so there is nothing to request from London and no consulate standing between you and your collection date.

That leaves two dates to plan around. Count back from your collection window: the customs pack has to be with us 7 days ahead of the window, the final inventory 3 calendar days ahead. Both rest on papers you already control, which is one more reason to build your inventory once and early. So keep your council tax bills and whatever ends your UK home, the sale agreement or the rental notice, rather than shredding them: those are what prove the move.

From London to Lisbon our routing tool records 21.6 hours at the wheel. The route lands at Cherbourg after a sailing of about three hours and follows the Atlantic side of France to the Basque border. It crosses to Burgos and then turns west on the A-62 through Castilla y León. It enters Portugal at Vilar Formoso and comes down the Beira Interior motorway to the A1 and the coast. Spain is the long middle of this drive, which is why a Lisbon range starts later than it would if the border were the finish line.

That length sets the first possible delivery at day 3, with loading day as day one. We quote a dedicated 20 or 30 m³ van at 3–5 days. We quote a shared 5 or 10 m³ load at 3–10 days, since a part load waits for a van to fill.

People moving to Portugal ask us about access more than about anything else after documents, and they are right to. Lisbon’s older streets are steep and narrow. Porto’s riverside houses stack their rooms over four or five flights. An Algarve villa can be a long way from where a 7.5-tonne lorry can stop. None of that is a problem if we know. The driver’s help is at the van: your things come to the van door and go from it. Where the lorry cannot stop close to your door, or the flat is up several floors without a lift, that calls for Additional Crew, booked ahead of the day and priced before you commit.

So send us the address, a photo of the street and the floor number when you ask for your quote. We check the approach, we tell you what the standard service covers there, and we price anything beyond it in writing. The standard service, in full, is on our page about how international removals work. If the new home is not ready when the van is, our removals and storage service bridges the gap, subject to availability. In London the loading crew is our own; outside London one partnership company loads for us anywhere in the UK, and in Portugal we deliver through partner companies chosen route by route.

Lisbon adds a zone of its own in the middle. The city’s low-emission zone began on the Avenida da Liberdade and the Baixa, and it keeps the oldest vehicles out of the centre on weekdays. The newer Baixa-Chiado scheme admits only authorised vehicles for most of the day. A delivery into those streets is planned for the hours the zone allows and from a spot the lorry may use, which is why we ask for the exact address and not just the parish.

After the van has gone, one Portuguese formality is the easy kind. A registered resident may keep driving on a UK licence until it expires. The exchange, when you want it, runs on a check code from the DVLA and brings a temporary permit, the guia, while Portugal makes the new licence. The health service wants the NIF too, so that number earns its place at the top of your list.

Portugal’s labour code names thirteen national holidays, and two of them fall where a move is most likely to land. Lisbon adds its municipal holiday on 13 June, the day of Saint Anthony, when the city runs Saturday timetables and Alfama fills for the procession. A delivery into the old town that week is better planned for another day. Nationally, 10 June and 15 August are holidays, and August is holiday month across Portugal, when an answer from a landlord or a lawyer comes slower. A collection in early July or in September gives you the quietest road and the fastest answers at the Portuguese end.

Two dates are ours. Sundays are never collection days, and the booking calendar greys out our festive closure over Christmas and New Year before you choose. A Portuguese holiday does not stop a lorry already on the road. We plan the delivery day around it, though, so that nobody waits outside a closed building.

The window itself depends on the size you book. A shared 5 m³ load takes a 4-day window, a 15 m³ load a 2-day window, and a 30 m³ van a confirmed day. We pick the loading day inside it and warn you of the time. That means being packed from its first morning rather than across the week. A 25% deposit fixes the booking; the balance follows on loading day, and nothing else is due between the two.

Your price locks when you book and does not move on the day. Among our published examples, London to Lisbon at 10 m³ came out at about £2,411; the table, and what sits behind each figure, is in our guide, how much does it cost to move abroad. Customs clearance is in the price. So is the Channel crossing, and the longer sailing to Santander if the driver takes it. The baggage certificate is the consulate’s to issue, not ours, and we tell you that now.

What stays outside the price is named before you book, never on the pavement. Additional Crew for stairs and long carries, as above. A load heavier than its cap, which moves up a size for the locked difference once you tell us, and nothing more. And the cover on your goods, a capped policy with named exclusions that runs from loading to arrival: we publish the cap and the excess once, on our goods in transit insurance for removals page.