Megaport Launches in Portugal

By Lorenzo Ruggiero, Regional Director, Southern Europe

Portugal’s data center growth and direct routes to Brazil are reshaping Atlantic connectivity — and it’s the newest country to join Megaport’s ecosystem.

Portugal has been subtly building one of the most interesting connectivity ecosystems in Europe. A mix of strong subsea-cable routes, accelerating data center investment, and a stable, growing economy is turning the country into a digital hub for the Atlantic – linking Europe not just to Africa and North America, but crucially to Brazil and the wider Latin American market.

Now, Megaport is officially launching in Portugal — meaning local, European, and global businesses can use Megaport to plug directly into Portugal’s expanding digital infrastructure or use Portugal as a bridge into Brazil’s massive cloud and data center economy.

Making this bridge stronger is the ecosystem covered by Latitude.sh, a major infrastructure player in Brazil and broader LATAM. Together, we’re creating an end-to-end path from Europe to Brazil through a single global platform.

Why is Portugal attracting digital infrastructure investment?

Portugal’s economy is steadily growing, with the country’s environment supporting digital investment. The data center sector in Portugal is set to support up to €26.2 billion in GDP and an annual average of 13,400-48,400 jobs between 2025-2030, depending on investment and policy conditions.

This stability is important when you’re planning long-term network, cloud, and interconnection strategies. It makes long-term planning easier and lowers the risk for network projects that involve cloud migration, multicloud adoption, and cross-border expansion.

Sérgio Nunes, Portugal’s Head of Industrial, Logistics & Land, is focused on nurturing the country’s strengths and filling the gaps.

“Portugal has land in strategic industrial areas, ideal for new data center projects, and robust renewable energy production capacity,” said Nunes. “Currently, more than 70% of the country’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, positioning us as leaders in the production of this type of energy. However, we must take into account that not all lands have dark fiber backbone coverage, which means some locations are not yet fully prepared for these digital factories of the future.”

To prepare digitally underserved areas, Portugal’s leading telcos recently announced plans to invest €4.2 billion over the next five years to expand 5G networks, enhance fibre-optic infrastructure, and improve satellite services.

Portugal’s data center market growth

The data center market in Portugal is early in its growth curve, but expanding quickly.

• The market was valued at USD $947M in 2024 and is expected to reach USD $3.09B by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 21.84%.
• As of March 2025, Portugal’s “live IT power capacity” in data centers was approximately 47.5 MW, with over 310 MW under development or planning – positioning them for significant market growth.
• Lisbon remains the center of gravity. Equinix expanded its footprint with LS2, backed by an initial €50M investment; together, LS1 and LS2 support 2,000+ cross-connects and 100+ customers across 45 networks.
• Sines is adding scale with Start Campus’s 26 MW SIN01 facility, the first phase of a planned 1.2 GW, €8.5B campus located near major subsea cable infrastructure.

This combination of steady growth and investment positions Portugal as a long-term connectivity hub. And the value of the market lies not only in the facilities themselves, but in how easily businesses can connect and leverage them.

Portugal as an Atlantic gateway

Portugal sits on Europe’s southwestern edge, where cable routes can reach the Americas and Africa without first traveling through northern Europe.

Lisbon is already well-connected within Europe, but its real value is due to its position on the coastline, where it sits at a natural convergence point for trans-Atlantic subsea cables linking Europe to Africa, North America, and South America (including Brazil).

The EllaLink system runs directly from Sines to Fortaleza, Brazil. Its 6,000-kilometer route provides up to 100 Tbps of capacity and avoids the longer path through North America that historically carried much of the traffic between Europe and Latin America. For latency-sensitive cloud and content-delivery workloads, a more direct route can materially improve performance.

Google’s Equiano cable extends Portugal’s reach down Africa’s west coast to South Africa, with connections to markets including Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and St. Helena.

These cables make Portugal a natural aggregation point for infrastructure spanning Europe and the Atlantic-facing markets beyond it.

What Portugal offers network and infrastructure teams

Portugal gives infrastructure teams several expansion options:

• A local route into a growing market: Portuguese enterprises can connect data centers and cloud services without building every long-haul path themselves.
• An Atlantic landing point for European networks: Businesses can add an Iberian location close to direct routes serving Brazil and Africa.
• A European entry point for Latin American companies: Organizations expanding into the EU can establish infrastructure in Portugal, then extend to other European markets.
• More control over capacity: Teams can add bandwidth as demand develops instead of committing all capacity at the start of an expansion.

Connecting in Portugal with Megaport

Megaport’s launch in Portugal gives businesses a simple, flexible way to connect across Europe, Brazil, and beyond. With our global automated infrastructure platform now available on the Atlantic edge — and with our expansion in Brazil strengthened by our acquisition of Latitude.sh — we provide a seamless path between the EU and Latin America.

These paths give Portuguese enterprises instant, private access to major clouds and data centers for compute, network, and storage, without building or managing complex infrastructure.

For Brazilian and LATAM businesses moving into Europe, Portugal is now a low-latency landing zone. And for European companies entering Brazil, the combination of Iberian connectivity and Megaport’s growing LATAM footprint offers a direct, consolidated route across the Atlantic.

This makes Portugal an ideal connection point for:

• local enterprises modernizing their hybrid or multicloud
• Brazilian companies entering the EU
• European businesses expanding into Brazil
• global providers seeking a new interconnection hub.

As Portugal’s digital footprint grows, we’re here to help businesses on both sides of the Atlantic connect, scale, and reach new markets.

Get help with your setup See all our locations