# Portugal's Grocery Basket Price Rises for a Third Straight Week > Deco Proteste's essential food basket hit €255.97 in September 2026 as tomatoes, bread and tuna spike, squeezing residents' budgets. - Source: https://www.growinportugal.com/news/portugal-s-grocery-basket-price-rises-for-a-third-straight-w-2026-09-20 - Publisher: GrowIN Portugal (https://www.growinportugal.com) - Published: 2026-09-20 - Last reviewed: 2026-09-20 - Language: en > **Key figures — as of 2026-09-20:** Deco Proteste's 63-item essential food basket hit **€255.97** the week of 9–16 September 2026, up for a **third consecutive week** — a rise of €0.72 on the previous week — and **5.85% (€14.15) more expensive than at the start of 2026** — tomate chucha jumped **18% to €2.68/kg**, sliced bread rose **11% to €2.61**, and tinned tuna in vegetable oil climbed **9% to €1.61**. ## The basket that keeps getting heavier Portugal's benchmark grocery basket — the 63 essential products tracked weekly by consumer watchdog Deco Proteste — has now risen for three weeks running, reaching €255.97. The basket of 63 essential goods monitored by Deco Proteste rose for the third consecutive week, settling at 255.97 euros, the consumer defence association reported. It's a small weekly move on paper — an increase of 0.72 cents compared to the previous week — but it follows a €0.52 rise the week before and a €2.11 jump the week before that, meaning the direction has been consistently upward through September. For anyone newly arrived in Portugal building a household budget from scratch, this basket is a useful yardstick precisely because it strips out discretionary spending. It includes meat, frozen goods, fruit and vegetables, dairy, groceries and fish — products such as turkey, chicken, mackerel, hake, onion, potato, carrot, banana, apple, orange, rice, spaghetti, sugar, ham, milk, cheese and butter. ## What's driving the September spike The sharpest weekly movements are the ones grabbing headlines locally. Between 9 and 12 September, the products with the largest percentage rises were tomate chucha, up 18% to €2.68 per kilogram, sliced crustless bread, up 11% to €2.61, and tuna in vegetable oil, up 9% to €1.61. The week before, it was fish and courgette leading the charge — between 2 and 9 September, mackerel rose 23% to €5.46/kg, courgette rose 20% to €2.15, and tinned tuna in olive oil rose 17% to €2.21 — a reminder that the products squeezing shoppers change fast, week to week. Zoom out to a year-on-year view and the picture is starker for fish and seafood specifically: compared with the same period last year, mackerel is up 30% to €5.82/kg, large cod is up 29% to €20.06/kg, and sea bass is up 27% to €10.35/kg. Since Deco Proteste began tracking the basket in January 2022, the cumulative distortion is even more visible — the largest percentage increases since monitoring began in January 2022 were boiling veal, up 117% to €12.62/kg, large cod, up 89% to €20.06/kg, and heart cabbage, also up 89%, to €1.87. ## GrowIN's take: a bigger bite out of the minimum wage Here's the number that matters for household budgeting rather than headlines: at €255.97, this essential basket now represents roughly **27.8% of Portugal's 2026 national minimum wage of €920/month** — up from about 26.3% in early January, when the same basket cost €241.82. That's a shift of nearly a percentage and a half of a minimum-wage paycheck going on 63 basic food items alone, before rent, utilities, transport or health insurance enter the equation — a gap that hits lower-income newcomers and long-time residents alike, since food inflation doesn't discriminate by visa status. "A basket meant to represent bare essentials is now eating into more than a quarter of the minimum wage before a single bill is paid," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial. ## Why this matters for foreigners settling in Portugal Portugal has long marketed itself on affordability relative to Western Europe, and for many costs — rent outside Lisbon and Porto, dining out, transport — that's still broadly true. But grocery inflation compounds quietly. Anyone budgeting for a D7 or D8 visa application, where AIMA and Finanças expect proof of sufficient recurring income, should factor rising food costs into their monthly estimates rather than relying on figures from a year or two ago. Our cost of living guide is updated as these numbers shift, and it's worth revisiting before finalising any relocation budget. There's also a political angle worth watching. With the State Budget approaching, Chega is pushing a proposal to bring back zero VAT on the food basket, after similar projects were rejected in the spring — the question is whether it gets a green light this time. If a VAT exemption on essential foods returns, it would directly affect the shelf prices tracked in this basket. ## What to watch next Deco Proteste publishes its basket update every Wednesday, and the next release will show whether the tomato and tuna spike was a short-lived seasonal blip or the start of a fourth consecutive weekly rise. Also worth tracking: the outcome of the Chega VAT proposal in budget negotiations, and whether wholesale fish and dairy prices — the categories showing the steepest year-on-year gains — stabilise into autumn. For now, the trend line points one way, and it's not down. ## Sources - [ECO (Economia Online)](https://eco.sapo.pt/2026/09/16/cabaz-alimentar-sobe-pela-terceira-semana-consecutiva-para-25597-euros/) - [Rádio Renascença](https://rr.pt/noticia/mundo/2026/09/16/cabaz-alimentar-sobe-pela-terceira-semana-consecutiva-para-25597-euros/485688/) - [Executive Digest](https://executivedigest.sapo.pt/cabaz-alimentar-sobe-pela-terceira-semana-seguida-tomate-dispara-18/) - [Diário de Coimbra](https://www.diariocoimbra.pt/2026/09/16/preco-do-cabaz-alimentar-sobe-pela-terceira-semana-consecutiva-e-atinge-25597-euros/) --- © GrowIN Portugal. Cite as: GrowIN Portugal, "Portugal's Grocery Basket Price Rises for a Third Straight Week", https://www.growinportugal.com/news/portugal-s-grocery-basket-price-rises-for-a-third-straight-w-2026-09-20