Lisbon
Portugal
Discover impactful tech clusters, urban innovation priorities and find the most relevant startup support programs in Lisbon.
The capital of Portugal aims to be the home of believers and social innovators, a place that invites new ideas and solutions to solve some of the city's green goals and challenges.
Unicorn Factory Lisboa is a City Hall flagship initiative aiming to position Lisbon as a leading European innovation centre.
Introducing the City
Lisbon, with its south-facing hills bathed by the Atlantic and the Tagus, it’s a magnet for global talent and forward-thinking entrepreneurs—and the reason goes beyond the weather conditions.
As one of Europe’s oldest and most storied cities, Lisbon is a place where creativity meets collaboration, making it the beating heart of Europe’s tech and entrepreneurial scene. Home to the world-renowned Web Summit, Lisbon has rapidly scaled its startup ecosystem, now boasting over 1,200 innovative companies. In 2022 alone, the local ecosystem attracted investments exceeding 400 million EUR, solidifying Lisbon's status as a hotbed of opportunity and ideal testing space for scale-ups.
But that’s just the beginning.
Lisbon is a proud member of the Scale Cities Alliance, working to create Europe’s most interconnected technology hub, and was named European Capital of Innovation in 2023. Here, experimentation thrives, and sustainability is a commitment. Lisbon is on a meteoric rise as a global innovation hub, offering fertile ground for businesses to launch and to soar to international acclaim.
Now is the time to be part of Lisbon’s incredible journey.
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City Achievements
On its way to driving entrepreneurial success, Lisbon not only hosts Europe’s largest tech conference and attracts millions in investments. The city is also recognised by the European Commission as an innovation and green capital, and has some of the world's most important innovation hubs.
In 2020, Lisbon was considered a European Green Capital. The city’s commitment to achieve a better urban environment was renewed up to 2030.
In 2022, the city consolidated its ambition to become a "Unicorn Capital" by creating the Unicorn Factory Lisboa, which introduced the first scaling-up program in Portugal.
Lisbon was awarded the annual distinction by the European Innovation Council of the European Union to recognize the work of cities in promoting innovation in their communities.
In 2024, Unicorn Factory Lisboa ranked between the top ten Europe's Leading Startup Hub ranked by the Financial Times.
Roadmap to 2030
Lisbon aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, and its green efforts have awarded it the European Green Capital 2020 and European Capital of Innovation in 2023. The city is also one of the 23 cities awarded the EU's Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities label, which recognises Lisbon's efforts and overall vision for climate neutrality as well as its action plan and investment strategy.
Other plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 include:
With a commitment to a circular economy, Lisbon is part of the ‘Let's Go Circular’ network, which paves the way for a sustainable, just and productive transition of cities towards a functioning circular economy.
This platform allows companies to publicly declare their commitments until 2030, specifying the measures they plan to implement within their operations to support the city's ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) sustainability goals.
lisboaparticipa.pt/pt/lisboa-sustentavel-empresas
The Social Innovation Prize aims to discover and support innovative and impactful solutions that can be applied practically in the city of Lisbon. Awarded by the Lisbon City Council and organized by the Unicorn Factory Lisboa and supported by the European Innovation Council.
A program aiming to reduce frequent flooding issues and enhance infrastructure resilience in particularly vulnerable areas of the city. To be completed by 2025.
Innovation Priorities
Solutions focused on improving the lives of students and innovating in Primary, Secondary, and University education. Challenges include promoting creative and critical thinking, testing alternative learning methods, and strengthening the city's capacity to attract teachers.
Solutions to increase the quality of life and support patients in need of medical care. Challenges include reducing or eradicating waiting lists, promoting healthy lifestyles, and increasing access to specialized care.
Solutions to promote social integration and improve the quality of life of migrants. Challenges include facilitating navigation through bureaucratic procedures, increasing housing solutions, and combating racism and discrimination.
Latest Innovation Challenges
Lisbon 2024 Social Impact Challenge
The Social Innovation Prize from the Lisbon City Council aims to discover and support innovative and impactful solutions that can be applied practically in the city of Lisbon in three different categories: Quality of Education, Access to Healthcare and Integration of Migrants.
Startup Support
The Nova SBE Innovation Ecosystem is an innovation meeting point to forge partnerships with a shared vision, blending generations, industries, cultures, and perspectives to breed new business models, products, and solutions.
Embracing innovation and entrepreneurship, 351 Startups began as a grassroots initiative and swiftly transformed into the heartbeat of Portugal’s startup ecosystem. Today, as the Association of Portuguese Startups, they stand as a pillar for over 1600 startups, companies, and investors, ensuring a collaborative and inclusive environment where ideas prosper.
BGI is an accelerator and powerhouse equipping startups and entrepreneurs from all over the world with the right knowledge, tools and networks to succed. They have a multidisciplinary team and a vast network of mentors and partners committed to taking you further.
BioLab Lisboa is a citizen science laboratory that aims to implement an open, multidisciplinary innovation ecosystem and position Lisbon as the European Capital for the integration of STEM knowledge.
Fab Lab Lisboa is a digital manufacturing and prototyping space operating at the Mercado do Forno de Tijolo. This workshop space offers accessible and safe industrial equipment, such as small and large milling machines, laser and vinyl cutting machines, a 3D printer, an electronics bench, computers and their respective computer programming tools supported by CAD and CAM software.
Unicorn Factory Lisbon is the City Council’s platform that brings together various initiatives in the field of innovation and the promotion of entrepreneurship, fulfilling the ambitious vision of creating a global hub for entrepreneurship and technology.
Beta-i was born with the goal of boosting the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Today, they have offices in Boston, Brussels, Lisbon and São Paulo, aiming to be the innovation consultancy of choice for world-class companies to accelerate their journey.
Impact Hub Lisbon accelerates the transition to a new economy, by supporting entrepreneurs, businesses and institutions who work for a more sustainable, inclusive and impactful future.
HCB Living Lab leverages the HCB's vision and strategy, accelerating its operationalization, and transforming the Hub Criativo do Beato into a large-scale experimentation and demonstration space based on a context of excellence for the development, prototyping, validation and testing of new technologies, new services and innovative ways of life.
The Hub do Mar Lisboa (Sea Hub) will constitute a blue hub aggregating innovation, research, knowledge, entrepreneurship and companies, enhancing, through the transfer of knowledge, the development of synergies and shared infrastructures, the growth of the blue economy.
Hub Criativo do Beato (HCB) is an innovation centre in the heart of the Beato neighbourhood. It is a space for open innovation where work, leisure and culture intertwine. Its ultimate goal is to instil interaction between different types of people and industries, creating a dynamic, innovative and creative community.
Casa Do Impacto supports impact entrepreneurs and startups through incubation, acceleration and investment programs. They also support public entities and private companies that want to integrate social and environmental innovation into their activities.
Promising Startups
A company offering more energy efficient and sustainable solutions, focusing on electricity generation using solar panels.
Automated Collection of Energy Data for Decarbonization & Sustainability
An impact finance and investment app that empowers people and companies to actively contribute to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.
Renewable energy company focused on accelerating the advent of a sustainable industry with Biomethane and Green Hydrogen.
We are building a management & insights platform to help organizations learn advanced tech skills, automate career development tasks, and manage the impact of training initiatives, helping managers save time and L&D to optimize learning budgets.
Urban Wind Turbines for Renewable Energy Generation. The micro Wind Turbines are specially designed for urban applications.
Funding Landscapes
