Portugal has overtaken Spain to become Europe’s second-largest footwear producer, behind only Italy, according to the World Footwear Yearbook 2026 published this week by APICCAPS, the Portuguese footwear industry association. Spain has dropped out of the world’s top 20 producing countries altogether; Portugal climbed to 18th globally, accounting for 0.5 percent of world production by value.
The headline is symbolic, but the underlying numbers explain why Portuguese factories keep showing up in the supply chains of Scandinavian brands. Almost 93 percent of everything made in Portuguese footwear factories is exported, reaching 174 countries. In 2025 that meant US$1.95 billion (around €1.7 billion) in export value across 69 million pairs — ranking Portugal 15th worldwide by export value but, more tellingly, second in the world by average export price, at $28.25 per pair. Only Italy commands more per pair.
A price position, not a volume position
APICCAPS executive director Paulo Gonçalves has been explicit that the industry’s achievement should be read through export orientation and value, not tonnage. While the world’s biggest producers compete on cost, the cluster around Felgueiras, Guimarães and São João da Madeira competes on leather craftsmanship, small-batch flexibility and speed to European markets. Average export prices rose another 2.5 percent in 2025 even as global demand softened.
The product mix is shifting underneath: leather footwear now accounts for 58 percent of exports, down from 69 percent three years ago, as sneakers and technical footwear in rubber, plastics and textiles gain share. That shift matters for the Nordic conversation — it is precisely the category where Scandinavian labels compete hardest, and where “made in Europe” has become a differentiator against Asian mass production.
Where the Nordics fit
Germany remains Portugal’s largest footwear customer at nearly a quarter of exports, followed by France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The Nordic countries sit outside that top tier as direct destinations — but direct trade statistics understate the relationship. A significant share of Scandinavian footwear and fashion brands manufacture in northern Portugal or buy through German and Dutch distribution hubs that the yearbook counts as first destinations.
The visibility runs both ways. As NSHQ reported from Copenhagen Fashion Week’s SS27 edition this week, Scandinavian designers continue to place production orders with Portuguese ateliers, and Swedish pop star Zara Larsson spent her current tour, as The Portugal News noted in July, performing in Portuguese-made boots. The premium positioning documented in the yearbook — second-highest price per pair in the world — is exactly the manufacturing tier that Copenhagen and Stockholm brands say they struggle to source at scale anywhere else in Europe.
Resilience under tariff pressure
The sector is not immune to the trade environment. Portuguese footwear exports fell 2.7 percent in the first five months of 2026, dragged down in part by new US tariffs that reversed several years of strong American growth. But the decline is milder than what competing exporters in Spain, China, Brazil and Turkey recorded over the same period — a relative resilience APICCAPS attributes to the industry’s long-run bet on innovation, sustainability and higher value-added manufacturing, backed by the PRR-funded BioShoes4All programme.
For Portuguese factory owners, the US tariff squeeze sharpens a strategic question this publication returns to often: where does the next increment of premium demand come from? The Nordic market — wealthy, design-led, sustainability-regulated and increasingly committed to near-shoring — is one of the few European regions where Portuguese suppliers remain under-penetrated relative to the product fit. EU-internal trade faces no tariff risk, freight from Porto to Gothenburg is measured in days not weeks, and incoming EU eco-design and forced-labour rules play directly to Portuguese compliance strengths.
The corridor takeaway: Europe’s No. 2 footwear producer now sells at the world’s No. 2 price point — a profile that matches Nordic buyers better than almost any other customer group. The yearbook confirms the capability. Converting it into direct Nordic order books is the commercial work still to be done.