Finland is the Nordic market Portuguese exporters know least, and the one whose statistics office measures the relationship most completely. On 18 September 2026 Statistics Finland published the revised second-quarter database release of its International trade in goods and services series, which records trade by partner country on a balance-of-payments basis and, unlike the customs tables NorthSouth HQ has used for Norway, Sweden and Denmark, counts services as well as goods. NorthSouth HQ pulled the Portugal rows. In January–June 2026 Finland imported €291 million of Portuguese goods and services, up 25.4 percent from €232 million a year earlier. Goods were €125 million of it, up 36 percent; services were €165 million, up 18 percent. The second quarter alone came to €157 million, 43 percent more than the €110 million of the second quarter of 2025 and the fourth-highest quarter on record, behind the three quarters of 2024 that were lifted by an exceptional run of goods shipments.
The other direction moved even faster. Finnish exports of goods and services to Portugal rose 33 percent to €298 million in the first half, and the €181 million recorded for the second quarter is the highest quarterly figure in the series, which starts in 2013. The driver was not goods, which slipped 10 percent to €141 million, but services: Finnish services sales to Portugal were €157 million in the half, against €67 million a year earlier, with €109 million booked in the second quarter alone. Statistics Finland does not yet publish the 2026 quarters by service item for individual countries, so the composition of that surge will only become visible in the annual tables; the 2025 breakdown, discussed below, points to computer services and other business services as the likeliest candidates.
The fastest-growing of Finland’s southern suppliers
Portugal is a small supplier to Finland, about 0.46 percent of the €63.4 billion of goods and services the country imported in the first half, but it is the one growing fastest among Finland’s large European partners. On the same measure, Finnish imports from Norway rose 16.1 percent, from Italy 11.5 percent, from Spain 3.3 percent, from Germany 1.9 percent, from Sweden 1.0 percent and from Denmark 0.8 percent, while imports from France fell 3.1 percent. Finland’s total imports grew by about 11 percent. Portugal’s 25 percent is therefore not a rounding effect of a strong Finnish economy; it is share gain.
| Finland ↔ Portugal, € million (Statistics Finland, table 12gq, revised 18 Sep 2026) | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Q4 2025 | Q1 2026 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish imports from Portugal | 110 | 132 | 141 | 134 | 157 |
| of which goods | 39 | 35 | 37 | 58 | 67 |
| of which services | 71 | 97 | 104 | 76 | 89 |
| Finnish exports to Portugal | 102 | 87 | 142 | 117 | 181 |
| of which goods | 66 | 58 | 73 | 69 | 72 |
| of which services | 36 | 28 | 69 | 48 | 109 |
A services relationship first
The structural finding is the one the customs-based series could not show. Over the full year 2025, Finland bought €505 million from Portugal: €164 million of goods and €341 million of services. Services have outweighed goods in three of the last four years, 2024 being the exception because of a one-off spike in goods shipments, and were 2.7 times larger in 2023. Portugal supplied 0.77 percent of Finland’s €44.3 billion of services imports last year, a share well above its weight in goods. The annual table by service item, also refreshed on 18 September, shows where the money goes. Other business services, the category that covers technical, trade-related, research and consulting work, were €133 million in 2025, having peaked at €186 million in 2023; in 2024, the last year with a full sub-split, technical and trade-related services were €77 million, research and development €27 million and management consulting €13 million. Travel, meaning what Finnish residents spend in Portugal, was €98 million, steady on 2024’s €103 million and up from €26 million in the 2021 pandemic year. Telecommunications, computer and information services doubled to €29 million, almost all of it computer services, from €15 million in 2024 and €10 million in 2023. Transport was €24 million, three-quarters of it sea transport.
Finland’s own services sales to Portugal are smaller and differently shaped: €164 million in 2025, of which computer and information services €58 million (up from €23 million in 2024), other business services €49 million, travel by Portuguese residents in Finland €24 million, transport €16 million and maintenance and repair €13 million. On goods, Finland is the larger seller, €288 million against €164 million in 2025, which is the pulp, paper, machinery and telecoms-equipment trade that Portuguese importers know. Netting everything, Portugal ran a €52 million surplus with Finland in 2025 and a €246 million surplus in 2024, when a one-off spike in goods shipments lifted Finnish imports from Portugal to €668 million; in the first half of 2026 the account is close to balance, with Finland €7 million ahead.
| Finland ↔ Portugal by year, € million (table 12gq/12gr) | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish imports from Portugal, total | 406 | 441 | 518 | 668 | 505 |
| goods | 201 | 166 | 139 | 349 | 164 |
| services | 205 | 274 | 378 | 320 | 341 |
| of which other business services | 33 | 90 | 186 | 117 | 133 |
| of which travel | 90 | 78 | 99 | 103 | 98 |
| of which telecoms, computer and information | 15 | 7 | 10 | 15 | 29 |
| of which transport | 28 | 30 | 24 | 32 | 24 |
| Finnish exports to Portugal, total | 291 | 377 | 438 | 422 | 453 |
| goods | 190 | 313 | 308 | 273 | 288 |
| services | 101 | 63 | 130 | 150 | 164 |
Half the goods INE counts, and why
Readers of our reading of INE’s January–July figures will notice a gap. Portugal’s statistics office records goods exports to Finland of €276.3 million for the seven months, up 56.8 percent, or roughly €259 million for January to June. Statistics Finland records €125 million of goods imports from Portugal for the same half-year. The Finnish figure is about half the Portuguese one, and the difference runs the opposite way to Norway, where Oslo records more than Lisbon does. Two things explain most of it. Statistics Finland’s goods figures are on a balance-of-payments basis, which counts changes of ownership rather than border crossings and removes goods that transit or are processed without being sold. And within the Finnish data, the table reports imports both by country of origin and by country of consignment: in the second quarter of 2026, €67 million of goods were of Portuguese origin but only €52 million were consigned from Portugal, so roughly a fifth of Portuguese-made goods reach Finland through a warehouse or distributor in a third country, typically the Netherlands, Germany or Sweden. INE’s customs declaration captures the Portuguese exporter’s stated destination; the Finnish importer often books the purchase from the intermediary. The practical reading for exporters is that a good part of what Portugal sells to Finland is invoiced by someone else.
Why this matters for the corridor
Three conclusions. First, Finland is the Nordic market where Portugal’s comparative advantage is least about shoes and wine and most about people: engineering, R&D and consulting work sold from Portugal, software services that have doubled in two years, and a €100 million-a-year tourism line that, unlike goods, does not pass through any intermediary. For Portuguese technology and engineering firms, the table says a services relationship with Finnish buyers of around €340 million a year already exists, most of it invisible in the trade coverage that focuses on containers. Second, the second-quarter surge in Finnish services exports to Portugal, tripling year on year, is worth watching from the Portuguese side as well, because it is likely to include the software, telecoms and technical services that accompany Finnish investment such as the Spinnova, ICEYE and Nokia commitments covered in these pages. Third, this completes the four-country set. Norway’s SSB, Sweden’s SCB, Denmark’s DST and now Statistics Finland all record Portuguese sales growing faster than their total imports in 2026, and the next round of data, SCB’s July figures at the end of September, DST’s August in early October and SSB’s September in mid-October, will let NorthSouth HQ update all four at once. Portuguese companies with named Finnish customers or partners are listed in the Portuguese Companies in Scandinavia directory; Finnish companies operating in Portugal are in the Finnish Companies in Portugal directory.