Discover the city of Porto, now with many new flight routes. Enjoy an Arty Porto City Escape at Palacete Severo in 2026
Porto’s international airport had another record breaking year with 2025 reaching new heights with 16.9 million passengers. This increase was driven by new and increased transatlantic flights and an increase in European traffic. This trend is set to continue throughout 2026 with a wide selection of new intercontinental and European flights being added into Porto airport.
TAP Air Portugal will which added Boston as a direct route in 2025 will now make this a year-round destination. Delta will launch direct JFK – Porto flights adding to the twice daily United Newark – Porto flights and daily TAP Air Portugal Newark – Porto flights.
Other long haul routes with increases include São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife in Brazil.
Africa has also seen many new routes with four destinations now served in Cape Verde alone, five in Morocco (Casablanca, Marrakech, Rabat, Agadir and Tangier) and Luanda in Angola and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with Ethiopian Airlines who launched their only Portuguese route last year at Porto airport. In North America several Canadian cities also offer direct flights to Porto including Toronto and Montreal. 2026 will also see direct flights to Tel Aviv with TAP Air Portugal.
New European additions to the airport’s route map in 2026 include direct flights to Astúrias with Volotea, a new domestic route to Terceira in the Azores with TAP Air Portugal and new airlines entering the airport for the first time including LOT Polish Airlines which will connect Porto and Warsaw five times weekly.
The United Kingdom remains the number one market for inbound tourists to Portugal and five airlines connect many cities across the UK to Porto airport including British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair and TAP Air Portugal. Passengers can fly from London Gatwick, London Luton, London Stansted, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.
Porto airport is Portugal’s second busiest airport and served by a metro system which reaches the heart of the city in around 35 minutes. In 2023 Porto airport was named the best European airport distinguished by the ACI (Airport Council International), winning the Airport Service Award among the best airports in the world in the category for service quality in Europe.
Porto airport is the gateway to Portugal’s second largest city but also to the wider northern and central regions of Portugal. With the Spanish region of Galicia very close by (120km distance by car), 10% of passengers travelling through Porto airport are estimated to be of Galician origin.
Porto has a wide selection of accommodation options but to truly enjoy the city’s hospitality, a stay at an independent property will enhance the experience.
Palacete Severo in the Cedofeita neighbourhood is an architect’s dream house. The yellow-walled “palacete” was built by Portuguese architect, Ricardo Severo, in 1904 for his Brazilian wife Francisca Santos Dumont. There are just 20 bedrooms and suites. Eleven are in the original 20th-century building, with oak floors, thick wicker bedheads and stuccoed ceilings; while nine are in the new-build extension in the grounds. They all have their own character, from the former maid’s room, half way up the stairs under a sloping ceiling, to the original enclosed wooden balcony room and a garden suite apartment with separate sitting room area with a varanda overlooking the garden. The hotel is also home to ÉON fine dining restaurant and Bistro Severo. Guests can also enjoy the hotel’s spa.
What makes Palacete Severo truly unique is that the hotel acts as a revolving art gallery. Owner Géraldine Banier, who has a contemporary art gallery in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris (the Perspective Galerie), has designed this Porto hotel as a living art space, inviting Portuguese and international artists to showcase their work. A changing programme of temporary exhibitions is hosted around the entire building – bedrooms, spa, reception, bar, restaurant and garden (with its heated outdoor saltwater pool) – and artwork is available to buy. So if you visit more than once you get an entirely new experience.
Because the hotel is so central you can walk to many of Porto’s famous cultural attractions including the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, the Casa da Música, Dom Luís I Bridge, the Bolsa Palace and the Livraria Lello Book Store. Located on a quiet residential street, named after Severo himself, the hotel is close to Porto’s many art galleries, as well as independent boutiques, shops, restaurants and cafés. How do you showcase a city through art while also encouraging walking? The city of Porto has unveiled a new digital public art circuit – Galeria Digital do Porto. Galeria Digital do Porto presents itself as an open-air, digital public art gallery aimed at offering visitors new points of view of the city through digital art projects that can only be accessed by visiting a specific place. Local artists were invited to showcase the city, away from the obvious tourist points and so far 13 artistic projects are available to discover. The initiative is curated by João Laia and Patrícia Coelho with the objective of exploring the intersection between art, technology and territory in a city easily discovered on foot. The curators note “the projects are situated between the physical place of the city and the virtual dimension, this initiative explores how digital art can suggest new ways of thinking about and interacting with public space”.
Add Porto and northern Portugal to your travel list in 2026 and discover a region combining history and modernity.
