Vilamoura Marina (Algarve)

Location

Vilamoura, Quarteira, Loule, central Algarve, Portugal, at 37 04.38 N 008 07.31 W

Operator

Marina de Vilamoura S.A., part of Vilamoura World, formerly Lusotur

Ownership

bought from Lone Star in May 2021 for over EUR 100 million by Portuguese investors led by Joao Brion Sanches with Filipe de Botton and Alexandre Relvas, alongside Arrow Global

Concession

the Marina de Vilamoura concession runs to 2060; the Nova Marina in the outer harbour is a separate concession from Docapesca, Portos e Lotas, S. A., contracted on 11 August 2023 with Podio Navegante, S. A.

Berths

825 published by the marina and by TYHA, for boats from 6 m to 60 m, plus 68 berths on three pontoons in the Nova Marina in the outer basin, opened November 2024

Vessel range

the old basin's tariff runs in classes from 3 m to 40 m LOA, with only the Cais de Honra above that; the Nova Marina's own card carries a full tariff row for boats over 40 m. Its home page says its berths take 20 to 50 m, its berth page says 20 to 40 m

Beam limits by class

5.70 m at 20 to 26 m, 6.90 m at 26 to 35 m, 8.30 m at 35 to 40 m, measured including fenders and any bow or stern projections

Depths

4.0 m at the entrance and in the Nova Marina basin; the marina's own technical page quotes the yacht basin at 3.3 m and 2.0 m

Entrance

about 75 m wide between two lit breakwater heads, facing southeast, with cruising guides warning it can be dangerous in a levante

VHF

channel 9 for general and working traffic, manned 24 hours, call sign Vilamoura Radio; channel 16 for calling and emergency

Lights

approach beacon 18 m elevation, white, 10 second period, 19 miles; east entry beacon green and west entry beacon red, each 14 m and 5 miles

Boatyard

60 tonne travel hoist, 6 tonne and 2 tonne cranes, slipway, dry storage for 200 boats, DIY area and sailmaker

Customs status

a designated Portuguese marina for arrival formalities from abroad; the GNR stamps passports on the quay

Accreditation

TYHA Five Gold Anchor Platinum, the first marina in Portugal accredited at that level, in January 2023, plus ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and the European Blue Flag

Awards

TYHA Superyacht Marina of the Year 2025, announced at the Southampton International Boat Show on 24 September 2025; Best Portuguese Marina at the Publituris Portugal Travel Awards for 14 consecutive years to 2025

Airport

Faro is about 25 km and under 30 minutes by road via the N125 and N396; Lisbon is the long-haul alternative

What Vilamoura actually is

Vilamoura is not a fishing town that grew a marina. It is a purpose-built resort of roughly 2,000 hectares, planned from 1966 by the Portuguese banker Cupertino de Miranda through the management company Lusotur, and the marina opened in 1974 as the first marina built in Portugal. Everything you see around the water was drawn at the same time as the water: five golf courses, a casino, hotels, apartment blocks and a promenade of restaurants that runs the full length of the north and west quays. The Roman site at Cerro da Vila, where garum fish paste was produced, sits a few hundred metres from the berths and is the only thing on the site older than the 1960s.

For an owner that has consequences in both directions. The good side is that a resort built around a marina puts everything within walking distance of the pontoon, keeps the quay lit and staffed all year, and gives crew somewhere to live in February. The bad side is that in July and August you are berthed in the middle of a mass-market Algarve holiday destination, with the traffic, the noise and the crowd that implies, and a 35 metre yacht on the front row is part of the scenery for several thousand people a day. If discretion is what you are buying, this is the wrong coast.

The entrance, and why it faces the wrong way

The approach is easy to find and harder to enter than it looks. The marina publishes an approach beacon at 18 metres elevation showing a white light with a 10 second period, visible 19 miles, with a green light on the eastern entry beacon and a red on the western, both at 14 metres and visible 5 miles. Cruising guides put the gap between the two breakwater heads at about 75 metres and note that it faces southeast. Coming from the west, the breakwaters are visible several miles offshore, and the Vilamoura Marinotel behind them is the conspicuous landmark when the moles themselves are lost against the beach.

Southeast is the problem. It is the one quadrant an Algarve levante blows from, and the guides are blunt that the entrance can be dangerous in a levante. A southeasterly puts wind, Atlantic swell and the outflow from the marina and the Ribeira de Quarteira all into the same 75 metre gap, and the general Portuguese advice for any bar entrance in a swell is to go in shortly before high water so that the ebb is not running against the sea. On a settled day the entrance is a non-event for any size of boat the marina takes. On a hard onshore day in winter it is a genuine decision, and a skipper who has just crossed from Gibraltar in an easterly should have Portimao or Lagos in mind as an alternative rather than force it.

There are two rate cards here, not one. The old basin stops at 40 metres; the Nova Marina next door prices a yacht over 40 by the day, the week, the month and out to five years, and charges EUR 3,054 more for a class VII year than the basin it was built alongside.

The sand, the dredger and the 84 metre mole

The Algarve coast moves sand from west to east, and the Vilamoura breakwaters sit across that path. The point is not a rumour: when the new outer basin was presented in January 2024, the project's environmental engineer, Katrin Schifferegger, told the assembled press that specialists consider the marina's moles to interrupt or condition the west-to-east sediment transport along the Algarve coast, and that the planned extension therefore had to be studied rigorously to be sure the effect was not made worse. The studies were run with the University of the Algarve and the University of Aveiro. The west mole was then extended by 84 metres on an oblique alignment, and the Ribeira de Quarteira dyke by 86 metres, the second of those checked specifically to make sure it did not choke the stream and raise flood risk behind it.

The dredging that goes with all this is not incidental. The 2024 works alone lifted between 150,000 and 195,000 cubic metres of sediment out of the outer basin. Schifferegger described the spoil as clean but fine, muddy, black and smelling, which made it unfit for beach nourishment and unfit to be released into the littoral drift, so it went instead to four dump points six miles offshore at the 40 metre contour under a private maritime use title granted by the DGRM, the Portuguese natural resources and maritime services directorate. Those are the same points the marina has used for its routine maintenance dredging campaigns. What an owner should take from this is that the depths quoted here are maintained depths, not natural ones, and that the marina's ability to keep its numbers depends on a permitted dredging programme that runs indefinitely.

The berth mix, and where the published numbers stop

The marina and the Yacht Harbour Association both publish 825 berths for boats from 6 to 60 metres. The tariff shows how those are actually cut. There are thirteen classes, and the striking thing is that most of them are duplicated by beam: class VII takes 20 to 26 metres but only to 5.70 metres of beam, class VIII takes 26 to 35 metres to 6.90 metres of beam, and class IX takes 35 to 40 metres to 8.30 metres. The 2025 sheet also stated that the class is set by maximum dimensions including anything projecting at bow or stern, and that the beam figure includes fenders; those notes are not repeated on the 2026 card, whose only footnotes are the logistical visit at half the daily rate, multihulls at plus 100 per cent, and VAT added at the legal rate. A modern 26 metre flybridge is frequently wider than 6.90 metres, so read your own beam before you assume a class, and multihulls pay double the table.

In November 2024 the owners opened what they call the Nova Marina: three floating pontoons carrying 68 berths in the old fishing basin in the outer harbour, which had held Quarteira's fishing fleet until that port was built. Depth there is 4 metres. Each new berth has its own pump-out, electric-boat charging and remote metering of water and power, which Vilamoura World said was a system not previously used in Portugal. Read who you are dealing with, because it is not the same company. The Nova Marina is a separate concession, granted by Docapesca, Portos e Lotas, S. A. under a contract signed on 11 August 2023 with Podio Navegante, S. A., with its own operating regulation published in the Diario da Republica on 18 November 2024 as Regulamento n. 1326/2024 and its own tariff regulation, Regulamento n. 970/2025, published on 5 August 2025. It has its own website, its own reception and its own rate card. The operator does not agree with itself about the size of boat it takes: the Nova Marina's home page says 68 berths for boats between 20 and 50 metres, its own berth page says 20 to 40 metres, and the rate card's top row is headed simply for boats over 40 m with no upper bound printed at all. What the marina has not done is update its headline: it still publishes 825 berths, exactly as it did before the 68 berths existed, so it is not clear whether the number is now a total or still the old basin alone.

What a berth costs, and what the table does not say

Vilamoura publishes a full rate card, which is more than most marinas in this guide do. The 2026 table, dated 13 January 2026, runs high season from 1 July to 31 August, medium season through June and September, and low season from 1 January to 31 May and 1 October to 31 December. A class VII berth, 20 to 26 metres, costs EUR 252.20 a night in high season, EUR 222.80 in the shoulder and EUR 72.80 in low season, with weeks at EUR 1,699.00, EUR 1,481.40 and EUR 492.80 and months at EUR 6,985.40, EUR 6,084.20 and EUR 1,990.40. A class IX berth, 35 to 40 metres, is EUR 360.30 a night in high season and EUR 110.40 in low. VAT is added at the legal rate on top of every figure, 23 per cent on the Portuguese mainland.

The long numbers are where the value is. A one-year contract on a class VII berth is EUR 26,846 for 2026, with a maintenance charge of EUR 2,395.10 a year that applies only to contracts over a year, and a separate water and electricity line of EUR 185.50 a month. Add those and the annual bill before VAT works out at roughly EUR 31,470, which is what an owner should actually budget. The same table runs out to five years, EUR 99,331 for class VII. Longer tenures exist but no price for them is printed: the 2025 sheet's boatyard allowance schedule listed 10 and 20 year rental periods, and the Nova Marina's own tariff regulation formally provides for indivisible stays of 10 and 20 years. Against the daily rate, a low-season month at EUR 1,990.40 for a 26 metre boat is one of the cheapest serviced winter berths on the European Atlantic seaboard.

Clearing in from Gibraltar or the Canaries

Vilamoura is one of the Portuguese marinas designated to handle arrival formalities from abroad, so you do not have to make a separate stop. Working practice, per Noonsite, is that a yacht arriving from outside the EU or carrying non-EU crew berths and goes ashore with passports, ship's papers and insurance, and the GNR, the national guard, stamps passports. The marina's reception pontoon lies to starboard in the channel between the control tower and the offices, and reception runs 08:30 to 21:30 from 1 June to 15 September, 08:30 to 19:30 in April, May, September and October, and 08:30 to 18:30 through the winter. Work VHF 9, which is manned 24 hours under the call sign Vilamoura Radio; 16 is calling and emergency only. Gibraltar is 140 miles away by the marina's own reckoning, Lisbon 160, Puerto Banus 190, Madeira 500 and the Azores 860.

The two common approaches are legally different and it is worth knowing which one you are on. Gibraltar is a third country: outside the EU, outside the customs union, outside the VAT area and outside Schengen, so a passage from there is a full external arrival and customs will take an interest in stores and in the vessel's status. The Canaries are Spanish and inside Schengen, so nobody is checking passports on a passage north, but they sit outside the EU VAT and excise territory, which means the duty-free fuel and stores you loaded in Las Palmas are a customs matter even though the crew are not. Noonsite also reports that Portuguese customs watch non-EU yachts against a 180 day limit. That is a different rule from the EU-wide 18 month temporary admission period rather than a contradiction of it. Temporary admission is a customs relief from import duty and VAT. The roughly 180 days is the 183 day threshold written into Portugal's own circulation tax code, which brings a craft not registered in Portugal inside the annual tax once it has spent more than 183 days in the country in a calendar year, consecutive or not. The two clocks run at the same time and neither cancels the other, so a non-EU flagged yacht can be comfortably inside its 18 months of temporary admission and still owe Portuguese circulation tax. Get both in writing from a Portuguese agent before you plan a long stay.

The tax picture, and the pitch that no longer works

Portugal is a full EU VAT jurisdiction at 23 per cent on the mainland, with 22 per cent in Madeira and 16 per cent in the Azores, so importing a yacht into free circulation here costs materially more than doing it through the islands, and every marina invoice on this quay carries the mainland rate. A non-EU flagged yacht in private use, owned by someone resident outside the EU, can run under temporary admission with relief from import VAT for up to 18 months, but the regime is strict: private use only, no modifications, re-export at the end. Portugal separately levies an annual circulation tax on private pleasure craft by engine power, the imposto unico de circulacao or IUC, and the rate is published rather than mysterious. Category F of the code covers private pleasure craft with motive power of 20 kW or more registered from 1986, and the 2026 rate is EUR 2.95 per kW; the tables were not uprated for inflation for 2026, so the same figure has stood since 2024. A yacht with 500 kW of installed power therefore pays EUR 1,475 a year. For craft registered in Portugal the tax period is the calendar year and the bill falls due by the end of January. Craft not registered in Portugal are caught once they remain in the country for more than 183 days, consecutive or not, in a calendar year, and in that case the tax is settled within 30 days of the end of that period, which is why a nine month winter contract has traditionally been the way owners avoid it.

The residency angle has changed and a lot of Algarve marketing has not caught up. The Non-Habitual Resident regime, the flat-rate scheme that sold a great many Algarve properties and berths, closed to new entrants on 1 January 2024 under that year's State Budget, with a transitional window that ran out on 31 March 2025. Its replacement, the tax incentive for scientific research and innovation, generally called IFICI or NHR 2.0, came into force in December 2024 with retroactive effect to 1 January 2024. It gives 20 per cent flat tax on Portuguese employment and self-employment income for up to ten years, but it is gated on an EQF Level 6 qualification, broadly a bachelor's degree, plus three years of relevant experience in an eligible activity, and the application is due by 15 January of the year after you become resident. IFICI is aimed at researchers and skilled workers, not at retired owners, and nobody buying a berth here in 2026 should be pricing in the old NHR.

Weather, swell and the afternoon breeze

This is the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean, and the difference shows in the swell rather than the wind. The south coast is sheltered by the land from the big Atlantic north-westerly systems, so Vilamoura gets a filtered version of what Lagos and Sagres take on the chin, but a long southwesterly swell still wraps round Cape Saint Vincent and arrives at the entrance with no local wind behind it. Cruising notes for the coast give prevailing winds from north to northeast from May to October, with a strong breeze that sets in at the start of the afternoon and runs to sunset, coming from the southwest and backing through west to west-northwest or northwest. That daily breeze catches crews out: mornings are flat, and by three there is a real sailing wind and a chop on the beam of anything lying stern-to.

Inside, the marina is a dug basin behind two moles and is quiet in almost anything. The exposure is at the gate, not at the berth, and the specific risk is the southeasterly. What matters commercially is that the Algarve shoulder is long: a berth taken from October at EUR 1,990.40 a month for a 26 metre boat buys weather a northern European owner would call summer, which is not true of the Adriatic or the Ligurian shoulder at the same money. Winter is mild and wet, and the reliable window for a full season runs roughly April to October rather than the Mediterranean's June to September.

Who owns it, the concession, and what they are spending

Ownership has turned over repeatedly and anyone signing a five year lease should know the chain. Lusotur ran the resort from the beginning; the assets passed through Andre Jordan, then the Spanish PRASA group, then the Spanish bank BBVA, which sold to the American fund Lone Star in 2015. In May 2021 Lone Star sold Vilamoura World to a group of Portuguese investors led by Joao Brion Sanches, including Filipe de Botton and Alexandre Relvas, together with the British investment group Arrow Global, for more than EUR 100 million. The deal took in the whole share capital of Vilamoura World, 21 development plots, 49 per cent of the infrastructure company Inframoura, the equestrian centre, a 200 hectare environmental park, the Cerro da Vila museum site and the marina, reported as the most valuable asset in the package. The marina concession runs to 2060.

In October 2023 the owners announced a EUR 500 million relaunch of Vilamoura, of which the marina expansion was one line item. The EUR 23 million Nova Marina was built without European funds, started on 23 January 2024 and opened that November, and Arrow Global has separately taken on the former Dom Pedro hotels and golf courses on the same estate, so marina, hotels and golf now sit inside one ownership. Note that the outer basin is not on that concession: the Nova Marina sits on a separate contract with Docapesca, signed on 11 August 2023 with Podio Navegante, S. A. The marina holds ISO 9001, ISO 14001, the European Blue Flag and the Yacht Harbour Association's Five Gold Anchor Platinum rating, which it was the first marina in Portugal to be accredited at, in January 2023, when the operator said only ten marinas worldwide held it. It has taken Best Portuguese Marina at the Publituris Portugal Travel Awards for 14 consecutive years to 2025, and TYHA named it Superyacht Marina of the Year for 2025 at the Southampton International Boat Show on 24 September 2025, with Yalikavak Marina the runner-up. That record is the honest case for Vilamoura: not the biggest berths and not the deepest water, but the best-run marina in the country by a distance, with a concession long enough to make a multi-year contract worth signing.

Для кого: An owner of a 15 to 40 metre boat who wants a certified, year-round, fully serviced Atlantic base with a published price list, a real winter tariff and a half-hour airport run, and, in the outer basin, the owner of a yacht over 40 metres who wants an annual rate in print rather than on application, though nobody at that size will find a hoist here big enough to lift her.