LISBON — Portugal will keep 50.1 percent of TAP Air Portugal and hand the running of the airline to Lufthansa, the government announced on Wednesday, choosing the German group over Air France-KLM for the first phase of the carrier’s privatisation.
Lufthansa will pay €1.201 billion for 44.9 percent, according to Euronews’s account of the announcement, with 5 percent of the shares reserved for employees; the winning investor may also buy any employee shares left untaken. Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said the process was run with “strict respect for competition” and that Lufthansa’s “financial offer is 16% higher than the rival proposal.”
Ownership and control split here. The state keeps its majority, but Lufthansa takes executive and operational management. Finance minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento said the sale would be complete in 18 to 24 months, after European Commission approval, which puts the finish line around 2028. Montenegro’s government relaunched the partial sale in 2025 under a decree law that lets up to 49.9 percent go to private investors while the state remains the majority shareholder, Euronews reported in July. The announcement is a choice of partner, not a closed deal.
What Lufthansa has promised is substantial on paper. Euronews reported commitments to a fleet of 117 aircraft by 2035 and 130 after that, with up to eight Airbus A350-900s transferred to TAP from 2030, and €500 million for a pilot training school in Tancos, an innovation centre in Aveiro and a corporate services centre. Infrastructure minister Miguel Pinto Luz presented investment plans for Porto’s Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, Faro and airports in the autonomous regions.
The jobs figures are less tidy. Euronews gives 3,000 associated jobs tied to TAP’s growth and 5,500 direct and indirect jobs across all the investments, without saying how either was counted. Lufthansa already runs a southern European airline of its own: ITA Airways joined the group in 2024, and TEH’s reporting on the ITA Airways restart of Rome-Tel Aviv flights showed how differently the group’s carriers can behave under pressure.
The pressure on airline accounts is not going away. Euronews put TAP’s first-half 2026 loss at €99.2 million, 40 percent more than a year earlier, citing Portugal’s business press. The IMF’s Julie Kozack said in June that jet fuel prices in Europe were up 35 percent since the Iran war began, as TEH reported, a cost that no change of owner controls.
The money does not reconcile on its face. A price of €1.201 billion for 44.9 percent implies a valuation near €2.7 billion, yet the reported valuation of TAP is €2.552 billion. The material read does not say whether part of the sum is new capital rather than payment for shares.
Air France-KLM and Lufthansa had both filed final bids at the end of September, Parpública confirmed, and International Airlines Group, the owner of Iberia, had dropped out earlier. Nothing read for this report records Air France-KLM’s reaction, who will sit on TAP’s board, or whether the investment pledges are binding conditions or intentions.
The government has picked a winner. What 18 to 24 months of regulatory review will do to the promises is the part nobody has priced.
