Portugal has officially launched AMALIA (Automatic Multimodal Language Assistant with Artificial Intelligence) today, 1 July 2026, marking a major milestone in the country's digital and artificial intelligence strategy. As the first large-scale language model (LLM) designed specifically for Portuguese, AMALIA has been developed to understand and reason in Portuguese while reflecting the country's linguistic, cultural, and social context.
Unlike general-purpose AI systems such as ChatGPT and Gemini, AMALIA has been created with Portugal's language and national reality at its core. First announced by the Prime Minister during the 2025 Web Summit, the project now enters its public deployment phase and will begin operating over the coming days, with progressive integration into public administration services and the Portuguese business ecosystem.
According to André Martins, the IT researcher leading the project, AMALIA also represents an important step towards strengthening Europe's technological sovereignty in artificial intelligence.
"AMALIA aims to contribute to Europe's strategic autonomy in AI by helping reduce the technological gap between Europe, the United States, and China," he said.
Backed by an investment of €5.5 million from Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), AMALIA represents a landmark collaboration between leading Portuguese research institutions and industry partners. The consortium brings together researchers from the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Unbabel, NOVA University Lisbon, and the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
The launch of AMALIA reinforces Portugal's ambition to play an active role in developing trustworthy, multilingual, and European artificial intelligence, while providing advanced AI capabilities tailored to the needs of Portuguese-speaking users, public services, academia, and industry.
In the photo - from left to right: Paulo André, member of the IT Lisbon Board and Professor at IST; André Martins, project coordinator and Professor at IST; Armando Nolasco Pinto, recently elected President of IT and Professor at UA; Paula Duarte, Rector of UBI; and Pedro Inácio, IT researcher, Vice-Rector and Professor at UBI.
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