More bad news, albeit of the kind that merely confirms what many travelers already suspected. Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport ranked 274th out of 279 airports in the 2026 AirHelp global ranking, placing it near the very bottom of the list of the world’s major airports.

Its standing is particularly striking in a European context: according to the ranking, Lisbon is now the lowest-rated airport serving a European capital.

For comparison, airports in Amsterdam, Madrid, Rome, Paris and Berlin all occupy positions in the middle or upper tiers of the ranking. Even traditionally congested hubs such as London and Istanbul scored higher than Lisbon.

In practice, Lisbon has found itself grouped with some of Europe’s worst-performing holiday airports, including Rhodes and Heraklion, as well as several heavily overloaded Turkish hubs.

AirHelp evaluates airports based on three criteria: punctuality, service quality and overall passenger experience. In Lisbon’s case, the main issue remains an overstretched infrastructure struggling to cope with growing passenger numbers, a problem that directly affects delays and service standards.

The authorities have been attempting to address the airport’s chronic congestion. Holders of Portuguese residence permits were recently allowed to use the same immigration queues as EU citizens in an effort to ease pressure on border control officers. In addition, around 300 extra police officers were deployed to the airport to help manage operations and passenger flows.