Government approves second phase of AI assistant AMALIA until the end of 2026

The Government has approved the second development phase of the Automatic Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Language Assistant (AMALIA), which will run until the end of the second half of 2026. The decision is contained in the Council of Ministers Resolution no. 178/2026, published in the Diário da República, 1st series, no. 179, of September 15, 2026, and signed by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro on September 4.

The resolution defines the strategic objectives, activities, results to be achieved, investment, and governance model for this phase, which covers the entirety of the second half of 2026. The measure enters into force on the day following its publication, taking effect from July 1, 2026.

A sovereign language model

AMALIA was conceived as a new large-scale, open language model developed in Portugal, whose first version was publicly released in July 2026. The project results from the collaboration of a consortium of Portuguese public universities, under the funding and operational coordination of the Foundation for Science and Technology, I. P. (FCT, I. P.), and the Agency for the Technological Reform of the State, I. P. (ARTE, I. P.), with funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).

The continuation of the project falls under the “Innovation and Adoption” axis of the National Agenda for Artificial Intelligence, approved by Council of Ministers Resolution no. 2/2026, of January 8, and follows Council of Ministers Resolution no. 201/2024, of December 30, which provided for the initial development of the model.

Objectives and activities of the new phase

The second phase of AMALIA pursues three strategic objectives:

• Promote the efficiency of the Public Administration through the adoption of secure AI tools, boosting their use in public services;
• Strengthen the sovereignty of the Portuguese language and national data, training the model with European Portuguese language data from secure sources;
• Promote national scientific and technological development in the field of AI, in coordination with public and private entities, both national and foreign.

Planned activities include the continued training of the base (core) model, the development of agentification tools for integration into internal Public Administration processes, improvements in Image and Speech use cases, and the expansion of the Culture domain. In the latter domain, the Portuguese Cinematheque, Cultural Heritage, I. P., Museums and Monuments of Portugal, E. P. E., the Directorate-General for Books, Archives and Libraries, and the National Library of Portugal are collaborating.

Investment and governance

The total investment to execute the activities is €1,800,000, fully secured by PRR funds, without recourse to budget reinforcement from centralized allocations of the Ministry of Finance. ARTE, I. P. is responsible for the funding and operational execution, while FCT, I. P., or the entity that succeeds it under the terms of Decree-Law no. 132/2025, of December 24, ensures joint operationalization.

The computational infrastructure relies on the Deucalion supercomputer, the national participation in the Marenostrum-5 supercomputer, and the “BSC AI Factory” Artificial Intelligence Factory. The Specialized Monitoring Committee, created by the 2024 resolution, remains in office with a mandate extended until December 31, 2029, and the development of AMALIA continues in 2027, on a schedule to be defined by order of the Government members responsible for the areas of finance, state reform, and science and innovation.

Relevance for citizens

With this resolution, Portugal consolidates its commitment to technological sovereignty and the adoption of artificial intelligence in Public Administration, ensuring that the model is trained with national data and in the Portuguese language. The dissemination of AMALIA across public entities should translate into more efficient services closer to citizens, within a context of strengthening the national AI ecosystem.

Source: Diário da República, 1st series, no. 179, September 15, 2026, p. 1 (official reference: Council of Ministers Resolution no. 178/2026).