Portugal's government has approved a second phase of development for Amalia, the country's open-source artificial intelligence language model, backing it with 1.8 million euros through the end of 2026, according to a Council of Ministers Resolution published in the Diário da República, Portugal's official gazette.
The resolution, numbered 178/2026, approves the "second phase of development of the Automatic Multimodal Language Assistant with Artificial Intelligence" (Amalia) running until the end of the second half of 2026, along with the strategic objectives, activities, targets, investment and governance model set out in an annex, the document states.
What Is Amalia
Amalia was designed as a new open, large-scale language model built in Portugal. Its first version was released in July, the product of a consortium of Portuguese public universities working under the funding and operational coordination of the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Agency for the Technological Reform of the State, known as ARTE, using money from Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan, the European Union-backed programme that channels post-pandemic recovery funding into the country's economy.
The resolution states that Amalia's development is jointly overseen by the government members responsible for state reform and for science and innovation, and it gives ARTE responsibility for financing and the operational execution of the project.
Goals For The Second Phase
According to the resolution, the strategic objectives of this phase are to improve the efficiency of public administration by adopting secure AI tools aligned with the needs of citizens, businesses and the state, particularly by expanding the use of AI in public-facing services; to advance scientific and technological development in AI in Portugal; and to strengthen the sovereignty of the Portuguese language and of national data, while preserving Portugal's cultural, historical, scientific and literary heritage by training the model on European Portuguese-language data of secure and known origin.
The phase aims to continue training and developing Amalia's core model, to build what the resolution calls "agentification" tools capable of being integrated into internal public administration processes and public service delivery, and to continue training and refining the model for image and speech use cases, the document says.
Cultural Heritage Partners
The plan also calls for expanding into the cultural domain in collaboration with several institutions named in the resolution: the Cinemateca Portuguesa, Portugal's national film archive; the Património Cultural heritage body; Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, which oversees museums and monuments; the Directorate-General of Books, Archives and Libraries; and the National Library of Portugal.
Funding And Oversight
Total investment for the second phase is set at 1,800,000 euros, fully financed under the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The resolution states that taking on commitments and charges for the plan's measures depends on funds being available from the competent public entities, and that these will be entirely covered by Recovery and Resilience Plan money, with no budget top-up to come from the Finance Ministry's provisional allocations or other centralised funds, nor from the "chapter 60" budget line managed by the state treasury and finance entity, during budget execution.
The Foundation for Science and Technology, or whichever entity succeeds it under Decree-Law No. 132/2025 of 24 December, will be responsible, together with ARTE, for putting the initiative into operation.
The resolution also extends the mandate of the Specialized Monitoring Committee overseeing Amalia until 31 December 2029, and allows its membership to be expanded by order of the government members responsible for state reform and for science and innovation.
What Comes Next
Amalia's development is set to continue in 2027, following the technical and strategic guidelines already established, on a calendar and under terms to be defined by order of the government members responsible for finance, state reform, and science and innovation.
The resolution takes effect the day after its publication but applies retroactively from 1 July 2026, according to the document.
