AMALIA, the first large-scale language model (LLM) developed from scratch in European Portuguese, was unveiled on 1 July 2026 at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. The event featured speeches by the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, the Minister of State for State Reform, Gonçalo Matias, and the Minister for Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre.
The project was the result of a joint effort by a consortium of public universities and national research centres. Among the partner institutions, the University of Minho developed the Education module, an educational platform aligned with the national curriculum, featuring tools for teachers, a personalised tutor for students and a student portal with a chatbot.
The UMinho delegation attending the session was led by the Vice-Rector for Research and Scientific Policy, António Salgado, and included researchers José Alberto Lencastre, from the Centre for Educational Research (CIEd) at the Institute of Education, and Dalila Durães and Renata Magalhães, both from the Algoritmi Centre at the School of Engineering.
Scientific coordination of AMALIA within UMinho has been entrusted to Professor Paulo Novais, from the Department of Computer Science at the School of Engineering, who heads the ISLab research group – the Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory at the Algoritmi Centre – and is coordinator of the Associated Laboratory for Intelligent Systems (LASI), the country’s largest associated laboratory specialising in Artificial Intelligence.
Unlike international models, this new Artificial Intelligence tool has been specifically designed to respect and enhance Portugal’s linguistic, historical and cultural reality. The main objective was to strengthen the country’s digital sovereignty, accelerate technological innovation and reduce dependence on foreign platforms. The model will be made available as open source to the public administration, businesses and academia, with a view to transforming citizens’ interaction with public services and supporting key sectors such as education, culture and science.
AMALIA – an Automated Multimodal Language Assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence – involved more than 60 Portuguese researchers and an initial investment of 5.5 million euros, with funding from the PRR (Recovery and Resilience Plan), with a further 1.5 million euros expected by 2027 for the next phase of development of the model and the sovereign infrastructure.
The Prime Minister attended the presentation. The UMinho delegation was led by Vice-Chancellor António Salgado, whilst Professor Paulo Novais was responsible for the scientific coordination of the project.
Live stream of the ceremony (45m 33s): Facebook
* Video highlights: Facebook
+Info: amaliallm.pt, Governo de Portugal, Governo de Portugal, Escola de Engenharia, Centro Algoritmi, Instituto de Educação, CIEd
SOURCE: UMinho
