Portugal has never hosted the Olympic Games, but the long-serving mayor of Oeiras thinks he knows where they could happen. Speaking at the Portugal Football Summit, held at the Portuguese Football Federation's Cidade do Futebol, Isaltino Morais suggested that a fully redeveloped Jamor sporting complex — home to the National Stadium and a cluster of high-performance facilities — could one day give the area a shot at the world's biggest sporting event.
The pitch is not a formal bid. Morais framed it as a long-term ambition that depends on who steers the National Stadium's redevelopment. He wants the FPF, the council and the government to work together on the venue, arguing that their combined management muscle would turn Jamor into a complex of European — possibly world — standard. Without that kind of investment, he admitted, an Olympic Games in Portugal would be very hard to pull off.
There is real money moving in that direction already. In July, the government and Oeiras Council signed off on a €19.3 million programme to renovate and modernise the National Sports Centre at Jamor, an agreement between the Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth (IPDJ) and the municipality that covers the wider complex. Morais pointed to the area's existing assets: the National Stadium, rugby grounds, swimming facilities and elite training infrastructure.
He also had bold words for the municipality itself, calling Oeiras Portugal's 'national capital of football' thanks to the Cidade do Futebol, and noting that the town increasingly sits at the centre of conversations about the sport's future. The summit, running September 23 to 25, brought football executives, clubs, players and federations to Oeiras — a reminder of how much sporting gravity the small coastal municipality now carries.
Morais is a polarising figure. Mayor since 1985, he served a prison sentence for tax fraud and money laundering before staging a comeback as an independent, winning the municipality again in 2017, 2021 and 2025. In March 2026 the Public Prosecutor's Office charged him and 22 others with embezzlement and abuse of power over roughly €150,000 in municipal-funded meals; the council rejects the allegations.
For travellers, the story is a useful signal: Jamor, just west of Lisbon along the Cascais rail line, is being groomed for a bigger stage. The National Stadium already hosts the Portuguese cup finals, and the surrounding complex — set in the Jamor valley near Cruz Quebrada — is worth a detour for sports fans passing through Lisbon. If the €19.3 million works and any wider redevelopment take shape, the area will only get more interesting, whether or not five rings ever fly over the Estadio Nacional.
