The Madeira Tourism Board has been promoting an initiative to attract more digital nomads to the island.

The dedicated website for digital nomads in Madeira puts it simply: “your new home”. With this enticing headline, the Portuguese island aims to attract remote workers under the slogan “from Madeira to the world”. This article contains an affiliate link.

Madeira’s International Ambitions

Madeira decided to push the boat out and create a new concept completely dedicated to digital nomads: a ‘Digital Nomad Village’, describing it as the first in Europe, providing free access to a community workspace, WiFi and a number of events, from talks and workshops to fitness and leisure activities such as yoga and dance classes. To make it easy to find, the community workspace is located at the centre of the village, within the John do Passos Cultural Centre.

The location is Ponta do Sol in Funchal, with a population of about 8,000 residents and the digital nomads initiative is the product of Start Up Madeira in partnership with the Regional Government of Madeira. It also aims to give more visibility to the island of Porto Santo.

Madeira has good air transport links, offers different accommodation options and has a mild climate throughout the year.

Madeira Airport has incoming flights from the UK, Finland, mainland Portugal, the Czech Republic, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain.

The idea behind the Digital Nomad Village in Ponta do Sol is to connect local businesses with international remote workers, as well as ensuring that the presence of digital nomads on the island has a positive effect on the local economy. The idea is also to allow visitors to truly live like locals and make the most of the communities within the island.

The pilot project can host 100 nomads (Euronews) and, understandably, registrations exceeded the number of places available. During 2021 the Digital Nomad Village welcomed over 3,000 nomads since February 2021 with the number of registrations exceeding 8,000. A counter with the updated figures is displayed on the pilot scheme’s website. The feedback from the first year of the pilot scheme has been extremely positive (Portugal on the Move).

A Time-Limited Pilot Scheme for Digital Nomads in Madeira

It is worth noting that the digital nomads project for Madeira is time-sensitive: it has been designed as a pilot scheme running until 2024.

The Digital Nomad Village itself runs until 2022. The main objective of this pilot project is to attract visitors to the island during off-peak season, from February to June, for a duration of between one month and six months. It will be interesting to see how the results of this initiative will inform future developments, particularly any strategic investment in the island and similar projects to entice visitors throughout the year.

When you book your travel it is recommended to also book travel insurance and SafetyWing (affiliate) has created comprehensive and affordable insurance cover especially designed for digital nomads.