Cheap Flights from Madrid (MAD) to Lisbon (LIS)

Flying Out Of Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport

To make the trip from Madrid to Lisbon, you’ll need your passport, your plane ticket, and a reminder to set your watch back an hour. Lisbon’s ornate citadels and modern esplanades await.

To fly on this route, you’ll have to pick from British Airways, Swissair, United, Finnair, Iberia, Qatar Airways, TAP Portugal, Aer Lingus, and Air Europa. All flights along this route are direct, quick, and a bit expensive.

You’ll depart from Madrid’s Adolfo Suarez airport in the first terminal. Because this is an intra-EU flight, you won’t need to make any additional customs declarations or request any visa.

Arriving in Lisbon

You’ll be touching down in Lisbon’s Airport. Lisbon tends to be about ten degrees cooler than Madrid in every season, so pack for warm summers and chilly winters.

At Lisbon’s Airport, you can hop onto Portugal’s train system, Lisbon’s metro station, the metro bus, the Aerobus, or a taxi. The country train system can take you to most of the major cities in Portugal but tends to be expensive. The metro train and metro buses have good coverage within Lisbon, and will only take you half an hour to reach downtown.

The Aerobus is a bit more limited than the metro system but is more roomy for hauling your cargo. The Aerobus does a small loop around downtown, stopping at a couple of the major hotels before returning to the airport, so it may be a better way to get to the airport than to get from it.

Taxis in Lisbon are relatively cheap and highly professional.

Welcome to Portugal

Madrid is considerably more expensive than Lisbon, so your wallet will have a nice break. The biggest places where you’ll see the difference in prices is in sit-down dinners and alcohol. Sit down dinners in Lisbon can end up costing half as much as their equivalents in Madrid, as can a bottle of wine or beer.

The exception to Lisbon’s inexpensiveness is petrol, which is significantly more expensive than in Madrid. If you rent a car, plan to pay a lot for gas—enough to offset the low price of the rental.

Culturally, Lisbon is also a bit different than Madrid. Portuguese tend to be slightly more reserved than their Spaniard counterparts, and you’ll find that drivers in Lisbon are a bit more polite. Fewer Portuguese speak English than in Spain, but you should still be able to communicate effectively enough with most people.