Second Super Bock Ladies Open Tees Off at Vidago Palace

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A royal spa hotel, a 1936 golf course and 84 players chasing a Tour card.

For a country that runs on golf tourism, Portugal went a surprisingly long time without a professional women’s tournament. When the LET Access Series (LETAS) pitched up at Vidago in May 2025, it was the tour’s first Portuguese stop since the Azores Ladies Open in 2017. Eight years is a long time to wait for a tee time.

The wait, happily, has not become a habit. The Super Bock Ladies Open at Vidago Palace returns for its second edition from 20 to 22 October 2026, and on 15 October the Portuguese Golf Federation (FPG) announced that Turismo Porto e Norte has increased its backing. The tournament carries a €50,000 prize fund and a field of 84, and is the third-to-last event of the LETAS season. With seven Ladies European Tour cards for 2027 going to the top of the Order of Merit, that makes it rather more than a pleasant week in the hills. (LETAS)

Vidago Palace Hotel façade and gardens, Vidago, northern Portugal

The Home Contingent

Portugal’s hopes rest chiefly with professional Sofia Barroso Sá. She is a three-time national champion and former Texas Christian University regular who climbed to 135th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, played two Ladies European Tour events as an amateur in 2025 — finishing 30th at the Tenerife Women’s Open — and made her LETAS debut at the Women’s Irish Challenge at Malahide in July.

Sofia Barros teeing off

She has form against all comers, too: in 2022 she became the first woman to win an event on the FPG’s own circuit, ahead of a field that included 22 professionals. (Sul Informação)

Two amateurs complete the home team: Francisca Ferreira da Costa, the reigning national champion, and Laura Santos, who has just won the Taça da FPG – BPI at the age of 14. Most of us, at 14, were still losing balls to the nearest pond.

Last Year’s Story

The inaugural edition belonged to France’s Sara Brentcheneff, who won at 17 with a 12-under-par total of 204, two clear of Norway’s Madelene Stavnar. Still an amateur, she had to leave the €8,000 first prize on the table. She did get to keep the trophy. (Record)

The Course

The Vidago Palace Golf Course began life in 1936 as a nine-hole layout by Philip Mackenzie Ross, the Scot better known for restoring Turnberry’s Ailsa after the war. Cameron & Powell extended it to a par-72 eighteen that reopened in 2010, measuring 6,308 metres from the back tees. The opening four holes run through the wooded centenary park, the next eleven drop into the Oura Valley, and the closing three climb back to the high ground for views across the hills and villages. Every tee is held up by walls of local stone. Last year’s first-round co-leader, Germany’s Leonie Harm, liked the way it alternates tough holes with gettable ones — though she also noted there was not much room off the tee. (Visit Portugal)

Tee with local-stone retaining wall on the Vidago Palace Golf Course

The Palace

The Vidago Palace Hotel was King Carlos I’s idea: a grand spa built around Vidago’s celebrated mineral springs. The king was assassinated in 1908, and the hotel opened on 6 October 1910 — the day after Portugal declared itself a republic. Timing, as every golfer knows, is everything. Restored and reopened in 2010, it now has 70 rooms and suites, a spa designed by Pritzker laureate Álvaro Siza Vieira and membership of The Leading Hotels of the World. (Vidago Palace)

Pro-Am and Pro-Am Kids

The week starts on Sunday 18 October with the Pro-Am. The same day brings a Pro-Am Kids and golf taster sessions for around 50 juniors from clubs across the north — part of the FPG’s push to take professional and amateur golf beyond the coast and into the interior.

Making a Trip of It

Vidago is about an hour’s drive from Porto and 15 minutes from Chaves, where the Roman bridge still spans the Tâmega and the pastel de Chaves — a crescent of flaky pastry filled with seasoned veal — is sold warm from the oven. Late October in Trás-os-Montes also means chestnut season, with castanhas roasting on street corners. And there is a particular pleasure in watching a tour professional play a hole on Thursday, then trying the same shot yourself on Friday. Usually a humbling one.

Browse our Porto and Northern Portugal golf holidays and add a few days at Vidago Palace to your next trip north.

 

The Legends Head for the Dunes: Comporta Hosts Its First Senior Tour Event

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Major champions, a Ryder Cup captain and free admission. Comporta has rather outdone itself.

For a stretch of coast long described as Portugal’s best-kept secret, Comporta is making an increasingly poor job of keeping it. From 30 October to 1 November 2026, Pinheirinho Golf Course hosts the inaugural Portugal Legends Championship, the newest stop on the Staysure Legends Tour. Entry for spectators is free. In golf, that is practically unheard of.

Who’s Teeing It Up

The field is expected to include Michael Campbell, who held off Tiger Woods to win the 2005 US Open at Pinehurst, and Paul McGinley, Europe’s winning Ryder Cup captain at Gleneagles in 2014. Two of McGinley’s team from that week, Jamie Donaldson and Stephen Gallacher, are also slated to play. Donaldson hit the wedge to the 15th green that won the Cup, and there is a plaque on the fairway to prove it. (Golf Business News)

A fairway at Pinheirinho Golf Course in Comporta running between umbrella pines and sandy dunes

A Course Brought Back From the Brink

Pinheirinho has had a more eventful life than most golf courses. Designed by Jorge Santana da Silva as part of an ambitious tourism and property project, it closed not long after it was first unveiled. A change of ownership brought eighteen of the original twenty-seven holes back into play, and the course reopened in 2022.

The second act has been kinder. The layout threads through secondary dunes and pine forest, with heavily sculpted bunkering and a 3.5-hectare lake for those who like their jeopardy wet. The clubhouse is by Jacobsen Arquitetura, and Six Senses Comporta, the brand’s first resort in Portugal, sits on the same estate with access to 60 kilometres of Alentejo coastline.

Two More Reasons to Stay the Week

Three days of watching legends is a fine start, but nobody flies to Lisbon to keep their clubs in the bag. Down the road at Terras da Comporta, David McLay-Kidd’s Dunas Course has long been the headline act, and it now shares the bill with the Torre Course, the first signature design by Sergio García. Torre opened in the summer of 2025, plays to par 72 over 6,790 yards, and was named the world’s best new golf course at the 2025 World Golf Awards. (Golf Monthly) (Rus Tourism News)

That makes three serious courses within a short drive of one another, all about an hour south of Lisbon. Dunas is the bold links-style test, Torre the more strategic thinker’s round, and Pinheirinho the woodland interlude between them. A week here does not repeat itself.

The second hole of the Torre Course at Terras da Comporta, with sandy waste areas and pine trees

Rice Fields and Long Lunches

Comporta is rice country, and the paddies that line the road in from the north are not decoration. Order the arroz de marisco at lunch and you are eating the local crop. The village itself remains resolutely low-rise, all thatched roofs and barefoot beach restaurants, which is precisely why people who could go anywhere keep coming here.

How to Watch

The Portugal Legends Championship runs over three rounds, from Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November 2026. Tickets are free; spectators simply register their interest on the tournament page. The autumn timing suits the Alentejo nicely, with the summer crowds long gone and the light rather better for it. (Legends Tour)

Browse our Lisbon golf holidays and build a Comporta week around the Legends, or come later and play the courses in peace.

Camiral: The Course Booked for Golf’s Next Ryder Cup

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Catalonia’s two championship layouts, six years before the crowds arrive.

Camiral, in the Girona countryside an hour north of Barcelona, has just been named host of the 2031 Ryder Cup. It is only the second Spanish venue in the competition’s history, following Valderrama in 1997, and the decision changes what a round here means. The two championship courses have always been serious golf. Now they come with a deadline attached.

Golfer checking in a golf travel bag at airport departures before a golf holiday

A Second Ryder Cup for Spain

Ryder Cup Europe’s selection of Camiral makes Spain the first country on the continent to host the event twice, a decision framed by chief executive Guy Kinnings as recognition of Spanish golf’s long-standing contribution to the competition. Sergio García remains the Ryder Cup’s all-time points leader, and Jon Rahm has been one of Europe’s defining players across the last three editions. Camiral now carries that history forward. (ESPN)

Stadium and Tour — Two Different Tests

Camiral operates two courses, and they reward different games. The Camiral Stadium is the tougher of the pair, having hosted a DP World Tour event three times, most recently in 2022, and the European Tour’s Qualifying School Final Stage on seven occasions since 2008.

Camiral Stadium course fairway with the Girona countryside behind, Costa Brava
Next door, the Camiral Tour was built to the same standard but wider, with larger greens that give a broader range of handicaps a fair shot at scoring well. Both share ground that was originally earmarked for a Grand Prix circuit before Formula 1 relocated to Montmeló — golf got the better draw. Between now and 2031, the resort will also host the Estrella Damm Catalunya Championship each year from 2028 to 2030, so the countdown is already on the calendar. (ESPN)

Camiral Tour course, the kinder option

Girona and the Costa Brava Table

The resort itself, now trading as Camiral after years as PGA Catalunya, sits a five-minute transfer from Girona airport. Girona itself is worth the detour on a rest day — a walled old town of stone stairways and a cathedral that climbs straight up from the Onyar river, with a market culture built on Catalan cooking rather than tourist menus. Barcelona is an hour away if the trip stretches to a long weekend either side of the golf. (The Independent)

Historic Old tow Girona

Play It Before 2031

Ryder Cup venues rarely get quieter as the event approaches. Valderrama’s profile only grew after 1997, and Camiral will follow the same curve — more attention, fuller tee sheets, and eventually a course that plays host to the loudest week in golf. Six years is not a long runway. The Stadium and Tour courses are booking-ready now, at a stage where a serious golfer can play the same fairways the world’s best will contest without the surrounding circus.

Camiral joins a shortlist of courses that will only get harder to book quietly. Browse Costa Brava golf holidays and get there ahead of 2031.