For more than a century, pilgrims have walked to Fátima without receiving an official document acknowledging the journey. That is now changing. On 13 October 2026, Portugal’s most important Marian shrine launches Via Pacis, a new pilgrimage certification initiative that gives those arriving on foot something comparable to the Compostela issued in Santiago de Compostela.
The Sanctuary announced the details on 12 October, at the start of the year’s final major anniversary pilgrimage. The new certificate will recognise pilgrims who complete at least 13 kilometres on foot, whether individually or in groups, and can provide evidence of their journey. A dedicated pilgrim credential is available from 13 October, although the first certificates will not be issued until 29 November, the beginning of the new pastoral year.
For anyone who has walked into Santiago de Compostela and queued at the Pilgrim’s Office for a document confirming their journey, the parallel is obvious. Fátima is getting its own version of the Compostela, but with a different threshold and an emphasis on the spiritual experience of walking.
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A Request That Kept Arriving
The initiative was first announced in February by the rector of the Sanctuary, Fr Carlos Cabecinhas, at the opening of the thirteenth International Religious Tourism Workshops. His explanation was revealing: the creation of an official certificate for those who walk to Fátima was a request that pilgrims had repeatedly brought to the Sanctuary.
People had been arriving on foot after days on the road, sometimes covering considerable distances, without receiving formal recognition of their journey. They asked for it, kept asking, and eventually the Sanctuary responded.
Fr Cabecinhas outlined three objectives: encouraging pilgrimage on foot, giving greater visibility to the Caminhos de Fátima, which have received particular attention from the Centro Nacional de Cultura and the municipalities along their routes, and reinforcing Fátima’s role as the destination of those paths.
The third objective is particularly significant. Fátima has been a major pilgrimage destination for generations, but the creation of an official certificate gives the roads leading there a new institutional recognition. It connects the experience of walking with the moment of arrival and creates a common framework for journeys that have developed across different parts of Portugal.
The Roads That Already Exist
Fátima has had walking routes for decades. What it has lacked is the formal recognition at the destination that helps turn a collection of routes into an established pilgrimage network.
The existing network is substantial. The Caminho do Tejo covers approximately 141 to 150 kilometres from Lisbon, beginning at Parque das Nações beside the Tagus estuary and continuing through Vila Franca de Xira, Azambuja, Santarém and Minde over five or six stages. The Caminho do Médio Tejo comprises three approaches to Fátima, totalling approximately 220 kilometres: from Tomar (31 km), Abrantes (91 km) and Sertã (98 km). The Caminho dos Candeeiros covers 63 kilometres from Rio Maior, while the Caminho Nascente connects Tomar to the Sanctuary over 29.4 kilometres.
And then there is the route that makes Iberian pilgrims smile: the Caminho do Norte, running approximately 225 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela to Fátima and following much of the Portuguese Camino in reverse.
Anyone who has walked north toward Santiago on the Portuguese Way may have noticed the blue arrows pointing in the opposite direction, painted alongside the familiar yellow ones. Two pilgrimages share the same roads, each treating the other’s destination as its point of departure.
The network has developed largely through the work of the Centro Nacional de Cultura, which has held the Caminhos de Fátima trademark since 1998. Helena Vaz da Silva and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles were instrumental in establishing the Caminho do Tejo and its distinctive blue waymarking. The Associação de Amigos dos Caminhos de Fátima followed in 2008, while a pilgrim credential was already available for walkers to collect stamps at churches, museums and municipal offices.
The infrastructure, in other words, was already there. The new certificate adds formal recognition from the Sanctuary itself.
How the New Fátima Pilgrim Certificate Works
The official regulations answer the most important question left open when the initiative was announced in February: how far must a pilgrim walk to qualify?
The answer is 13 kilometres, a considerably shorter distance than the final 100 kilometres required for the Compostela in Santiago de Compostela.
The Fátima certificate is specifically intended for pilgrims travelling on foot, either alone or in organised groups. The Sanctuary has also introduced a dedicated fold-out credential containing identification fields, space for the departure point and date, stamps collected along the route, and short prayers intended to accompany the journey.
Before setting out, pilgrims must complete an online registration form through the Sanctuary’s website. The system generates a registration code, sent by email and associated with their credential. Along the way, walkers are encouraged to obtain a stamp at their departure point, preferably a parish church, cathedral or other ecclesiastical institution, as well as additional stamps documenting the route. One stamp per walking day is recommended, although the Sanctuary does not impose this as an inflexible requirement.
The certificate can be requested at the Sanctuary’s Information Office after the journey, once the supporting documentation has been checked. Pilgrims may use the new Via Pacis credential, the existing Caminhos de Fátima credential or other suitable records capable of demonstrating that the pilgrimage meets the established criteria.
The new credential costs €2 and can be purchased at the Sanctuary’s shops or online. Of that amount, €1.50 goes to charitable purposes, with the first year’s proceeds from direct Sanctuary sales benefiting Acreditar, a Portuguese organisation supporting children and young people with cancer and their families.
There is one important distinction between the launch and the actual issuing of certificates. The credential and registration process become available on 13 October, but physical certificates will only begin to be issued on 29 November 2026, the First Sunday of Advent.
Full details, registration instructions and the official regulations are available on the Sanctuary’s Via Pacis information page.
Why Thirteen Kilometres Matters
The choice of a 13-kilometre minimum gives the Fátima certificate a distinctive character.
The Compostela requires pilgrims to complete at least the final 100 kilometres on foot or horseback, or 200 kilometres by bicycle, with their journey documented through an official credential. Fátima has chosen a substantially lower threshold and limited its new certification to walking.
That difference is significant for the future of the Portuguese pilgrimage network. Several established routes to Fátima are shorter than 100 kilometres, including the Caminho dos Candeeiros, the Caminho Nascente and the three approaches that make up the Caminho do Médio Tejo. All can now potentially lead to the official certificate, provided pilgrims complete the required distance and documentation.
The decision also allows people who cannot undertake a week-long pilgrimage to participate. A 13-kilometre walk remains a meaningful physical undertaking for many people, particularly older pilgrims or those with limited time, without demanding the logistical commitment of a journey lasting several days.
Fátima has therefore avoided simply copying Santiago’s certification model. Its new system recognises a different tradition of pilgrimage, one in which organised parish groups, local communities and shorter devotional journeys have long played an important role.
The Sanctuary explicitly presents Via Pacis as an initiative intended to recognise the entire experience, from departure to return, rather than simply confirming arrival at the destination. That emphasis helps explain why the credential includes prayers and encourages pilgrims to begin their journey from their own parish or ecclesial community.
Why the Timing Matters
The date is not incidental, and neither is the year.
In 2025, the number of pilgrims and visitors who participated in at least one celebration at the Sanctuary reached 6,478,323, an increase of 241,913 over the previous year. Since 2023, when World Youth Day was held in Lisbon and Pope Francis visited Fátima, annual attendance has exceeded six million. The 2025 total also surpassed the approximately 6.3 million recorded in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Fátima, in other words, does not need a certificate to attract visitors. It is already Portugal’s leading religious tourism destination.
What the certificate offers is something different. It distinguishes the experience of someone who arrives after walking from that of someone who travels by coach or car, without suggesting that one form of devotion is more valuable than another. It gives the physical journey its own recognition and provides the Caminhos de Fátima, maintained and promoted for years by cultural associations and municipalities, with a formal point of arrival.
The initiative also has a wider social dimension. The decision to direct most of the credential’s purchase price toward charitable work connects the act of pilgrimage with support for vulnerable people, while the involvement of dioceses, parishes and ecclesial movements is intended to strengthen the relationship between the Sanctuary and the communities from which pilgrims depart.
The announcement made in February had also come amid calls for solidarity and resilience following severe storms that affected central Portugal. At the time, Fr Cabecinhas urged organisations involved in religious tourism to contribute to the region’s recovery, presenting the sector as a potential driver of reconstruction.
The new certificate now becomes part of that broader effort to strengthen pilgrimage as a cultural, spiritual and economic activity rooted in the territory.
The Thirteenth of October
The choice of National Pilgrim Day connects the launch with a defining moment in Fátima’s history.
Marco Daniel Duarte, director of the Sanctuary’s Museum, recalled at the February tourism workshops how the number of people gathering at Cova da Iria grew from three children in May 1917 to approximately 70,000 pilgrims that October. Photographs and historical records attest to the extraordinary crowd present on 13 October, a date that helped establish Fátima as one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the twentieth century.
Duarte also shared a letter written in September 1917 by a Portuguese soldier on the battlefields of France to António, the father of one of the three children, about the events in Fátima. The document illustrated how quickly the news had travelled and how far its influence already extended.
He described the experience of Fátima as something lived differently by each pilgrim and characterised arrival at the Sanctuary as a celebration of fraternity.
That description captures something a certificate can only partially express. A document can record a departure point, a distance and an arrival, but it cannot contain the personal meaning of the journey or the relationships formed along the way.
More than a century after those crowds gathered at Cova da Iria, pilgrims continue to approach Fátima from Lisbon, Abrantes, Rio Maior, Santiago de Compostela and countless smaller communities.
From 29 November, those who complete the new requirements will be able to leave with an official document recognising the road they have travelled.
The Sanctuary has given that journey a name: Via Pacis, the Way of Peace. And with a minimum distance of just 13 kilometres, it has made the possibility of receiving an official pilgrim certificate accessible to a much wider range of walkers.
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