One of the most important historical figures in Portugal is Pedro Álvares Cabral. He (born Pedro Álvares de Gouveia; c. 1467 or 1468 - c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator, and explorer who is credited with discovering Brazil for the Europeans. He was the first person in history to visit all four continents, connecting them all in his historic expedition of 1500, during which he also performed the first substantial exploration of South America's northeast coast and claimed it for Portugal. While details about Cabral's childhood are unknown, it is known that he was born into a minor noble family and received a solid education. In 1500, he was chosen to lead an expedition to India, following Vasco da Gama's newly established path through Africa. The mission was to return with precious spices and to develop trading contacts in India, so avoiding the monopoly on the spice trade held by Arab, Turkish, and Italian traders. Although Vasco da Gama's previous trip to India had recorded evidence of land west of the southern Atlantic Ocean (in 1497), Cabral made the first known mission to touch four continents: Europe, Africa, America, and Asia.

His fleet of 13 ships traveled far into the western Atlantic Ocean, possibly on purpose, and made landfall (April 1500) on what he mistook for a big island. Cabral claimed the new area for the Portuguese Crown because it was within the Portuguese domain according to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. He examined the shoreline, determining that the vast land mass was most likely a continent, and sent a ship to alert King Manuel I of the new region. The continent was South America, and the territory he claimed for Portugal became known as Brazil. The fleet replenished its supplies before continuing its trek to India.

For more than 300 years, his achievements were mostly forgotten. Cabral's reputation was rehabilitated by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil decades after Brazil's independence from Portugal in the nineteenth century. Historians have long debated whether Cabral discovered Brazil and whether the discovery was accidental or planned. The first question has been answered by the observation that the few, brief interactions with previous explorers were barely noted at the time and added little to the future development and history of the country that would become Brazil, the lone Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. On the second question, there is no clear consensus, and the purposeful discovery hypothesis lacks substantial evidence. Nonetheless, despite being eclipsed by contemporary explorers, historians regard Cabral as a pivotal figure in the Age of Discovery.

Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was the first European to enter India by water. His first trip to India via the Cape of Good Hope (1497-1499) was the first to use an ocean route to connect Europe and Asia, connecting the Atlantic and Indian oceans. This is often regarded as a watershed moment in world history, as it signaled the start of a sea-based period of global multiculturalism. Da Gama's discovery of the maritime route to India ushered in an era of global imperialism, allowing the Portuguese to construct a long-lasting colonial empire stretching from Africa to Asia. The violence and hostage-taking committed by Da Gama and others who followed earned the Portuguese a harsh reputation among India's indigenous kings, laying the groundwork for western colonialism in the Age of Exploration. Traveling by sea permitted the Portuguese to avoid sailing over the contentious Mediterranean and via the perilous Arabian Peninsula. The total distance traveled on the outgoing and return voyages made this mission the longest ocean voyage ever undertaken up to that point.

Da Gama landed in Calicut on May 20, 1498, after decades of sailors attempting to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks. Unrestricted access to the Indian spice trade helped the Portuguese Empire's economy, which was previously based in northern and coastal West Africa. Initially, the principal spices obtained from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but other items, all new to Europe, were quickly added. For numerous decades, Portugal held a market monopoly on certain commodities. Other European countries, first the Dutch Republic and England, then France and Denmark, were unable to challenge Portugal's monopoly and naval dominance on the Cape Route until a century later.

Da Gama commanded the first and fourth Portuguese India Armadas. The latter was the largest and left for India four years after the first one returned. In recognition of his contributions, da Gama was appointed Governor of India in 1524, with the title Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519. He is still regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of exploration, and tributes to his achievements have been paid all around the world. Luís de Camões wrote the Portuguese national epic poem Os Lusíadas in his honor.

Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524 or 1525 – 10 June 1580) is regarded as the greatest poet of Portugal and the Portuguese language. His command of the English language has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Milton, Vondel, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. He composed a lot of lyrical poetry and drama, but his epic work Os Lusíadas is what everyone remembers (The Lusiads). His poetry collection, The Parnasum of Luís de Camões, was lost during his lifetime. The impact of his masterpiece Os Lusíadas has been so great that Portuguese is frequently referred to as the "language of Camões."

According to Monteiro, Camões is the least known of the great western epic poets outside his homeland, and his masterwork, Os Lusíadas, is the least known of the major poems in the style. However, Camões was acclaimed by some non-Lusophone giants of Western culture during his lifetime and for centuries after. Torquato Tasso devoted a sonnet to him, claiming that Camões was the only opponent he feared. Baltasar Gracián appreciated his sharpness and ingenuity, as did Lope de Vega. Cervantes referred to Camões as the "singer of Western civilization." He had an impact on the work of John Milton and other English poets. Goethe acknowledged his eminence, Sir Richard Burton regarded him as a master, and Friedrich Schlegel referred to him as the ultimate exponent of creation in epic poetry, opining that the "perfection" of Portuguese poetry was evident in his "beautiful poems." Humboldt regarded him as an admirable naturalist painter. Camões, according to August-Wilhelm Schlegel, is worth the entire literary works.

Pedro António Vieira (6 February 1608 – 18 July 1697) was an Afro-Portuguese Jesuit priest, diplomat, orator, preacher, philosopher, writer, and member of the Royal Council to the King of Portugal.

António Vieira is considered one of the literary greats of the Portuguese-speaking world. The Padre António Vieira Chair in Portuguese Studies, at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica-Rio de Janeiro, was created on 7 October 1994, to train teachers and researchers in the social sciences. Promoting academic exchanges between Brazil and Portugal, the Chair's main aim has been to deepen the cultural dialog that already exists between the two countries within the university context. The Chair is involved in the training of teachers in the areas of Portuguese Literature and Culture, Portuguese Language, and Lusophone Literatures.

His works are possibly the most important monuments to Portuguese prose. Two hundred discourses survive to demonstrate his prolificacy, and his variety is demonstrated by the fact that he could approach the same subject differently on a half-dozen occasions. His letters, which are straightforward and conversational in style, have a deep historical and political relevance and serve as primary historical documentation for the period. Sermões (Sermons), História do Futuro (History of the Future), Cartas (Letters), Notícias recônditas do modo de proceder a Inquisição de Portugal com os seus presos (News on how the Portuguese Inquisition proceeds with its prisoners), and Arte de Furtar (The Art of Stealing) are among his most important works.

To commemorate the 300th anniversary of Father Vieira's death, Portugal issued a commemorative coin in 1997. In 2008, Portugal produced a stamp commemorating the 400th anniversary of Vieira's birth (1608). Brazil has already printed two Vieira stamps, in 1941 and 1997. On the initiative of the Holy House of Mercy of Lisbon, Portugal, a statue of Father António Vieira by artist Marco Fidalgo was unveiled in 2017 on the Largo Trindade Coelho near the church of São Roque.

One of the most important historical figures in Portugal is Pedro IV of Portugal (Pedro I of Brazil). Dom Pedro I, also known as "the Liberator," was the founder and first emperor of the Brazilian Empire (12 October 1798 – 24 September 1834). He briefly ruled Portugal as King Dom Pedro IV, earning the nicknames "the Liberator" and "the Soldier King" there. Pedro I, a member of the House of Braganza and the fourth child of King Dom John VI of Portugal and Queen Carlota Joaquina, was born in Lisbon. He and his family escaped to Brazil, Portugal's biggest and richest territory when French forces invaded the nation in 1807.

Pedro I's father was forced to leave Brazil in April 1821 after the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Lisbon broke out, leaving Pedro I to lead Brazil as regent. He had to cope with opposition from revolutionaries as well as Portuguese troops' disobedience, both of which he conquered. Brazil was widely unsatisfied when the Portuguese government threatened to revoke the political independence it had enjoyed since 1808. On September 7, 1822, Pedro I sided with Brazil and proclaimed that country's independence from Portugal. On October 12, he was proclaimed Emperor of Brazil, and by March 1824, he had vanquished all soldiers loyal to Portugal. Pedro I crushed the short-lived Confederation of the Equator, a failed secession effort by provincial rebels in Brazil's northeast, a few months later.

Pedro I temporarily reigned as King of Portugal in March 1826 before abdicating in favor of his eldest daughter, Dona Maria II. The situation deteriorated in 1828 when Brazil lost Cisplatina as a result of the conflict in the south. During the same year, in Lisbon, Prince Dom Miguel, Pedro I's younger brother, stole Maria II's reign. Other challenges developed in the Brazilian parliament, where from 1826 to 1831, political arguments were dominated by a dispute over whether the government would be appointed by the monarch or the assembly. Unable to deal with crises in both Brazil and Portugal at the same time, Pedro I abdicated in favor of his son Dom Pedro II on April 7, 1831, and departed for Europe.

In July 1832, Pedro I led an army invasion of Portugal. Faced with what appeared to be a national civil war at first, he soon became entangled in a larger conflict that engulfed the Iberian Peninsula in a struggle between supporters of liberalism and those desiring a restoration to absolute monarchy. Pedro I died of TB on September 24, 1834, only a few months after he and the liberals had triumphed. He was praised as a major individual who helped promote the liberal ideals that allowed Brazil and Portugal to transition from absolutist regimes to representative forms of governance by both contemporaries and posterity.

Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (14 November 1887 – 25 October 1918) was a painter from Portugal. Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, a member of the first generation of Portuguese modernist painters, stands out for the remarkable quality of his work and the conversation he formed with the historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. "The artist developed, between Paris and Manhufe, the most serious possibility of modern art in Portugal in an international dialogue, intense but little known, with the artists of his time". His painting is articulated with open movements such as Cubism, Futurism, or Expressionism, reaching a level similar in everything to his cutting-edge output of modern world art in many moments - and in a sustained way in recent years.

Death at the age of 30 will signal the abrupt end of a completely mature pictorial work and a promising international career that is still in the process of confirmation. Amadeo would have been forgotten long ago, both inside and outside Portugal: "the silence that for many years covered the interpretive visibility of his work with a thick blanket" and "that was also the silence of Portugal as a country, not allowed the international historical update of the artist"; and "Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso just started his path of historiographic recognition."

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher, and philosopher regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential literary figures and one of the language's best poets. He also wrote in English and translated from French.

Pessoa was a prolific writer, not only under his own name, but he created approximately seventy-five others, three of which stand out: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. He named them heteronyms rather than pseudonyms because he felt this captured their genuine autonomous intellectual life better. These fictitious characters occasionally held unpopular or radical beliefs.

Pessoa regarded himself as a British-style conservative, that is to say, liberal within conservatism and utterly anti-reactionary, and he stuck tightly to his upbringing's Spencerian individualism. His form of nationalism was defined as a mystic, cosmopolitan, liberal, and anti-Catholic. He was an outspoken elitist who opposed communism, socialism, fascism, and Catholicism. He initially supported the First Portuguese Republic, but the resulting instability led him to reluctantly support the military coups of 1917 and 1926 as a method of restoring order and preparing for the transition to a new constitutional normalcy.

He wrote a pamphlet in favor of the military dictatorship in 1928, but following the foundation of the New State in 1933, Pessoa became disillusioned with the regime and spoke harshly of Salazar and fascism in general, remaining antagonistic to its corporatist policy, illiberalism, and censorship. Pessoa was banned by the Salazar administration in early 1935 after writing in favor of Freemasonry. The administration also censored two pieces Pessoa published in which he opposed Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia and fascism as a menace to human rights everywhere.

José de Sousa Saramago (November 16, 1922 – June 18, 2010) was a Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. His compositions, some of which can be interpreted as allegories, frequently give subversive viewpoints on historical events, with an emphasis on the theopoetic human aspect. In 2010, Harold Bloom called Saramago "a permanent part of the Western canon," while James Wood praised "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."

Saramago's works have sold over two million copies in Portugal alone, and his work has been translated into 25 languages. Saramago, a supporter of libertarian communism, slammed institutions including the Catholic Church, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund. He was an atheist who championed love as a tool for bettering the human condition. In 1992, the Portuguese government, led by Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, removed one of his books, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, off the Aristeion Prize shortlist, stating it was religiously insulting. Disheartened by the political censorship of his work, Saramago moved into exile to the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where he died in 2010 alongside his Spanish wife Pilar del Ro. Saramago was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992, as well as a co-founder of the European Writers' Parliament alongside Orhan Pamuk (EWP).

One of the most important historical figures in Portugal is Amália da Piedade Rebordão Rodrigues. She (23 July 1920 – 6 October 1999), usually known as Amália Rodrigues, was a Portuguese fadista (fado singer) and actor. Rodrigues, known as the 'Rainha do Fado' ("Queen of Fado"), was essential in popularizing fado over the world and traveled extensively throughout her career. Amália is still the best-selling Portuguese artist of all time.

Rodrigues died on October 6, 1999, at the age of 79, in her Lisbon home. The Portuguese government, led by Prime Minister António Guterres at the time, quickly declared three days of national mourning. Her house on Rua de São Bento has been turned into a museum. She is buried alongside other Portuguese notables at the National Pantheon. She was accorded a state funeral attended by tens of thousands, and her ashes were eventually transferred to the National Pantheon in 2001, making her the first woman ever to be buried alongside the greatest Portuguese personalities, an uncommon distinction bestowed by Parliament.

The Amália Rodrigues Foundation (Fundaço Amália Rodrigues) was formed by her will. Except for her copyright, which was left to two of her nephews, the charity oversees her legacy and assets. Rodrigues had won over 40 awards and honors by the time she died in 1999, including the Légion d'Honneur from France, Lebanon, Portugal, Spain, Israel, and Japan. Amália Traïda, a short black-and-white film directed by Francesco Vezzoli, was released in 2004. In 2007, she finished 14th in Portugal's Os Grandes Portugueses election (The Greatest Portuguese). In 2008, a film based on her life, Amália, was released, with Sandra Barata portraying her.

Variety once named Rodrigues one of the century's best singers. She is still one of the most internationally recognized Portuguese musicians and vocalists, as well as a national icon in Portugal. She popularized Fado as a musical genre, and her works continue to influence new artists and vocalists today, with many of them performing her repertoire.