I was sitting in a sun-drenched coworking space in Santos one rainy morning in February, trying to sneak a bit of University Challenge between design sprints. The person at the desk next to me was audibly huffing about the Wi-Fi, but I had a different problem: my trackpad had a slightly sticky residue from a custard tart I’d demolished five minutes earlier, and I was frantically clicking ‘Connect’ on my laptop before the iconic theme music ended. There is something uniquely stressful about watching that little loading circle spin while you know Jeremy Paxman’s successor is already firing off questions about 14th-century botany.
Just so we’re on the same page, I use affiliate links on this site. If you end up signing up for a VPN through these links, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I have actually paid for and used every single service I talk about here while bouncing between Airbnbs and coworking spots—usually because one of them stopped working in the middle of a Liverpool match. I don't recommend things I haven't personally wrestled with at 2am. Full transparency is my vibe.
The Shared IP Headache in Lisbon Coworking Spaces
The reality of the Lisbon nomad life in 2026 is that while the coffee is world-class and the hills are great for your glutes, the digital infrastructure can be a bit of a shared pool. Most coworking spaces here—especially the ones near the waterfront—use the same pool of IP addresses across all their members. It sounds efficient, but it means that by the time you sit down to work, that IP address has probably been flagged or blacklisted by half the streaming platforms in the UK. You try to log in to your bank or the Beeb, and you get hit with that “access denied” screen that feels like a personal rejection.
It’s like trying to get into a club where someone who looks exactly like you just got kicked out for causing a scene. The website doesn't know it's *you*; it just sees the "face" of the coworking space's router and says "no thanks." This is why VPNs are non-negotiable here. You need your own private tunnel out of the building. I’ve written before about Why ExpressVPN is the Best VPN for BBC iPlayer When Others Fail, and that’s held true for me during most of my time in Portugal, especially when the local networks get grumpy.
Why My Go-To Stopped Working (and the Backup That Saved Me)
During late March, I hit a wall with my first VPN choice. It just wouldn’t play ball with iPlayer, no matter how many times I cleared my cache. I think the streaming services had a bit of a spring cleaning session and blocked a whole range of servers. I switched over to my NordVPN subscription—the one I keep as a backup for exactly this reason. I specifically jumped onto one of their specialty servers while my partner was in the next room, running a high-bandwidth video call. Usually, when he starts screen-sharing, my stream turns into a Minecraft-level pixelated mess. But this time, it just... worked.
Nord uses something called NordLynx—it’s their own version of a protocol called WireGuard, but don't worry about the tech-speak. Think of it like taking the back roads when the main motorway is jammed. It doesn’t seem to fight the local Wi-Fi as much. I noticed the stream snapped into HD almost instantly, which is a rare win when you're sharing a connection with forty other people all trying to upload 4K video files in a space in Alcântara.
One thing I didn’t expect was how much I’d rely on their Threat Protection. You know those aggressive landing pages in coworking spaces? The ones that make you watch an ad or sign your soul away just to get five minutes of connectivity? Nord seemed to filter out the worst of that noise. It made the coworking landing page actually load instead of just crawling. It was a small win, but when you’re on your fourth espresso and just want to check your Slack, it feels like a massive victory.
Managing Bandwidth When Your Partner is on Teams
The ultimate test for any VPN in my household is my partner’s work schedule. He spends his life on video calls, and he has a sixth sense for when I’m hogging the bandwidth to watch a documentary about Tudor architecture. If the VPN is too heavy, his video freezes, he gets "the look" on his face, and I have to pretend I'm just doing heavy research. I've found that ExpressVPN is surprisingly light on its feet for this. Because it’s so efficient at reconnecting, it doesn't seem to choke the router as much as the cheaper, clunkier options.
I actually looked into this recently because I was curious if I was just imagining it, and it turns out that certain protocols are just better at handling the "jitter" of public Wi-Fi. If you're curious about the technical side of that, I did a whole bit on Is ExpressVPN Good for Microsoft Teams Calls While Traveling Abroad? which explains why some VPNs make your voice sound like a robot underwater and others don't.
In Lisbon, where the Wi-Fi can be lightning fast one second and then drop to a crawl because a tram went past (okay, maybe not the tram, but it feels like it), having a VPN that doesn't constantly drop the connection is vital. There's nothing worse than being halfway through an episode of *Shetland* and having to restart the whole app because the VPN lost its grip on the server for a millisecond.
The Double-Hop Disaster of Mid-April
I did have one absolute “user error” moment in mid-April. I spent about forty minutes trying to troubleshoot why my connection was so incredibly slow, only to realize I’d accidentally left a "double-hop" VPN active on my tablet, phone, and laptop simultaneously. I was essentially routing my traffic through three different countries just to check the weather. It was like wearing three coats and wondering why I couldn't move my arms.
This is where having a service that allows for multiple devices really matters, but you have to be smart about it. I’ve been using Surfshark for our "household" devices (the TV and the backup laptop) because they allow unlimited connections. It’s a lifesaver for nomadic couples because you don't have to play the game of "who gets to be protected today?" However, as I learned, if you forget what you've turned on, you can easily create your own digital traffic jam. If you're traveling with a lot of gear, you might want to check out my guide on Why Surfshark is the Best VPN for Travel with Multiple Devices—just, you know, remember to turn them off when you're done.
One thing to watch out for in Lisbon is the "Bairro Alto signal drop." If you're working from one of those cute cafes in the old town, the thick stone walls are great for keeping things cool, but they are absolute murder on Wi-Fi signals. I’ve found that CyberGhost VPN is actually quite good for these "weak signal" spots because their apps have a very simple "Best Location" feature that doesn't overthink things. Plus, their servers are literally labeled “for BBC iPlayer,” which saves me the trial-and-error of jumping between London and Manchester servers at 2am when I'm tired and just want to see who won the quiz.
Final Verdict: The Best Setup for Lisbon Life
Lisbon is one of the few European nomad hubs that shares a time zone with the UK—a literal 0-hour offset. This makes live streaming sync perfectly with local evening routines. You aren’t staying up until 3am to watch a show; you’re just sitting down with a glass of green wine at the same time everyone back in London is putting the kettle on. But you still need that UK TV License and a way to prove you’re “there.”
After about four months of living near the Praça do Comércio, I realized that for the Lisbon lifestyle, a VPN isn’t just a security tool. It’s a necessary bridge to the digital life I left back in London. It’s the difference between feeling like a transient visitor and feeling like you’ve just moved your office to a place with better weather.
If you want the most reliable experience for streaming and work calls without the headache, I’d honestly tell you to grab ExpressVPN. It's the one I keep coming back to when everything else fails. But if you’re on a budget and want those extra security features for dodgy coworking Wi-Fi, NordVPN is a very close second. Just remember to wipe the custard tart off your fingers before you start typing your password—those crumbs are a nightmare for MacBook keyboards.