26 Academy – Academia de Barbeiros, Vila Nova de Gaia

26 Academy is a barbering-only academy headquartered on Avenida da República in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto, not Lisbon, as older directory data suggested. It teaches through a network of six centres, several of them hosted inside working barbershops, which gives students a real shop environment rather than a classroom mock-up.

The sites are Vila Nova de Gaia and Lousada, plus JR Hair Club in Ovar, Nobre Barbearia in Vila do Conde, Barbearia Viegas in Mangualde and 20Age Cuts in Évora. Beginner cohorts run in the evenings, typically 20:00 to midnight on three or four weekdays, at Lisboa, Vila Nova de Gaia and Caxinas in Vila do Conde, a schedule built for people already working. The academy lists seven certified instructors and publishes internal regulations and a student portal. Two gaps to note honestly: no course hours, module list, prices or start dates are published anywhere, and while it states DGERT certification it gives no number. Contact the academy directly before committing.

On Portuguese credentials: the meaningful mark is DGERT certification of the training body, with the certificate then registered on the SIGO platform and, at best, built from Catálogo Nacional de Qualificações module codes. All four Portuguese providers here claim DGERT, but none publishes a certification number, so every one of those claims is self-asserted, ask for the number.