Nuno Côrte-Real was born in Lisbon in November 1971. He studied guitar, music theory, piano and composition with, among others, Piñero Nagy, Helena Pimentel, Carlos Fernandes and Fernando Eldoro. In 1995 he finished the Superior Composition course in the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa studying with Christopher Bochmann, António Pinho Vargas, Eurico Carrapatoso, Carlos Caires and António de Sousa Dias (Electronic Music). In the fall of 1994 he had a student grant of the ERASMUS Exchange Program, studying Composition and piano in the Utrecht Conservatory (Holland) with Tom Lambij and Henck Heckel. In October 2001 he concluded the composition course in the Rotterdam Conservatory, where he studied with Klaas de Vries, Peter Jan Wagemans and Rene Uijlenhoet (Electronic Music).

He has conducted many of his pieces with ensembles and chamber orchestras from Utrecht and Rotterdam conservatories, and in Portugal with the Darcos Ensemble, his own organisation of a contemporary professional ensemble. Since 2002 he continues studying with Jean Marc Bourfin at the Academia Superior de Orquestra, Lisbon, where he regularly conducts the Academic Symphony Orchestra.

Nuno Côrte-Real has been regularly presenting his works in Portugal, in the Netherlands, in England, in Spain, in Iceland and in Hungary, some of them commissioned by different institutions and performers, and his music has been played by a wide range of interpreters, such as The Wallace Collection brass quintet with John Wallace, Remix Ensemble, Orquestra das Beiras, Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa, Meike Hartman and the trombonist Ribarski.

In 2000 Nuno Côrte-Real was awarded in the Competition of Electronic Music "Musica Viva", in Lisbon, with his 1995 piece Noa-Noa, homenagem a Gauguin, and in Italy, in the Egidio Carella Competition in Val Tidone, with the piece Le Vin (1997).

He had a scholarship, between 1999 and 2001, by the Centro Nacional de Cultura.