Francisco Vidal was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1978, to Cape Verdean and Angolan parents. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Higher School of Art and Design in Caldas de Rainha, Portugal, in 2002. He then obtained an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, USA in 2012 before attending the Maumaus Independent Programme at the Maumaus School of Visual Arts in Lisbon in 2015. He has lived in Berlin, New York and Luanda.