In this paper we consider a mixed variational formulation that have been recently proposed for the coupling of the Navier–Stokes and Darcy–Forchheimer equations, and derive, though in a non-standard sense, a reliable and efficient residual-baseda posteriorierror estimator suitable for an adaptive mesh-refinement method. For the reliability estimate, which holds with respect to the square root of the error estimator, we make use of the inf-sup condition and the strict monotonicity of the operators involved, a suitable Helmholtz decomposition in non-standard Banach spaces in the porous medium, local approximation properties of the Clément interpolant and Raviart–Thomas operator, and a smallness assumption on the data. In turn, inverse inequalities, the localization technique based on triangle-bubble and edge-bubble functions in localLpspaces, are the main tools for developing the efficiency analysis, which is valid for the error estimator itself up to a suitable additional error term. Finally, several numerical results confirming the properties of the estimator and illustrating the performance of the associated adaptive algorithm are reported.