Portugal Golden Visa (Residence Permit for Investment, ARI)
- Processing time
- 12–24 monthsAIMA publishes no official processing time. Immigration firms documented a 12-month best case, an 18 to 24-month median over 2025-2026, and up to 40 months where files are re-examined; the full path including the physical residence card commonly runs two to three years. The minister pledged in October 2025 to clear the backlog in 2026; lawyers publicly doubted it.
- Physical presence
- Seven days in the first year, then fourteen days in each subsequent two-year period.
- Family
- Spouse or partner, dependent children, and dependent parents.
See the investment routes and what each one really costs →
Limits and drawbacks
- Real estate has been excluded since 7 October 2023. Any site still offering a Portuguese golden visa through property purchase is out of date.
- Naturalisation now takes ten years, or seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking (CPLP) nationals, under the organic law of 18 May 2026 — not the five years widely quoted online.
- A civic test and Portuguese at A2 level are now required for naturalisation; the regulation setting the test format was not yet published as of July 2026.
- AIMA publishes no processing time, and the practical wait commonly runs two to three years including the physical residence card.
What it gets you
- One of the lowest physical-presence requirements in Europe: about seven days a year
- A route to permanent residence and, in time, to EU citizenship
- Family reunification covering spouse, dependent children and dependent parents
- A job-creation route that sets no capital minimum at all: ten permanent posts, and the amount you spend getting there is your own affair
When does the naturalisation clock start under the 2026 law?
- What the official source says
- Article 15 of Organic Law 1/2026 counts the sum of periods of legal residence, but does not state in plain terms whether the clock starts at the issuance of the first residence permit or earlier. The implementing regulation, due around 17 August 2026, was not published when we verified.
- What practitioners report
- Immigration lawyers read the clock as starting from the issuance of the first residence title, meaning AIMA processing delays before the card is issued do not count towards the ten years.
- What is not settled
- Until the implementing regulation is published and applied, the exact start date is not settled in law. For a golden visa held through years of AIMA backlog, this can move the citizenship horizon by two to three years. Confirm your own position with a Portuguese lawyer before relying on any single figure.
Official sources