Portugal's New Nationality Law Is Finally Here — What Actually Changed and Who It Affects

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]This law has been in the making for almost a year. It passed through through two presidents, the constitutional court, and now we finally have an actual approved law. It was promulgated on May 3rd. So, it's no longer just speculation.

[00:00:23]If you're living in Portugal, have a residency visa, or are planning to come to Portugal, this affects you. And I'm going to give you the clearest picture I can of what actually means this change means for your situation.

[00:00:42]So, my name is Anna. I'm the owner of Casavie Cat Realty. Casavie Cat Realty is a relocation and investment agency that helps expats move to Portugal in a sustainable way. We are a team of locals and are very concerned about integration and helping the local community. So, I covered this before. This is probably my third video about this because this has just going been going on forever. If you go to the past videos, it's kind of funny. So, also, FYI, I am not a lawyer.

[00:01:15]This is not legal advice. I'm just going over the facts, and I do like to do that as cleanly as possible.

[00:01:22]So, first things, how did we get here?

[00:01:26]The previous rule, it was the 5 years to legal to residency for everyone. I would like to note that from a worldwide and even European perspective, Portugal was one of the most accessible countries and easiest countries to get nationality, and this was becoming a problem. So, because of that, now we have this new law that took a while for several reasons. One of them being that it was separated into two parts because they wanted a a law that revoked nationality if serious crimes were committed.

[00:02:06]Um And that part is still being revised on the constitutional court. But, the part about the way the nationality is approved and how long it takes has been approved now. So, the new rule is that it will take 7 years to get nationality for those coming from Portuguese-speaking countries and former colonies like Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and so on. For everyone else, it is 10 years.

[00:02:42]So, any other countries, it is 10 years.

[00:02:45]And it is very important to note that the time starts counting from your residency permit being issued. And I am a is not exactly known for being very fast and very efficient. To be fair, they have been improving a lot and they have been taking a lot of measures in order to get these residency cards to people faster, but it is a very very recurrent complaint people having delays on actually getting their cards. So, now with the way that things are processed in this new law, it may take you 11 years from the time you get here taking into account the time it gets takes to get your actual residency card.

[00:03:31]I do truly hope that I am a finds working systems that allows them to give the cards in use useful time and that just takes a few months and not a year as it has been seen before.

[00:03:47]So, the other thing that has has changed is children born in Portugal and how they get can get nationality.

[00:03:57]Previously, if one of the parents were residents for a year, even without a formal title, it was possible to obtain nationality for the child. However, now the parent, at least one of the parents has to be a formal legal residence of Portugal for at least 5 years at the time of birth. It's relevant if you are in early residency and this is something you are planning, but it is definitely one of the changes. Another one of the changes is that some of the roots to nationality was were closed. Previously, one of the actually very popular roots was the Sephardic Sephardic Jewish descent route. And this route was completely revoked and no longer accepting new uh new applications.

[00:04:51]The former colonies route is also revoked. It's now closed.

[00:04:58]The naturalization through being a parent of a Portuguese minor is also revoked and no longer option for a nationality. Previously, if you had a child with a Portuguese person that was Portuguese, you would be able to request nationality through that. Now you still have to go through the formal channels and waiting periods.

[00:05:22]Um so if you are in any of these situations, I uh it's the best thing you can do is to get legal advice from specia- specialized immigration lawyers.

[00:05:34]So, in the end, what do all of these changes mean for visa holders? In my case, I work mostly with the what is is the self-sufficient visas. So that is the D7, the D2, uh uh the D8, and the golden visa.

[00:05:52]Uh in this case, the process and eligibility itself are exactly the same.

[00:05:58]So, the process for application and uh uh the time it gets you to get things and the requirements are all exactly the same. The only thing that changes is how long you get uh the nationality.

[00:06:13]So, the nationality was definitely um one of the coveted thing, especially in the golden visa and so on, because it gives you access to the Schengen area.

[00:06:26]So, in that sense, I would like to note that the biggest difference with having nationality or not having nationality is that you do not get free circulation in the European Union. You only get to vote in the municipal elections and not the uh the remaining national or European ones. And uh most visas, golden visa being an exception, only requiring the uh owners of the visa to stay 15 days per year. But, in most visas, you are required to stay in the country 180 days per visa per year. While with nationality, all of these requirements are uh bypassed. You can go in and out as you want in the whole European Union.

[00:07:11]And um you get to vote in all of the elections and free access to the European Union.

[00:07:19]So, honestly, if you are genuinely interested in Portugal to reside in, the nationality is a delay, but will not affect your day-to-day life. In the end, what was happening is that the use of the nationality path was attracting a lot of people that just saw Portugal as uh a stepping stone towards a goal that was European nationality. So they these people um didn't really want to reside in Portugal. They just were working for the 5-year pathway that is by European standards a very low requirement because as I said before, in most of the the worlds and in most of European the requirements were a lot stricter and took a lot longer than Portugal. So Portugal was kind of being used as a back door to the European Union.

[00:08:19]And this change affects the most the people that were coveting the passport, but it doesn't really affect those that generally want to live in Portugal because if you generally want to live in Portugal, then having nationality in 5 or 10 years won't make a difference on your daily life. You still get access to the national health insurance. You are still treated as resident as the same as a citizen in almost every aspect minus those three things are listed. So a 10-year requirement is actually very much the norm in most of the world in and European Union and you are seeing that most countries are walking towards this kind of timeline.

[00:09:10]Even the ones that have shortened timelines, they tend to have much stricter requirements or um are currently planning to elongate them.

[00:09:22]So overall, this is something that was necessary for Portugal in my personal opinion. And if you truly want to be in Portugal and become a resident, it won't affect your day-to-day life. It will affect if you have if you want a Portuguese passport, then it will definitely take longer.

[00:09:44]Another thing that is planned to be changed and it's considered in this law, but not yet specifically regulated in this the language and integration clauses. So, it is not yet applicable until they make a specific requirement of what exactly they want to uh change and uh include on this requirements. As I said before, a lot of countries have very very strict requirements when it comes to this. I'm curious to see what Portugal will decide to do as indeed the previous requirement was extremely basic. Uh people didn't really need to speak Portuguese at all. It was the A2 level, I think. So, I do think it's perfectly valid to increase those requirements and I'm curious to see exactly what they will be. And I don't know the note know what of at least one uh client that is taking the test now exactly before these requirements change. So, this is something that is going to affect you on the path. You might choose to do that too and take the test before the requirements change as they are now quite easy and probably you should take advantage of that because I don't know how they are going to change the the difficulty yet. Another thing that is very important to mention is the pending applications.

[00:11:10]This is something that was highly discussed in parliament and is actually one of the things that the president flagged as being uncomfortable about.

[00:11:19]There are uh since the law has been approved, but there are no safety mechanisms for those already in the waiting period. So, basically, if you are already uh a resident in Portugal and have 1 to 4 years of residency.

[00:11:38]The new timeline will just be altered.

[00:11:41]So, if you were waiting 2 years, you will now be waiting 7 years or 5 years depending on where the country you are coming from. But, if you had already applied for your nationality process, then if it was made before the the the decree being published, it will still go by the previous law and you still should be able to get your nationality. And this definitely led to a very very high peak of applications in I M A. So, I M A is currently completely overwhelmed with nationality applications because of this change, which is very expected. Every time this they do this kind of changes, all of the people that were kind of waiting around, all wake up and like, "Oh, wait, I have to do it now." So, that happened and now there are thousands of applications that I M A has to process. So, let's see how they deal with that.

[00:12:39]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> But, overall, if you are on the waiting period and still not eligible to get nationality, then your waiting period will just increase according to the new law.

[00:12:54]So, overall, this will change the long-time time frame of getting a passport, but not what you get while living in Portugal and the overall life in Portugal on a daily basis. The visas will still and are still working exactly the same.

[00:13:12]Portugal still has the same value for allocation that is it is before.

[00:13:17]Uh that just takes longer to get a passport. The If the citizen timeline was part of your planning, then you will have to take that into consideration and decide if you are waiting to have that longer time frame and waiting. For example, for the Golden Visa, Portugal is still the only one that only requires you to be in the country for 15 days and gets you the Golden Visa actually starting for 350,000 euros. So, it can still be very attractive programs.

[00:13:55]And if you are early on the decision state and doesn't understand how this will affect you, you are always free to get an advisory call with me. If you want more technical advice, you do need to get a call with me that is paid and it can be booked on our website in www.savvcatrealty.com.

[00:14:17]If you are just considering relocating to Portugal and get to live in Portugal, you can book If you want to understand our services better, you can book a free advisory call on our website too, www.savvcatrealty.com.

[00:14:38]So, I hope that this video giving you an overview of the nationality law and what changes and what impacts it gives was helpful to you. I would love to hear your feedback about the current situation and we are here every week with information about Portugal, political and relevant updates, cultural updates. We talk about lifestyle and regions of Portugal a lot too. So, if you find that useful, do give us a follow and I hope to see you again next week.

[00:15:12]Bye.