Portugal's Golden Visa is a €500,000 fund for most buyers, 14 days every two years, and a 10-year citizenship clock. Who can apply, what qualifies, and what AIMA actually asks for.
If you are a non-EU citizen trying to lock an EU residence card without moving your life to Lisbon, Portugal can still do that. The usual price is a €500,000 subscription in a qualifying investment fund, a stay of 14 days in each two-year renewal cycle, and a file that AIMA can actually read.
The pain is that half the pages still selling this program are written for 2022. They talk about a Lisbon apartment, a five-year passport, and a one-week holiday as if those were the rules. They are not.
This is the 2026 list: who is allowed in, which routes still exist, which documents stall a file, and the two clocks people mix up — the residence card and the nationality clock.
Those six lines are the map. The rest of the page is why each one keeps catching people out.
You must be 18 or over, hold a clean criminal record, prove the money is lawfully yours, and make a qualifying investment. You do not need to speak Portuguese to get or renew the residence card. You do not need to become a Portuguese tax resident.
You cannot apply if you are a national of the EU, the EEA, Switzerland or Andorra. That is not a footnote. Whole comparison tables still list "EU citizens" as Golden Visa customers. They are not. EU citizens can live in Portugal under free-movement rules. They cannot buy this permit.
CPLP nationals — Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and the other Community of Portuguese Language Countries — can use the Golden Visa. Their nationality clock is 7 years, not 10. That is a real advantage. It is not a shortcut around the investment or the AIMA file.
That answers who is even allowed through the door. Next is what the money has to do.
Portugal closed the property route in October 2023. A Lisbon flat you already own, or one you plan to buy, does not qualify a new file. The law behind that change is Law 56/2023, the housing package known as Mais Habitação.
| Route | Minimum | What you actually hold | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying investment fund | €500,000 | Fund units. Capital is potentially recoverable, subject to performance, liquidity, market and issuer risk. | Most applicants. This is the working route. |
| Cultural / heritage donation | €250,000 | A gift. It does not come back. | Buyers who want a lower cheque and can treat it as spent. |
| Scientific research | €500,000 | Donation or investment in an approved R&D body. | Rare in practice. Confirm the receiving institution is on the live list. |
| Job creation | 10 permanent jobs (8 in low-density areas) | A real payroll, not a paper company. | Founders already building in Portugal. |
| Company capital + jobs | €500,000 + 5 jobs held 3+ years | Equity in a Portuguese company plus employment conditions. | Operators, not passive investors. |
The fund route has its own four-part test. The vehicle must be set up under Portuguese law, regulated by CMVM, have at least five years of maturity at the moment you subscribe, and put at least 60 percent of its investments into commercial companies headquartered in Portugal. It cannot be a real-estate collective investment vehicle.
Here is the hidden gem. CMVM lists hundreds of funds. Most of them fail the Golden Visa test. A promoter who says "it is CMVM-registered, so it qualifies" is answering a different question. We wrote a whole page on that mismatch: /countries/portugal/cmvm-funds.
Once the route is chosen, the file becomes a document problem, not a brochure problem.
For the main applicant and each person on the file:
That is the paperwork. Here is the sequence it has to travel.
The official processing target you will see quoted — often 90 days — is not a promise you can plan a school year around. Our working range for a clean new 2026 file is 12 to 18 months to the first card. Legacy files filed around the 2023 reform have run two to three years. Some applicants on public forums have described waiting through a lawsuit just to get a biometric date. Treat those threads as secondary colour, not as AIMA policy.
What people on the internet are saying, dated and secondary: on the Nomad Gate Portugal Golden Visa board, applicants who sat biometrics in 2025 under the newer fee-at-appointment process have been posting card dates that run from about four months after biometrics to still waiting past 90 business days (thread started 2025, posts read August 2026). That is one community, not a government table. It matches the broader picture: the bottleneck moved from "will they take the file" to "when does the card actually print."
Filing is one problem. Keeping the card is another.
The statutory stay is 14 days in each two-year renewal cycle. People compress that to "seven days a year." The seven-day line is a shorthand, not a licence to skip a cycle and average it later. Miss the stay and the renewal is the fight, not the original approval.
One file can cover a spouse or registered partner, children under 18, and children 18 to 26 if they are single, dependent and studying. Parents over 65 are usually easier to add than younger parents, who need documented dependency. Each person adds government fees. Children age out — we keep a separate page on those limits.
That keeps the card alive. It does not, by itself, make you a citizen.
Permanent residence is still available at year 5 of lawful Golden Visa residence. That clock was not stretched by the 2026 nationality reform. Once you hold permanent residence, you can usually exit the fund and keep living in the EU under that status, subject to the permanent-residence rules themselves.
Citizenship is a different clock. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, in force 19 May 2026, counts 10 years for most third-country nationals and 7 years for CPLP nationals, from the first residence title. EU citizens share the 7-year nationality rule, but they cannot use this visa to start it. Applications for nationality filed on or before 18 May 2026 keep the old 5-year rules. A pending Golden Visa file that had not yet filed for nationality does not.
We will not tell you that living abroad automatically stops or automatically advances that clock. The legal starting point is residence from the first title. Whether your particular pattern of days will satisfy a nationality officer is a question for Portuguese nationality counsel, not a blog table.
Tax is a third clock entirely.
If the wait is already the thing keeping you up, skip ahead to the stuck-file page. If you are still choosing a country, read the Portugal dossier next, then the fund-register extra.
Most applicants use a €500,000 subscription in a qualifying, CMVM-regulated, non-real-estate fund with at least five years' maturity and at least 60 percent invested in Portuguese-headquartered companies. A €250,000 cultural donation still exists; it is not recoverable. Real estate is closed for new files.
No. EU, EEA, Swiss and Andorran nationals are not eligible for ARI. They already have free-movement residence. The Golden Visa is a third-country route.
Fourteen days in each two-year renewal cycle. That is sometimes described as about seven days a year. It is a statutory minimum stay, not an average you can make up later, and it is not the lowest presence among European investor permits.
Ten years for most Golden Visa applicants, seven for CPLP nationals, counted from the first residence title under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 (in force 19 May 2026). Permanent residence at year 5 is separate and was not stretched by that reform.
Budget 12 to 18 months for a clean new file to the first card. Older backlog files have taken longer. The often-quoted 90-day legal target is not the planning number.
No. A residence permit is not tax residency. Tax residency depends on days, ties and, where a treaty applies, OECD Article 4 tie-breakers. You can hold this visa and remain tax resident elsewhere.
