Portugal golden visa requirements in 2026, and what is left of the programme

The Portuguese golden visa is the most written-about residence-by-investment route in Europe and one of the most inaccurately described. Three years after the property option was repealed, pages selling it still print property thresholds. Sixteen months after the naturalisation period doubled, the largest investment-migration site on the internet still describes the route as ending in citizenship on the old timetable.

This page sets out what article 3(1) of Lei 23/2007 actually offers today, what article 90-A does and does not waive, what the permit costs beyond the investment, and where the route now ends. Every figure carries the instrument that sets it and the date that instrument was read.

Portugal golden visa requirements in 2026: the five routes that remain

The programme is not a scheme with its own statute. It is a residence permit for investment activity under article 90-A of Lei 23/2007, and the qualifying activities are the list in article 3(1)(d) of the same law. That list once had eight entries. It now has five.

Article 53 of Lei 56/2023, the housing law known as *Mais Habitação*, repealed subparagraphs i, iii and iv: both property options and the capital transfer, in one provision.

The part that gets missed is article 3(5) of the same law, which separately prohibits an investment channelled directly or indirectly into real estate. So the workaround that circulates — subscribe to a fund that happens to hold housing — is closed by a different provision from the one that closed the property route, and closing only the first would not have closed the second.

Two of the surviving routes are rarely listed anywhere. Subparagraph ii asks for ten jobs created, eight in low-density areas, with no capital threshold at all: there is no sum of money attached to it. Subparagraph vi asks €250,000 into cultural heritage, €220,000 in low-density areas — half the price of the fund route, and it appears on almost no comparison page.

Is the Portugal golden visa suspended? No, and the confusion has a source

The route is open. Applications are accepted, permits are issued, and the queue is long enough that people reasonably conclude otherwise.

What happened is that three of eight qualifying activities disappeared on one day in 2023, and those three were the ones every advertisement described. A reader who knew the programme as "buy a property in Portugal and get residency" met a route that no longer existed and read that as the programme being suspended. It was not suspended. It was reduced.

The €350,000 and €280,000 tiers: what happened to them

Searches for these figures are rising, and the honest answer is short. No property tier of any amount survives. The reduced thresholds that circulate belonged to the property subparagraphs, and article 53 of Lei 56/2023 repealed those subparagraphs entirely rather than adjusting the amounts inside them. There is no lower tier to find, in any region, for any category of building.

We have not read the historical amounts in a primary source and do not restate them as figures of ours. What we have read is the repeal, and the repeal is what settles the question.

Portugal golden visa investment fund: €500,000, and three conditions on the fund itself

Subparagraph vii is the route most applicants now take, and the money is the least of its conditions.

• €500,000 subscribed to units of a fund or venture capital fund.
• The fund may not be a real-estate fund, which follows from article 3(5) as much as from the subparagraph.
• The term must be at least five years.
• At least 60% of the fund's assets must sit in companies with their registered seat in Portugal.

The last condition is the one that disqualifies products in practice. A pan-European fund with a Portuguese sleeve does not meet it, and the 60% test is on the fund, not on the investor's share of it.

Does the Portugal golden visa have an income requirement? Yes, and here is the article

This is the claim most likely to contradict what you have read elsewhere, so it is set out with its provenance.

Article 90-A(1)(a) requires that applicants *"Preencham os requisitos gerais estabelecidos no artigo 77.º, com exceção da alínea a) do n.º 1"*: meet the general requirements of article 77, with the exception of subparagraph (a) of paragraph 1.

Article 77(1) lists those requirements. Subparagraph (a) is possession of a valid residence visa. Subparagraph (d) is *"Posse de meios de subsistência"* — possession of means of subsistence, as defined by the order referred to in article 52(1)(d). That order is Portaria 1563/2007, the same one that sets the D7 scale.

The exception is singular and it is named. It removes the visa. It does not remove the income test.

The amount is the national minimum wage: €920 a month since 1 January 2026, under article 3 of Decreto-Lei 139/2025, with 50% for a second adult and 30% per child under article 2(2) of Portaria 1563/2007.

The practical consequence is small in money and large in paperwork. An investor who has moved half a million euros will clear €920. But it is a document to produce, and a page that tells you the investment route has no income requirement has told you something that is not in the law.

How widely is it missed? On 6 September 2026 we read the two largest guides ranking for this term. Neither contains the words *means of subsistence*. One, at 57,000 characters, mentions proof of income only in a paragraph about opening a bank account. This is not a subtlety buried in a schedule; it is the second requirement in the article that creates the permit.

Portugal golden visa processing time: 60 days in the statute, one to three years in the queue

Article 82 of Lei 23/2007 gives 60 days to decide a grant and 30 days to decide a renewal, with tacit approval on a renewal where the delay is not the applicant's fault.

The queue does not. Submission to biometrics runs 6 to 24 months; biometrics to card runs a further 6 to 18. As of 4 August 2026, AIMA reported roughly 30,000 pending files. Any page promising six to nine months is quoting the law and calling it the timetable.

The gap matters beyond patience, because the clock that leads to citizenship starts at the issue of the permit, not at the application. Two years of queue are two years that do not count.

Portugal golden visa cost: what sits on top of the €500,000

The investment is not the expense people are unprepared for. These are the AIMA fees in force from 1 March 2026:

One applicant, from filing to the first renewal, is roughly €13,470 in fees alone. A family of three is roughly €40,400. Add a lawyer and the fund's own subscription and management commissions and the real range is €30,000–50,000 for one applicant and €65,000–90,000 for a family — figures we give as a range because the legal and commission components are market prices, not published ones, and we do not present a market price as a statutory one.

Portugal golden visa to citizenship: ten years since 19 May 2026, not five

Lei Orgânica 1/2026 of 18 May, in force 19 May 2026, rewrote article 6(1)(b) of Lei 37/81. The naturalisation period is now:

• seven years for nationals of EU member states and of Portuguese-speaking countries;
• ten years for everybody else.

Against five years for everybody before. The law also added an examination in culture, history and national symbols, and a solemn declaration of adherence to the democratic rule of law.

The transitional rule is article 7(2): proceedings already pending on 19 May 2026 are decided under the previous text. It is the pending application that is protected, not the pending residence.

Article 5 of the same law does something the market has not reported at all: it repeals article 15(4) of Lei 37/81, the paragraph inserted by Lei Orgânica 1/2024 that made the time waiting for a residence permit count towards naturalisation once the permit was granted. On a route where the card can take one to three years to arrive, that paragraph was worth a third of the clock. What is left is article 15(1) — lawful presence under any title, visa or authorisation — which starts when a title exists, not when one is requested. So the honest sentence is the pair: a file pending on 19 May 2026 still counts from the request, and anything after it does not. That is the difference between a ten-year plan and a thirteen-year one, and which of the two you are on depends on a date in the past.

This is the single fact most often missing from pages selling the route. On 6 September 2026 the largest investment-migration site's Portugal golden visa page did not mention the change at all; the second still described renewable two-year permits without naming where the road ends.

Family reunification on a golden visa: the two-year wait does not apply

Lei 61/2025 of 22 October made family reunification conditional on already holding a residence permit valid for at least two years, and rewrote who counts as family.

Holders under articles 90, 90-A and 121-A keep their exemption from that wait, and article 90-A is the investment permit. So the two-year rule that now governs most Portuguese routes does not govern this one — one of the few places where the investment permit is treated more favourably than an ordinary permit, and it survived a law that tightened almost everything else.

Dependent minors and incapacitated persons keep the exemption in every case.

Figures in circulation with no legal source

• "€350,000 rehabilitation tier." No property tier survives. See above.
• "Six to nine months." That is article 82's 60-day grant deadline, rounded upward and presented as a queue time.
• "No income requirement." Article 90-A(1)(a) names one exception and it is the visa.
• "Five years to citizenship." Correct until 18 May 2026 and wrong since.
• "€250,000 arts route is closed." Subparagraph vi is in force at €250,000, €220,000 in low-density areas.

Frequently asked questions

Where this sits in the rest of the site

What Portugal asks of an applicant who is not investing — the D7 at €920 a month, the D8, AIMA appointments and the queue — is in the Portugal guide. Whether property still buys residency anywhere in this set is in the property piece. Where the naturalisation change sits against Greece and Malta is in the passport piece. Who may file an application and what stops one is in the application guide. Every act named here, with the date each was read, is on the sources page — the repeal at Lei 56/2023, the fund route at AIMA's own text of subparagraph vii, the fee table at AIMA's schedule, and the citizenship law at Lei Orgânica 1/2026.

If you are deciding whether this route still makes sense

We do not sell property, we do not sell fund units and we do not give legal advice. What we do is put a person who knows what they are asking in front of a licensed firm in the right jurisdiction.

The Portuguese route has become a narrower instrument than the one most pages describe: half a million euros into a non-real-estate fund with a 60% Portuguese-seat test, a means-of-subsistence document that was never waived, a queue measured in years before the citizenship clock even starts, and ten years at the end of it rather than five. For some people that is still the right answer — the family-reunification exemption alone decides it for some. For others the €250,000 cultural-heritage route, or Greece, or a route that is not an investment at all, answers the same question at a different price. Send the question through the enquiry form and say what you actually want at the end of it. We take no part in the fee.

Sources: where each figure comes from

• Article 53 of Lei 56/2023 repealing subparagraphs i, iii and iv of article 3(1) of Lei 23/2007, and article 3(5) on investment channelled indirectly into real estate: the text of Lei 56/2023 as reproduced by the International Labour Organization's NATLEX database, read 23 August 2026.
• The surviving subparagraphs and their conditions — ten jobs with no capital threshold, €500,000 research, €250,000 cultural heritage, the €500,000 fund with its five-year term and 60% Portuguese-seat test, and the €500,000 company route: AIMA's own published documents for each subparagraph of the ARI, read 23 August 2026.
• Article 90-A(1)(a) and its single exception: the consolidated text of Lei 23/2007, nineteenth version, updated to Lei 61/2025 of 22 October, in the legal database of the Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, read 28 August 2026. Article 77(1) and its subparagraph (d): the original Diário da República of 4 July 2007. The version is named because the claim rests on the numbering, and Lei 23/2007 was amended three times in 2025 alone.
• The €920 minimum wage and the 100/50/30 scale: article 3 of Decreto-Lei 139/2025 of 29 December, in force 1 January 2026, and article 2(2) of Portaria 1563/2007.
• Article 82's 60-day and 30-day deadlines and tacit approval on renewal: Lei 23/2007, read 28 August 2026. The roughly 30,000 pending files as of 4 August 2026 and the 6–24 and 6–18 month observed ranges: AIMA's own reporting and our timelines verification file, read 28 August 2026.
• The AIMA fee schedule in force from 1 March 2026 — €842.80, €8,418.90, €4,210.30, per family member and the 25% online reduction: AIMA's published table of fees and charges, read 23 August 2026. The €30,000–50,000 and €65,000–90,000 ranges include legal fees and fund commissions, which are market prices and are given as ranges for that reason.
• The ten-year and seven-year naturalisation periods, the examination, the declaration and the transitional rule of article 7(2): Lei Orgânica 1/2026 of 18 May, Diário da República, in force 19 May 2026, read 1 September 2026.
• The family-reunification two-year condition and the preserved exemption for holders under articles 90, 90-A and 121-A: Lei 61/2025 of 22 October, amending articles 75, 98, 99 and 101 of Lei 23/2007.
• That two of the largest guides ranking for this term omit the means-of-subsistence requirement, and that one of them omits the ten-year naturalisation change entirely: their own live pages, read 6 September 2026. Reported as what those pages say on that date, not as a permanent property of them.
• Not established and therefore not printed: the historical property thresholds of the repealed subparagraphs, including the €350,000 figure that circulates. The repeal is sourced; the superseded amounts are not.