Portugal 2026: Golden Visa, IFICI and the End of NHR

EU citizens: registration, not a golden visa

An EU, EEA or Swiss citizen does not need a golden visa in Portugal and cannot get one. The Portuguese migration agency AIMA states plainly that the investment residence permit (ARI) does not apply to nationals of the EU, the EEA, Switzerland and Andorra. Free movement covers them.

Anyone staying longer than three months applies at the Câmara Municipal of their town for the EU citizen registration certificate, the CRUE. According to the government service portal gov.pt, it costs 15 euros. You need a passport or ID card, a Portuguese address and proof of your reason for staying. Details vary by municipality. Alongside it come the tax number NIF, the social security number NISS and registration with the national health service SNS.

The CRUE is a right of residence, not a tax status. You are tax resident in Portugal if you spend more than 183 days there in any twelve-month period, or if on any day of that period you have a home there that you intend to use as your habitual residence. The home alone can be enough.

Non-EU nationals: when the golden visa makes sense

The golden visa is built for people who want a European residence permit without actually moving. The typical cases:

• a non-EU investor who wants Schengen access, a fallback residence and a long-run path to Portuguese citizenship while living elsewhere,
• a non-EU spouse or parents of an EU citizen in a constellation where the EU citizen does not live in Portugal, so the family member route under free movement does not apply,
• families who want a second residence for children's education or a future move, without committing now.

If you actually want to live in Portugal full time, the golden visa is usually the expensive way in. The D7 visa for passive income and the D8 visa for remote workers exist for that purpose. Practitioner guides put the D7 income guide value at the Portuguese minimum wage, which is 920 euros a month in 2026, with add-ons for family members. Check the current consular requirements before relying on that figure.

The golden visa routes in 2026

Since Law 56/2023 of 6 October 2023, the investment may not go directly or indirectly into real estate. The plain capital transfer route is gone too. AIMA lists five routes:

• Funds: at least 500,000 euros in units of non-real-estate investment funds set up under Portuguese law. At the time of investment the fund must have a remaining maturity of at least five years and invest at least 60 percent in companies headquartered in Portugal.
• Research: at least 500,000 euros for research by public or private scientific institutions.
• Culture: at least 250,000 euros for artistic production or the national cultural heritage through the designated public or non-profit bodies.
• Business: at least 500,000 euros to set up or recapitalise a Portuguese company with five new permanent jobs.
• Jobs: creating at least ten jobs, eight in low-density regions.

In practice almost everyone uses the fund route. The money is invested, not spent, but in an illiquid private-equity or venture product with all the risk that implies. According to AIMA the investment must be held for at least five years, counted from the grant of the permit. Management fees, subscription charges and actual returns are not in the law, they are in the fund documents, which deserve a careful read before you subscribe.

Process, fees and waiting time

The application runs in steps:

• NIF and a Portuguese bank account through which the investment flows. The bank confirms the transfer in writing.
• The full investment before you apply. AIMA requires the minimum amounts to be met when the application is filed.
• Online application on the ARI portal with passport, health insurance, a criminal record certificate from your home country or country of residence (no older than three months, translated and legalised), proof of investment, and certificates showing no tax or social security debt.
• A biometrics appointment in Portugal, then the decision and the card.

Fees under AIMA's current fee table, linked from its ARI page, are charged per person, so for each family member too: 842.80 euros for the review and 8,418.90 euros for the grant, while a renewal costs 4,210.30 euros. Applications filed digitally get a 25 percent reduction, to 632.10 and 6,314.20 euros. A family of four can easily pay more than 25,000 euros in government fees alone, before lawyers, translations and fund costs.

Time is the biggest problem. On 7 October 2026, Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro told parliament that AIMA had processed about 6,000 of roughly 46,000 pending golden visa applications and booked around 30,000 biometrics appointments. The government had promised to clear the backlog in 2026. Anyone filing today should plan in years, not months.

Minimum stay and renewal

The minimum stay is why the golden visa appeals to people who live elsewhere. AIMA requires seven days in the first year and then fourteen days in each following two-year period. Nothing more.

The first permit is valid for two years, renewals run for three years each. At every renewal AIMA checks that the investment is still in place and the minimum stay was met. Selling fund units early can cost you the renewal. Since 16 February 2026 renewals are handled only online through the Portal de Renovações.

Spending fourteen days in Portugal does not make you tax resident there. The golden visa is a residence right, not a tax home, and for US citizens it changes nothing about US taxation, which follows citizenship.

The path to citizenship since May 2026

This is where most has changed. Organic Law 1/2026 was published in the Diário da República on 18 May 2026 and has applied since 19 May 2026. Naturalisation now requires:

• seven years of legal residence for nationals of the EU and the Portuguese-speaking countries (CPLP), up from five,
• ten years for everyone else,
• Portuguese at level A2 or higher and a test on culture, civic rights and the political system,
• a declaration of adherence to democratic principles, sufficient means and a clean criminal record.

More important for golden visa applicants: only time after the first residence permit is issued now counts. Previously the waiting time after filing counted as well. With a backlog of several years, that is a big difference. Applications for nationality filed before 19 May 2026 are still assessed under the old rules. The Constitutional Court had struck down some provisions before the law was enacted, but not the longer residence periods.

So a non-EU investor applying in 2026 is realistically looking at ten years from card issuance plus the wait until then. The old pitch of an EU passport after five years with two weeks of holiday is over. For a broader view of passport options, see the overview of second passports and citizenship by investment.

The end of NHR

The non-habitual resident regime (NHR) was abolished with effect from 1 January 2024. It now applies only to people registered by early 2024 or who met the conditions by the end of 2023, and, subject to conditions, to people who became resident by 31 December 2024. Those inside keep it for the rest of their ten years.

For retirees NHR was the main reason to choose Portugal. Foreign pensions were initially not taxed at all, and for registrations from 2020 at a flat 10 percent. There is no successor for pensions. A retiree moving to Portugal today pays normal progressive income tax on the pension, with a top rate of 48 percent.

Home countries also push back on old cases. Germany's Federal Fiscal Court ruled on 3 September 2025 (X R 1/24) that Germany may tax the pension of a retiree with Portuguese NHR status because it stayed tax free in Portugal under the special regime. The retiree owed more than 77,000 euros. Similar questions can arise under other tax treaties.

IFICI: who qualifies and who does not

The successor is IFICI (Incentivo Fiscal à Investigação Científica e Inovação), set out in article 58-A of the Tax Benefits Statute and Portaria 352/2024/1. It is much narrower than NHR, and it is open to EU and non-EU nationals alike. The conditions:

• New arrival: you became tax resident in Portugal and were not resident there in any of the previous five years, and you never held NHR status.
• A qualifying activity in one of the statutory categories: teaching and research at universities and research bodies, qualified jobs in companies with contractual investment benefits, highly qualified professions from Annex I of the Portaria in industrial and service companies with listed activity codes that export at least 50 percent of their turnover, R&D staff of companies using the R&D tax incentive, roles in companies recognised by AICEP or IAPMEI, and jobs in certified startups.
• Registration by 15 January of the year after you become resident, depending on the category with the science foundation FCT, AICEP, IAPMEI, the innovation agency ANI, Startup Portugal or the tax authority AT.

What IFICI gives you: a flat 20 percent on Portuguese employment and self-employment income from the qualifying activity, for ten years, not renewable. Foreign employment, investment and rental income and capital gains are, according to PwC, generally exempt, though they count for the progression rate.

What IFICI does not cover:

• Pensions. Foreign pensions are explicitly excluded.
• Income from tax havens on Portugal's blacklist.
• Remote work for a foreign employer with no Portuguese presence: the categories require work for a qualifying company or institution. Bringing your laptop is usually not enough.
• Wealthy people without a job. Someone living on dividends gets no IFICI and pays the standard 28 percent on investment income. That is the key difference from Cyprus, where non-dom status favours exactly this group.

The home-country side, briefly

Portugal is a high-tax country with carve-outs for certain newcomers. Your current country still matters:

• Keeping a home. In most countries, including Germany, keeping a home available to you keeps you fully taxable. If you are resident in both countries, the tax treaty decides by permanent home and centre of vital interests. 183 days in Portugal do not settle it alone.
• Exit taxes. Germany taxes unrealised gains on company stakes of 1 percent or more when you leave, payable in seven annual instalments even within the EU. Other countries have their own rules.
• Extended taxation. Germany can keep taxing German-source income for up to ten years if a German citizen moves to a preferential regime and keeps substantial economic interests at home. A regime like IFICI can count as preferential.
• Citizenship-based tax. US citizens remain taxable in the US wherever they live. IFICI can reduce the Portuguese bill, but the US return still has to be filed.

The outcome depends on your individual case, and nobody should move without tax advisers in both countries. For a comparison with other destinations, see the Plan B residency options and the overview of EU golden visas.