Portugal does not offer citizenship by investment. No investment, donation or property purchase gives you a Portuguese passport directly, and no EU country has offered that since Malta’s programme closed in 2025. What Portugal offers is residency by investment — the Golden Visa — with citizenship possible after ten years of legal residence (seven for EU/CPLP nationals) under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026.
What Portugal offers is residency by investment. The Golden Visa (officially the ARI, residence permit for investment activity) gives you a Portuguese residence permit in exchange for a qualifying investment. Citizenship can follow, but only after a period of legal residence, and since 19 May 2026 that period is ten years for most nationalities.
If you searched for “Portugal citizenship by investment”, this page sets out what the phrase really points to, what changed in 2026, and where the clock starts.
The short version
- Investment gets you residency, not citizenship. The Golden Visa is a residence permit renewed every two years.
- Permanent residency is available after five years of legal residence. That has not changed.
- Citizenship by naturalisation requires ten years of legal residence for most applicants, seven for EU and CPLP (Portuguese-speaking country) nationals, under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, in force since 19 May 2026.
- The count starts on the date your first residence permit is issued. Time spent waiting for AIMA to process the application no longer counts.
- Citizenship applications formally submitted on or before 18 May 2026 are assessed under the previous five-year rule.
- Malta was the only EU citizenship-by-investment route. It closed after the Court of Justice of the EU ruling of 29 April 2025 and was repealed within three months.
Why the phrase exists
Until 2026, Portugal’s Golden Visa was often marketed as “citizenship by investment” because the residence period before a citizenship application was five years and, from 2024, that period was counted from the date the application was filed. With AIMA taking a year or more to issue permits, some applicants were within reach of a citizenship application not long after receiving their first card. The label stuck.
The 2026 nationality law removed both of those advantages. The period doubled, and the clock now runs from the permit, not the application. The Golden Visa itself did not change: the investment routes, the minimum stay and the five-year permanent residency point are the same as before.
What the Golden Visa gives you
A residence permit for you and eligible family members, renewable every two years for as long as the investment is held. The minimum stay is seven days in the first year and fourteen days in each subsequent two-year period, which is why it suits people who are not ready to relocate. Visa-free travel across the Schengen area. After five years, the option to apply for permanent residency and, at that point, to exit the investment.
The qualifying routes in 2026 are a subscription of €500,000 into a CMVM-regulated investment fund with no real-estate exposure, a €250,000 donation to an approved cultural or heritage project (€200,000 in a low-density area), €500,000 into scientific research (€400,000 low density), €500,000 into a Portuguese company creating five jobs, or the creation of ten jobs. Property purchase has not qualified since October 2023. The routes and costs are set out on the Portugal Golden Visa page.
What citizenship requires
Naturalisation is a separate application to the Ministry of Justice, made after the residence period is complete. The current requirements are ten years of legal residence (seven for EU and CPLP nationals) counted from the first residence permit, Portuguese language at A2 level, a civic knowledge test on Portuguese culture, history and institutions introduced by the 2026 law, and no conviction carrying a prison sentence of three years or more. The implementing regulation for the civic test had not been published at the time of writing, so no test is yet in application.
Any legal residence counts towards the period, whether it comes from a Golden Visa, a D7, a D8 or a work permit. What matters is that it is continuous and that absences stay within the limits of the permit held. Full detail is on the Portuguese citizenship requirements page.
If you filed before the change
The law respects applications already made. A citizenship application formally submitted on or before 18 May 2026 continues under the previous rules. A Golden Visa filed before that date but not yet at the citizenship stage does not: the residence period for that holder is now ten years from the first permit. Many of the questions I have had this year come from people in exactly that position, and the answer depends on which stage their file had reached in May.
Where a second passport does fit
Some clients want a travel document sooner than a ten-year track allows. The Caribbean programmes still grant citizenship directly for a contribution from US$200,000, typically within four to eight months and with no residence requirement. That is citizenship by investment in the true sense. It gives a second nationality and visa-free travel; it does not give the right to live in Europe. The two products are compared on the citizenship by investment page, and some clients hold both.
