On 1 April 2026, the Portuguese Parliament voted through the proposed Portugal Nationality Law 2026, a revised Decree that passed by two-thirds and is now with President António José Seguro for promulgation, veto, or referral back to the Constitutional Court. It is not yet law, and nothing in it has entered into force.
The coverage has been heavy, and a lot of it conflates things Portuguese law keeps separate. For clarity, here is what the Decree proposes, what it leaves alone, and what it would mean for the two types of client I tend to speak to if it does become law: those who want Portugal as their main base, and those who are in it specifically for the EU passport.
Residency and citizenship are not the same thing
This is the distinction the media keeps collapsing, and it sits at the heart of why the Portugal Nationality Law 2026 is widely misunderstood.
Residency is your right to live in Portugal, granted through the Portugal Golden Visa, D7, D8, NHR, work or family route. After five continuous years of legal residence, it becomes permanent residency. That means an indefinite status, with full rights to live, work, access healthcare and educate your children here, plus Schengen mobility.
Citizenship is the Portuguese passport. It is a separate outcome. It gives you EU nationality and the right to live and work anywhere in the EU, indefinitely. It is granted through naturalisation.
The proposed law would change the naturalisation timeline. It would not materially change the residency side. That single fact is where most of the confusion in the coverage comes from.
What the Portugal Nationality Law 2026 proposes
Longer citizenship timelines
This is the headline. The residence period required for naturalisation would rise.
For EU and CPLP nationals (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Timor-Leste, Equatorial Guinea), the requirement would become 7 years.
For everyone else, it would become 10 years. That change alone has driven much of the noise around the law, and in my experience it is the point US and other non-EU clients worry about most.
Both would be up from 5. This would affect only the final step, the move from permanent residency to the passport. It would not affect your investment, or your right to remain in Portugal indefinitely.
How residence time would be calculated
Two mechanical tweaks are worth flagging.
First, the time between submitting a residence permit application and actually receiving it would no longer count as legal residence. Given the AIMA backlogs clients have been living with, that would be a real loss of time on paper.
Second, the window for aggregating prior periods of legal residence would be shortened. 12 years for non-EU / non-CPLP, 9 years for EU and CPLP, 6 years for stateless applicants.
A tighter integration test
The effective connection to Portugal test would be broader than it is now. On top of Portuguese language, applicants would need to show knowledge of Portuguese culture, history, national symbols, fundamental rights and duties, the Constitution, and how the political system works.
There would also be a formal declaration to be signed, affirming adherence to the principles of the democratic rule of law. None of this is unusual by EU standards. The UK, Germany and the Netherlands all do something similar. How demanding it would feel in practice would depend on how AIMA administered it.
Children born in Portugal
Ius soli would tighten. A child born here to foreign parents currently qualifies for nationality if one parent has been legally resident for a year. Under the proposal, that requirement would move to five years.
For minors naturalising later, the school-attendance and parental-residence conditions would become cumulative rather than alternative.
Sephardic descent pathway
The special regime for descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews, in place since 2015, would be repealed. Applications already filed would still be processed. New ones would not be possible.
Other proposed changes
De facto unions with Portuguese nationals would need a prior judicial declaration before they count for nationality purposes. The Public Prosecutor’s window to oppose a nationality grant would double, from one year to two. The procedural framework for acquisition by adoption would also be tightened.
What the Decree would leave alone
The investment timeframe would not change. You hold your qualifying investment until permanent residency is granted, which, as now, comes at five years. From that point the investment can be safely exited. Citizenship, when and if it comes, doesn’t require the investment to still be in place.
Eligibility for permanent residency after 5 years of legal residence would be unchanged.
The rights that come with permanent residency, the right to live, work, access healthcare, educate children in Portugal, Schengen mobility, would be unchanged.
Portugal’s minimum-stay requirement for the citizenship pathway would be unchanged. It would remain the only EU country where you can pursue a passport with a physical presence requirement of around seven days a year. Nothing in the Portugal Nationality Law 2026 changes that.
What it would mean, depending on what you are here for
If Portugal is your destination, if the aim is a base here, Schengen mobility, tax planning, a life with your family in Lisbon, the Algarve or somewhere else, then the residency pathway would be essentially unaffected.
The investment, the five-year permanent residency milestone, the full rights in Portugal that come with it, would all continue to work the way they do now. The passport at the end of the line would be further out, albeit the things most people actually move for would not shift.
If the passport is the reason you are doing this, if you want EU-wide mobility and the right to live and work in another EU country, then the proposed changes would be a real delay.
Non-EU clients currently planning to naturalise at year five would be planning for year ten. EU and CPLP clients would move from year five to year seven.
Portugal would still offer the EU passport pathway with a lighter physical presence requirement than anywhere else in the bloc. It would just take longer than it does now.
If you have already applied
Article 7 of the Decree provides that applications pending at the date the new law enters into force would continue under the current Nationality Law. So if your citizenship application is already with AIMA, the existing five-year rule would still apply to it.
It would be residents who haven’t yet filed who would be assessed under the new framework.
What happens next
The Decree still needs the President’s signature to become law. Seguro has three options: promulgate, veto, or refer it back to the Constitutional Court.
The Portuguese Parliament can override a political veto, but only with an absolute majority of all deputies, a higher bar than the two-thirds already secured. A Constitutional Court referral would suspend everything until the Court rules. Once promulgated, the law only takes effect upon formal publication in the Diário da República.
Given Seguro’s Socialist affiliation and his party’s stated concerns about the constitutional fit, I wouldn’t bet on any of the three. Expect clarity within weeks, but leave room for another round of constitutional review, and for the final shape of the law to differ from what is on the table today.
My take
If the Decree were promulgated in its current form, the Portugal Nationality Law 2026 would have genuinely tightened the citizenship side of the pathway without reshaping the residency side.
For clients whose focus is building a life in Portugal, very little would change in practical terms. For clients whose focus is the EU passport, the finish line would be further out. The path would still be open, it would just take longer.
Portugal would remain the only EU country offering a route to citizenship without a meaningful stay requirement, on a credible investment threshold, with full residency rights from year five. The competitive position would be intact, and I don’t expect demand to be materially affected.
The right response to any of this is not panic, and not dismissal. For clarity, be clear about which of the two outcomes, residency or citizenship, you are actually here for, and plan from there. I’ll continue to monitor the Decree and will update clients as soon as the position is clearer.
If you’d like to talk through what this would mean for your situation, please don’t hesitate to ask.