oscarleo.
← Passports for sale: all countries

Portugal.

How Portugal sells residence for investors (golden visa): one programme, open today. Every number and rule below links to the document it comes from.

740
numbers
147
prices and rules
31
events
65
documents and articles
Residence·Open·since 2012

Golden visa

Sells the right to live in the country (a “golden visa”), sometimes leading to citizenship later.

Official name: Portugal Golden Visa (Autorização de Residência para Atividade de Investimento, ARI)

Lowest price for one person: €500,000

Main route today: EUR 500,000 in units of non-real-estate Portuguese investment funds (Law 56/2023, from 7 Oct 2023), the route most applicants now use since real estate and capital transfer were removed. Research and job-creating company routes are also EUR 500,000 (t-d3f6b6811b, t-5ccea19610). The cheapest money route is EUR 250,000 for arts production or cultural heritage (t-0963153d54), up to 20% less in low-density areas; it is a niche donation route, so it is not used as the headline (same choice as Greece, where the EUR 250,000 conversion/listed-building routes are niche). Permit fees (EUR 8,418.90 in 2026) excluded.

Notes from the research

Residence permit for investment under art. 90-A of the Foreigners Act (Law 23/2007), created by Law 29/2012. Temporary permit (now two years, renewable for two-year periods) without a residence visa; minimum stay 7 days in the first year and 14 days in each later two-year period; family reunification. Routes over time: capital transfer (EUR 1m, then EUR 1.5m), job creation (30, then 10 jobs), real estate (EUR 500k), rehabilitation property (EUR 350k), research (EUR 350k, then 500k), culture (EUR 250k), funds (EUR 500k/350k/500k) and company capital with jobs (EUR 350k, then 500k). Residential property limited to the interior and islands from 2022; real estate and capital transfer closed to new applications by Law 56/2023 (Mais Habitação) from 7 Oct 2023. Run by SEF until 28 Oct 2023, then AIMA. Path to citizenship: naturalisation after 6 years of legal residence (2012-2018), 5 years (from 6 Jul 2018; from 1 Apr 2024 counted from the permit application), and from 19 May 2026 10 years (7 for CPLP/EU nationals), with pending applications kept under the old law. 12,718 investor permits and 20,424 family permits were granted under SEF (Oct 2012-Sep 2023), with EUR 7.32bn of reported investment.

Investors approved, not counting family members
01k2k3k20122014201620182020202220242026

Prices and rules

Ways in that apply today (minimum amounts)
Fees today

What is measured

  • Investors approved, not counting family members406
  • Investment by programme investors188
  • Dependants approved35
  • Golden visas issued33
  • Applications received21
  • CBI fees collected by the programme unit17
  • Applicant share10
  • Applications turned down4
  • Staff working on a programme4
  • Programme grants as a share of all grants of the same status3
  • Application appointments2
  • Programme investment inflows as a share of foreign direct investment2
  • Programme real-estate purchases as a share of all property transactions2
  • Processing time2
  • Share of programme investment by asset class or route2
  • Qualifying investments made (count)2
  • Applications pending1
  • Applications processed1
  • Approved files awaiting issue1
  • All money paid by buyers, as a share of the economy1
  • Share of applications turned down1
  • Jobs created by programme investors1
  • Change in investor residence permits issued (percent, as printed)1
Explore

All the numbers we have for Portugal

Pick what you want to see. Each dot is one number from one document; click anything to open its source.

Timeline

What happened, and when

Sources

The 65 documents behind this page

The stories behind the numbers

Who buys passports and golden visas, what they cost, and what happens when governments change the rules. Written from this data, in the newsletter.

Subscribe, it's free