What Law 62/2026 Says: A 90-Day Deadline to Decide
Law 62/2026 gives AIMA a general legal deadline of 90 days to decide a residence application. The law was published in the Diário da República on 10 September 2026 and entered into force the following day, 11 September 2026, as part of a broad tightening of the Foreigners Law. Buried inside that reform is a number that matters enormously to anyone whose file has been sitting in análise for months: a hard, statutory period within which the agency is legally obliged to reach a decision. As one summary of the new law puts it, "under Article 82(5), where no special period applies, a residence application must be decided within 90 days".
Ninety days is the default, not an absolute ceiling. The law allows AIMA one exceptional extension of 30 days, which must be duly reasoned, and the agency must inform you if it invokes it. That brings the real maximum to 120 days in the cases where an extension applies. Some categories of application carry their own special periods set elsewhere in the law; the 90-day rule is the general backstop that fills the gap whenever no other period is specified. For the great majority of ordinary residence applications and renewals, 90 days is the figure to hold AIMA to.
Why does a single deadline change anything, given AIMA's well-documented backlog? Because it reframes your situation in legal terms. Before this rule, an applicant waiting 8 or 12 months was simply one of hundreds of thousands caught in an overwhelmed system, with no obvious line in the sand. Now there is a line. Once 90 days (or 120, with a notified extension) have elapsed on a complete application, AIMA is not merely slow — it is in breach of a legal duty to decide. That distinction is the foundation of everything in this guide, because a breach of a statutory duty is something a complaint body and, ultimately, a court can be asked to remedy.
A Deadline to Decide, Not to Approve
The single most important thing to understand about the 90-day rule is what it does not do: it does not approve you automatically. Law 62/2026 creates no automatic-approval mechanism. The deadline obliges AIMA to issue a decision — yes or no — within the period; it does not convert the agency's silence into a granted permit. If you have read older guidance promising that AIMA's inaction turns into a positive outcome, set that expectation aside for applications governed by the new law.
This is a genuine shift from how many applicants understood the old deferimento tácito, or tacit approval, under which prolonged administrative silence could be treated as implied consent. The reform narrows and removes several of those routes. In their place, the law substitutes an explicit obligation to act within a fixed time. The trade is deliberate: instead of a silent, automatic yes that was legally fragile and often disputed at the counter, you now have a concrete, enforceable right to a decision. That right is stronger in one crucial respect — it is something a judge can order AIMA to honour, whereas arguing that silence had already granted you a permit was always an uphill fight.
In practical terms, this means you should not relax and assume that crossing day 90 has quietly legalised or upgraded your status. It has not. What it has done is unlock your escalation options. The correct response to the deadline passing is not to wait longer in the hope that silence helps you; it is to start the process, described below, that forces AIMA to put a decision on paper. A decision — even one you might later need to appeal — is far more useful than indefinite limbo, because it ends the uncertainty and starts the clocks on your next steps.
When the 90-Day Clock Starts
The 90 days run from the date your application is complete and validly submitted, not from the day you first tried to get an appointment or first logged into a portal. This matters because AIMA enforces a strict complete-application rule: a file missing required documents can be treated as not properly submitted, which means the clock may not have started at all. Before you count days against AIMA, make sure your application was actually complete when you filed it — every required document present, fees paid, biometrics collected where the process requires them. An incomplete file gives AIMA a legitimate reason to say the deadline never began.
For renewals filed through the Portal das Renovações, your anchor date is the submission receipt — the comprovativo de entrega that the portal generates when you complete the application. Keep that receipt and note its date; it is the document that proves when your 90 days began. For first-time applications and legacy cases processed through the older channels, the relevant date is usually when biometrics were collected or when AIMA formally accepted the file into processing. If you are unsure which date applies to your case, an immigration lawyer can identify the correct starting point, because getting it wrong undermines any later complaint or court action.
Be realistic about extensions and special periods when you count. If AIMA has sent you a reasoned notice invoking the 30-day extension, your deadline is 120 days, not 90, and a complaint filed at day 95 would be premature. Equally, if your application type has its own special statutory period, that period governs instead of the general 90 days. The safe approach is to treat day 90 on a complete, extension-free application as the earliest point at which AIMA is clearly in default, and to document the full chronology — submission date, any AIMA communications, the current status shown on the portal — so that when you escalate, the timeline speaks for itself.
Step One: The Formal Complaint (Livro de Reclamações and the Provedor)
Once the deadline has clearly passed, the first escalation step is a formal complaint, and the fastest route is the electronic Livro de Reclamações. Go to livroreclamacoes.pt, select Public Services (Serviços Públicos), find AIMA, and submit a complaint that states your process number, the date your complete application was submitted, and the fact that the 90-day legal deadline under Law 62/2026 has elapsed without a decision. Be factual and specific: name the deadline, give the dates, and ask plainly for an immediate decision on your file. A complaint that cites the exact legal obligation is far harder to deflect with a form reply than a general plea to hurry up.
If AIMA does not give you an adequate response within roughly 15 to 30 working days, escalate to the Provedor de Justiça, Portugal's Ombudsman. The Provedor investigates complaints about public bodies that fail to meet their legal obligations, and a missed statutory decision deadline is squarely within its remit. You can submit your complaint to the Provedor online, attaching your application receipt, the portal status, and a copy of the unanswered Livro de Reclamações complaint. The Ombudsman cannot order AIMA to decide, but it can press the agency, request explanations, and issue recommendations — and for a meaningful share of applicants, the combination of a documented complaint and Ombudsman attention is enough to shake a stalled file loose.
Treat this stage as both a genuine attempt to resolve the delay without litigation and as the paper trail that strengthens any later court action. Keep every reference number, every automated acknowledgement, and every reply. If you eventually file in court, being able to show that you first complained properly, cited the deadline, waited a reasonable time, and still got no decision makes your case for urgent judicial intervention far stronger. For a wider menu of pressure tactics at this stage, see our AIMA "awaiting decision" limbo remedies playbook.
Step Two: The Intimação — A Court Order to Force a Decision
If the complaint route does not produce a decision, the decisive tool is a court action called an intimação para a proteção de direitos, liberdades e garantias. This is an urgent administrative court procedure designed precisely for situations where a public body is failing to act and that failure is harming your rights. In an immigration context, you ask the administrative court to order AIMA to issue a decision on your pending application, and because the procedure is built for urgency, it moves far faster than an ordinary lawsuit — relief can come in weeks rather than the months or years AIMA itself takes.
The legal foundation is strong. Portugal's Supreme Administrative Court has confirmed that AIMA's obligation to decide within the legal period is enforceable, and that courts can compel the agency to act — including, in appropriate cases, by setting a short deadline and attaching a financial penalty (sanção pecuniária compulsória) for each additional day of delay. In other words, a judge can tell AIMA not merely that it should decide, but that it must decide by a specific date or pay for continuing to stall. That is the kind of pressure the agency actually responds to.
An intimação is a formal court filing, and while it is not the most complex administrative action, it is not a form you want to improvise. An immigration lawyer will draft the petition, attach your chronology and complaint record, and frame the request so the court understands both the breach of the 90-day deadline and the concrete harm the delay is causing you — inability to travel, work insecurity, family separation, an expired card that institutions keep questioning. If you are weighing whether this is the moment to bring in professional help, our guide on when to hire an immigration lawyer in Portugal walks through the decision; a missed statutory deadline with a documented complaint behind it is one of the clearest cases for doing so.
What the Courts Can Do and Your One-Year Window
When you bring an intimação, the court is not being asked to grant you a residence permit; it is being asked to order AIMA to decide. That is an important and reassuring distinction. The judge does not weigh whether you qualify — that remains AIMA's job — only whether AIMA has breached its duty to act within the legal period. Because the breach is usually easy to prove with dates and the portal status, these actions have a high success rate, and the typical outcome is an order that AIMA issue a decision within a short, court-set timeframe.
The practical effect is to collapse an open-ended wait into a defined one. If the court sets a deadline with a daily penalty, AIMA has a direct financial incentive to process your file rather than let it sit. In many cases the mere filing of the action, or the court's initial order, is enough to produce the long-awaited decision. If the decision is positive, you proceed to the card; if it is negative, you at least have a reasoned refusal you can appeal through the proper channels, instead of silence you cannot challenge. Either way, limbo ends.
There is, however, a deadline on your side of the fence: you generally have one year from the date AIMA's legal decision period expired to bring a court challenge over its failure to decide. Do not drift toward that limit. The strength of the intimação lies in acting while the breach is fresh and documented, and letting the year lapse removes your most powerful lever for forcing a decision. If you are already well past the 90 or 120 days and your complaint has gone nowhere, treat the one-year window as a reason to consult a lawyer now rather than later — and read our overview of what regular applicants should realistically expect from the 2026 backlog to calibrate your timing.
If Your Permit Already Expired While You Wait
Many people reading this are not only waiting on a decision but holding a residence card that expired months ago while AIMA processes a renewal filed on time. The 90-day deadline and the legal status of your expired card are two separate questions, and it helps to keep them apart. The deadline is about forcing AIMA to decide your renewal; your day-to-day legal status while you wait depends on your submission receipt and the rules that apply to renewals in progress. If that is your situation, our dedicated guide on what to do when your residence permit expired before AIMA decided covers the documents to carry and how to prove your status to employers, banks, and police.
Where the two questions meet is in deciding how hard to push. If your card has expired, the delay is not an abstract inconvenience — it is actively complicating your work, your banking, and your ability to travel. That real, ongoing harm is exactly what an administrative court weighs when it decides whether to grant an urgent intimação and how tight a deadline to impose on AIMA. When you escalate, document that harm concretely: the job offer you cannot accept, the loan refused, the trip you could not take, the appointment you keep having to explain. Harm plus a missed statutory deadline is a compelling combination.
The bottom line is that Law 62/2026 has handed stalled applicants a lever they did not have before. The 90-day deadline will not approve you, and it will not clear the backlog on its own — but it gives your waiting a legal shape and a set of concrete, sequenced actions: confirm your application was complete, pin down the start date, count to the deadline, file the formal complaint and escalate to the Provedor, and, if that fails, bring an intimação within the one-year window to get a court to order a decision. If AIMA has let your 90 days pass in silence, you are no longer simply waiting. You have a right to a decision, and a clear path to enforce it.