If you applied to regularise your status in Portugal through a vocational training course and an AIMA interview email has just landed in your inbox, the short version is this: it is good news, it means your file is finally moving, and your whole job now is to arrive at that interview with a complete, verifiable set of documents. From July 2026 AIMA began summoning a reported 20,000 applicants in this situation, sending on the order of 2,000 convocation emails a day, with the in-person interviews running from October 2026. This guide walks through who is being called, the one certification detail that quietly sinks files, exactly what to bring, what AIMA checks when you sit down, when a decision tends to follow, and whether a court action still makes sense.
What's Happening: AIMA Is Calling Curso Applicants to Interview
AIMA is clearing a large group of residence applications that were submitted on the basis of enrolment in a curso profissionalizante (a vocational or professional training course) by calling applicants to in-person interviews. According to Portuguese reporting, the agency started issuing convocation emails from July 2026 and has been sending roughly 2,000 a day, working through a pool of about 20,000 people whose files had been stuck since they applied. The interviews themselves are scheduled from October 2026 onwards, which means that right now, in the middle of October, thousands of people are either holding an email with an interview date or refreshing their inbox waiting for one.
It is worth being precise about what this is and is not. This is not a new law or a new route opening — the course-based pathway already existed — it is AIMA finally processing a backlog of applications made through it, using a scheduled interview as the mechanism to verify each file and issue a decision. The scheduling channel for these cases ran through AIMA's contact form (contacte-nos) and, per DN Brasil, was opened quietly as a test phase rather than through a formal public announcement. That matters because it explains why reliable, step-by-step information in English has been scarce: the process has been communicated piecemeal, mostly in Portuguese, while the people it affects are often still building their Portuguese.
For a reader who has spent months in limbo, the practical takeaway is that the convocation email is the event you have been waiting for, and it converts an open-ended wait into a fixed, actionable date. Treat it with the seriousness of a formal appointment: read it in full, note the date, time and office (which may not be your nearest), and begin assembling documents the same day. The sections below assume you want to walk in prepared and walk out with your file approved rather than deferred for a missing paper.
Who Gets Called — and the DGERT Certification Catch
The people being called are those who filed a residence application tied to enrolment in a professional training course and whose submission was made through the proper channel. The single most important condition — the one that silently disqualifies files — is that the course must be certified by DGERT, the Directorate-General for Employment and Labour Relations that accredits training entities in Portugal. AIMA has signalled that submissions outside this scope, or forms not validated by a certified training entity, can be disregarded. In plain terms: if the school you enrolled with is not DGERT-certified, or did not validate your file, your application may never generate a convocation at all.
This is the detail to verify before you do anything else, because it determines whether you are in the group that will be called or in a group that will keep waiting for an email that is not coming. Ask your training entity directly whether it holds DGERT certification and whether it validated your specific enrolment for immigration purposes, and get that confirmation in writing. A legitimate, certified school will answer this without hesitation; evasiveness is itself a warning sign. If you discover your course is not certified, that is a problem to address with a lawyer now rather than at an interview counter, because it goes to the legal basis of your entire application. Our overview of the education and training regularisation route explains how this pathway is meant to work and where it has tightened.
Assuming your course and enrolment are certified and valid, the second condition is simply that you applied through AIMA's channel and that your contact email is one you actually monitor. Convocations are going to the email address on file, so a stale or mistyped address, or an inbox you no longer check, is a common and entirely avoidable reason people miss their call. If you moved, changed phone number, or used a representative's email, make sure the live address is current and watched daily, including the spam folder.
What to Bring to the Interview
Bring originals and a photocopy of every core document, because a file that is complete on the day is a file that gets decided on the day. Based on the requirements reported for this channel, the essentials are: your valid passport (the original, not a copy); the convocation email, printed or on your phone; your proof of enrolment (comprovativo de matrícula) in the DGERT-certified course; and proof that you have paid your tuition instalments (comprovativo de pagamento das mensalidades). Those last two are not optional extras — reporting on the scheduling requirements lists the passport scan, enrolment proof and payment proof as mandatory.
Beyond the course-specific papers, bring the standard set AIMA expects for any residence file so that nothing stalls the decision: your NIF (tax number) and NISS (social security number); proof of address in Portugal such as a rental contract or a junta de freguesia certificate; your criminal-record consent form or certificate; and any prior AIMA correspondence, receipts, or process reference numbers tied to your application. If any of your documents are foreign-issued, make sure they carry the required apostille and certified translation, because an un-translated or un-apostilled document is treated as missing.
Organise it so you can hand over what is asked for without rummaging: a single folder, documents in the order listed above, originals and copies paired. Arrive early, because these interviews are being run at volume and a late arrival can mean a lost slot in a system with a long queue behind it. If your Portuguese is limited, it is worth learning a handful of key terms in advance so you can follow instructions at the counter — our list of AIMA appointment Portuguese words covers the ones that come up most.
What AIMA Verifies at the Interview
At the interview AIMA is confirming that your file is genuine, complete and within the rules, not re-litigating whether the course route exists. Expect them to verify your identity against your passport, confirm that your enrolment is with a DGERT-certified entity, and check that your tuition payments are documented — these three points are the spine of a course-based application and the most common places a file fails. They will also typically take or confirm your biometric data and check that the standard residence requirements (tax number, social security, address, criminal record) are satisfied.
Answer plainly and consistently with what your documents say. The interview is an administrative verification, not an interrogation, and the officers are processing a backlog they have been under pressure to clear; a clear, document-backed file makes their job easy and your approval likely. Where a question touches something your paperwork does not obviously cover — a gap in payments, a change of course, a name that appears differently across documents — have the explaining document with you rather than relying on your account of it. A name mismatch across documents, for instance, is a routine cause of delay that is trivial to pre-empt with the right certificate in hand.
If something is missing, the usual outcome is not refusal but a request to supply the item, which can push your file back into a queue. That is exactly the delay you are trying to avoid, which is why the completeness of what you bring matters more than anything you say. Before you leave the counter, ask what the next step is, whether a decision is pending or further documents are required, and get any reference or confirmation number for what was done that day. Screenshot or photograph any receipt or portal change, because that record is your evidence if the process stalls afterwards.
When the Decision Comes
For most applicants the interview is the slow part ending, not a new wait beginning. AIMA has presented these interviews as the step that unblocks files that had been frozen, and coverage of the convocation wave indicates that decisions tend to follow within a few weeks of a complete, well-documented interview rather than the many months people waited to be called in the first place. There is no published statutory processing figure specific to this course channel, so treat any number as an expectation rather than a guarantee, and judge your own case by what the officer told you at the counter.
Once a decision is made, the practical sequence is approval, then issuance of the residence authorisation, then the physical card, and these stages do not all happen at once. It is normal for the approval to land before the card arrives, and that gap has its own well-known frustrations. If you are approved but still waiting on the card, our guide to the card status between approval and pickup explains how to track it and what the intermediate statuses mean, and our piece on checking your AIMA status online covers reading the portal in general.
Keep monitoring after the interview rather than assuming silence means a problem. Check your AIMA portal status and the email address on file regularly, keep every reference number from the interview, and give the process the few weeks it reasonably needs before concluding it has stalled. If a genuinely unreasonable period passes with no decision and no explanation, that silence is itself the trigger for escalation — which is the subject of the next section.
Should You Still File a Lawsuit? AIMA Says Wait
AIMA's own message to people in this wave is that litigation is not necessary to be called: applicants who submitted through the proper channel will be contacted in turn, and spending money on a court action purely to be summoned is, by the agency's account, wasted. For the large majority who are inside the convocation process and whose files are in order, that is a fair read of the situation — the email is coming, and a lawsuit to force what is already happening adds cost without adding speed. Patience, with an actively monitored inbox, is the right default here.
A court action nonetheless remains a legitimate tool in specific circumstances, and it is worth knowing where the line falls. Litigation — typically an intimação para prestação de facto, the urgent order that compels AIMA to act — becomes worth weighing if your legal deadline has clearly passed with no scheduling, if the status gap is causing concrete harm such as a lost job offer, a blocked renewal, or a trip you cannot take, or if you were wrongly left out of the wave despite a valid, DGERT-certified enrolment. In those cases the question is not whether AIMA will eventually get to you, but whether you can afford the harm while you wait. Our guide to filing a lawsuit against AIMA sets out how the action works and when courts grant it.
Cost need not be the barrier people assume. Portugal's legal aid scheme (apoio judiciário) can cover representation and court costs for those who meet a means test, and it is available to foreign nationals whose status is itself stuck at AIMA. The sensible posture for anyone unsure is to keep waiting for the convocation while documenting your dates and any harm, and to get a lawyer's read on your specific timeline before deciding — not to file reflexively, and not to rule it out if the delay crosses into real damage.
What to Do This Week If You're Still Waiting for the Email
If you applied through a course and the email has not arrived, do not sit passively — spend this week confirming you are actually in the group that will be called. The first and most important check is certification: contact your training entity and get written confirmation that the course is DGERT-certified and that your file was validated for immigration purposes. If that confirmation does not come, or the answer is no, treat it as urgent and speak to a lawyer, because it affects whether a convocation will ever be generated for you. A file built on an uncertified course is a problem to solve now, not to discover at a counter.
Next, make sure AIMA can reach you and that your file is ready for the moment it does. Check the exact email address on your application daily, including spam and promotions folders, and confirm it is an address you still control; update your contact details if anything has changed. In parallel, assemble the document set from the sections above — passport, enrolment proof, payment proof, NIF, NISS, address proof, criminal-record papers, translations and apostilles — so that a convocation with a short notice period finds you ready rather than scrambling. The applicants who stumble are almost always the ones hunting for a document the night before.
If weeks pass, your file is demonstrably in order, and you have had no contact, you can use AIMA's contacte-nos form to ask about your scheduling, referencing your process number and your certified enrolment. Keep a copy of everything you send and every reply. That record does double duty: it nudges a stalled file, and if the delay ever becomes unreasonable, it is the evidence that turns a complaint into an enforceable court action. The throughline of this whole wave is that AIMA is finally moving — and it moves fastest for the applicant who is certified, reachable, and document-ready the day the email lands.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the AIMA curso profissionalizante interview in 2026?
It is an in-person interview AIMA is using to process residence applications based on enrolment in a vocational training course. From July 2026 AIMA began sending convocation emails to a reported 20,000 applicants — at roughly 2,000 a day — with interviews running from October 2026. At the interview AIMA verifies your identity, your enrolment with a DGERT-certified training entity, and your tuition payments, then processes the residence authorisation. You attend only if you receive a convocation email; you do not book it yourself.
What documents do I need to bring?
Bring your original valid passport, the convocation email, proof of enrolment (comprovativo de matrícula) in a DGERT-certified course, and proof you have paid the tuition instalments (comprovativo de pagamento das mensalidades) — those three are mandatory. Add your NIF and NISS, proof of address, criminal-record papers, and any process reference numbers, with a photocopy of each original. If a document is foreign-issued, make sure it is apostilled and translated.
How long after the interview does the decision take?
AIMA has framed the interview as the step that unblocks the file, and reporting around the convocation wave suggests decisions follow within a few weeks of a complete, well-documented interview rather than the months applicants waited to be called. There is no guaranteed statutory figure for this channel, so treat any timeline as an expectation. Keep checking your portal status and email afterwards, and save every reference number in case you need to escalate.
My course is not DGERT-certified — am I still eligible?
This is the critical catch. AIMA has indicated that submissions outside the proper scope, or forms not validated by a certified training entity, can be disregarded. If your course is not DGERT-certified, a convocation may never be generated for your file, and the problem goes to the legal basis of your application. Confirm your training entity's certification in writing now, and if it is not certified, speak to an immigration lawyer rather than waiting for an email.
Should I file a lawsuit while I wait for the interview?
AIMA's message is that applicants who applied through the proper channel will be contacted and should not spend money on litigation simply to be called. For most people in the wave, waiting is reasonable. A court action (intimação) becomes worth considering if your legal deadline has clearly passed, the status gap is causing concrete harm, or you were wrongly excluded despite a valid certified enrolment. Get a lawyer's read on your specific dates before filing.