What Is Confirmed About the 6 October Strike
AIMA workers have called a 24-hour national strike for Monday, 6 October 2026. The stoppage was announced on 24 September by the Migration Technicians' Union (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Migração, STM) and is backed by a second union, covering roughly six thousand workers across the agency. According to reporting on the call, the stoppage "will cover all workers performing duties at AIMA, regardless of public employment relationship, career, category, organisational unit or place where they work" — in other words, it is designed to hit every service point in the country, not a single region or office.
As of the start of October 2026 the strike remains scheduled and has appeared on published October strike calendars in the Portuguese press. That is not a guarantee it will go ahead exactly as called: national strikes are sometimes suspended at the last moment if the union and the government reach an agreement, and the scope can narrow. Because the entire value of this guide depends on the date being live, treat the confirmation as something to re-check yourself the day before. The single most reliable step is to look at aima.gov.pt and recent coverage from outlets like Portugal Resident on 5 and 6 October before you act on anything below.
It helps to know what a national AIMA strike actually looked like the last time one happened. During the first week of June 2026, a comparable stoppage produced cancelled and postponed appointments, uneven staffing, and conflicting information about which service points were open. Some offices operated partially, others closed; a few maintained minimum services while most work simply stopped for the day. The practical lesson from June, captured in our June 2026 strike survival playbook, is that the disruption is real but survivable if you plan for it rather than being caught out on the day.
What the Strike Means for Your Appointment
If you have an AIMA appointment booked for 6 October, you should treat it as at risk of cancellation or postponement, but you should not assume it is automatically cancelled. AIMA does not reliably send individual cancellation notices before a strike, and in June 2026 some applicants found their appointments went ahead at partially staffed offices while others arrived to find the doors closed. The uncertainty itself is the problem: you cannot rely on either outcome, so you have to prepare for both. That means having your documents organised and your confirmation in hand as if the appointment is happening, while also having a rebooking plan ready in case it is not.
Appointments in the few days on either side of 6 October can also be affected indirectly. A strike day creates a backlog that offices then have to absorb in the following days, so slots on 7 and 8 October may be busier, rushed, or quietly shuffled. If your appointment is in that window rather than on strike day itself, the odds are better that it proceeds, but build in extra time and do not be surprised by longer queues or a tense, understaffed office working through a one-day pile-up. The ripple from a single strike day is often felt for the rest of that week.
The impact is not limited to in-person appointments. Online processing, the handling of contact-form (contacte-nos) requests, document issuance, and card production all depend on the same staff who are striking, so expect no movement on any of those on 6 October and possible slowness afterwards. If you were waiting for a response to a message, a decision on a pending file, or a card to be printed, that work does not advance on a strike day. It is frustrating, but it is also finite — a 24-hour stoppage delays your file by days, not months, provided you keep your own actions on track.
Before You Travel: Check If Your Office Is Open
Do not travel to an AIMA office on or just after 6 October without checking its status first. The cost of a wasted trip to a closed or chaotic office — especially if you are travelling from another city or have taken time off work — is exactly what a two-minute check avoids. The two sources that matter most are the official AIMA website, aima.gov.pt, where service disruptions and minimum-service notices are published, and any notice posted by or about your specific local office, since staffing on a strike day varies office by office. National reporting will tell you the strike is on; only the office-level information tells you whether your particular appointment will be honoured.
Check twice: once the evening before, and again on the morning of the appointment, because the picture can change overnight as the agency confirms which points will keep minimum services. If you have a lawyer acting on your file, this is a moment where they earn their fee — a lawyer who represents you can often find out whether the relevant office is operating and advise whether to attend, defer, or rebook, and can act quickly if AIMA later publishes a list of cancelled appointments. If you do not have a lawyer, our guide on checking your AIMA status online covers the portal and notice channels to monitor.
Keep your expectations realistic about phone lines. AIMA's contact centre is difficult to reach on an ordinary day and will be effectively unreachable during a strike, so do not build your plan around getting a human on the phone on 6 October. Written channels — the official contact form and any email address relevant to your process — are where you should put your requests, even though they will not be read until staff return. Our AIMA contact guide sets out the numbers, email addresses and the contact form, and which of them actually gets a reply for which kind of request.
If Your Appointment Is Cancelled: Rebooking Step by Step
If AIMA cancels your appointment because of the strike, the first thing to understand is that this is not a no-show on your part. A cancellation driven by the agency's own stoppage should not cost you your place in the queue or count against you, so do not panic that you have lost months of waiting. What you must do is document the cancellation: save any message AIMA sends, screenshot the office's closure notice or the AIMA website entry, and note the date and time you were due. That record is your protection if the system later shows a missed appointment rather than an agency cancellation.
Next, request a replacement appointment through the correct official channel for your type of process. For most residence matters that means the online contact form (contacte-nos / contactenos) or, where it applies to your case, the SIGA scheduling platform — not a phone call, which will not get through. In the request, give your process number, state the original appointment date, say plainly that it was cancelled due to the 6 October strike, and ask for the earliest available replacement slot. A clear, specific message with your reference number is far more likely to be actioned than a vague complaint. Our step-by-step guide to rescheduling an AIMA appointment walks through this in detail.
If days pass with no replacement offered, do not simply keep waiting in silence. Follow up through the same written channel, keep every reference number and automated acknowledgement, and treat the growing paper trail as evidence that you have acted in good faith while AIMA has not rebooked you. Where a cancelled appointment turns into weeks of non-response, the situation starts to resemble the broader AIMA delay problem, and the same escalation tools apply. Our companion guide, on recovering a missed appointment after the June strike, covers what worked when the agency was slow to put people back on the calendar.
Protecting Your Legal Status While the Backlog Grows
A one-day strike does not change the law that governs your legal status, and this is the reassurance most people need on strike week. If you have filed a renewal and hold a valid submission receipt — the comprovativo de entrega generated when you complete the application — that receipt continues to document your lawful residence while AIMA processes the file, and a strike day does nothing to cancel that protection. The receipt is the document to carry and to show employers, banks, or police if anyone questions your status; a strike is not a reason for them to treat your receipt as invalid. If you are unsure what proof you are entitled to rely on, see our guide on proving your Portuguese residency while your AIMA file is pending.
The strike matters more if your residence card is expiring or has already expired while you wait. A single lost day is not a crisis on its own, but it adds to a backlog that was already leaving people in limbo for many months, and that cumulative delay is what causes real harm — a job you cannot start, a loan refused, a trip you cannot risk. If your card has expired and AIMA has still not decided, the relevant protections and documents are set out in our guide on what to do when your permit expires before AIMA decides. Keep both your expired card and your renewal receipt together, because the receipt, not the card, is what carries your status at that point.
Crucially, the strike does not pause the legal remedies available to you. Since 11 September 2026, Law 62/2026 gives AIMA a general 90-day deadline to decide a residence application, and a day of industrial action does not extend that statutory period or excuse an agency that has already blown past it. If your file has sat beyond the legal deadline, the strike is a reason to be realistic about further short-term delay, not a reason to give up your right to force a decision. Our guide on the 90-day decision deadline and how to enforce it sets out the complaint, Ombudsman and court steps that remain fully available regardless of any strike.
Why This Strike May Be Harder to Resolve
It is worth understanding why AIMA's own staff are striking, because the reasons suggest this dispute may not be settled quickly. The unions called the stoppage after the Ministry of Internal Administration proposed a specialisation pay supplement for police at the borders — the PSP and GNR — but declined to extend the same supplement to AIMA's migration technicians, the staff who verify documents, detect fraud, analyse migratory risk and actually process your application. The workers argue that they perform specialised, responsible work and want a dedicated technical career path and pay to match. A grievance about being left out of a benefit given to comparable colleagues tends to be stubborn, because it is about parity, not just money.
Compounding the problem, the strike comes at a moment when AIMA has no settled leadership. The agency's president, Pedro Portugal Gaspar, departed for the Competition Authority, and as the dispute escalated there was no named successor in place to negotiate with the unions. An agency without a leader is an agency that struggles to make the deal that would call a strike off, which raises the risk of further stoppages beyond 6 October if the underlying demands are not addressed. For applicants, the honest takeaway is to hope the single day is the end of it but plan as though more disruption is possible this autumn.
None of this changes what you should do as an individual, but it should shape your expectations. The backlog that already defines the AIMA experience in 2026 is not going to be helped by a demoralised, short-staffed workforce in an open labour dispute, and a one-day strike can be a signal of slower service for weeks around it rather than a clean, isolated event. Build that into your timing: file early, keep your proof current, escalate pending files that are already past their legal deadline, and do not leave anything that depends on AIMA to the last possible moment this October.
Your Strike-Week Action Checklist
Here is the short version to act on this week. First, if you have an appointment on or near 6 October, check aima.gov.pt and your local office's notices the evening before and the morning of, and do not travel until you have confirmed the office is operating. Second, have your documents and appointment confirmation ready as if it is going ahead, while keeping a rebooking plan in reserve. Third, if it is cancelled, screenshot the cancellation and request a replacement through the official contact form or SIGA with your process number and the reason, keeping every reference.
Fourth, protect your status: carry your submission receipt or renewal comprovativo, because that document — not a strike notice — governs your lawful residence while you wait, and keep it with any expired card. Fifth, if your file is already past the 90-day legal deadline, treat the strike as a reason to move on the complaint-and-court route, not to wait longer. Finally, watch for news of further strikes this autumn and front-load anything time-sensitive rather than betting on AIMA being fully staffed. A single day's stoppage is a manageable disruption when you plan around it — the applicants who struggle are the ones who travel blind to a closed office and lose a day they did not have to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AIMA on strike on 6 October 2026? Yes. The Migration Technicians' Union (STM), joined by a second union, has called a 24-hour national strike at AIMA for Monday, 6 October 2026, covering all workers regardless of career, category or office. Because strike dates can change if a deal is reached, confirm it is still on via aima.gov.pt and recent reporting before travelling to an appointment.
Will my AIMA appointment on 6 October be cancelled? It may be. In the June 2026 strike many appointments were cancelled or postponed and staffing was unpredictable, with some offices partly open and others closed. AIMA does not always warn you individually, so treat a 6 October appointment as at risk: check the day before and the morning of, and keep your documents ready in case it proceeds.
How do I rebook an appointment cancelled by the strike? Keep proof of the cancellation, then request a new slot through the official contact form (contacte-nos) or SIGA for your process — not a phone call. State your process number, the original date, and that it was cancelled due to the strike, and ask for the earliest replacement. An agency cancellation is not a no-show, so you should not lose your place.
Does the strike affect my legal status if my permit is expiring? A one-day strike does not change the law. A valid renewal submission receipt continues to protect your lawful residence while AIMA processes your file, and a strike day does not cancel that. Carry your receipt and renewal proof; if delay is causing real harm, the legal remedies to force a decision are unaffected by the strike.
Why are AIMA workers striking? Because the government proposed a specialisation pay supplement for border police (PSP and GNR) but not for AIMA's migration technicians, who do document verification, fraud detection and application processing. The strike also follows the departure of AIMA's president with no named successor, leaving the agency without leadership to settle the dispute.