Answer first. If you hold an old paper Cartao de Residencia and the AIMA renewal portal will not accept your card number, drop the leading zero. AIMA confirmed in a notice published on 13 August 2026 that, when entering the card number on the Portal de Renovacoes, you must ignore the first zero on the left: a card printed as 011641 is entered as 11641. The rule applies exclusively to residence cards issued on paper. If the submission still fails after you drop the zero, email geral@aima.gov.pt with a copy of the paper card and the subject line AIMA specifies. This is a narrow data-entry quirk, not a rejection of your renewal, and it is fixed in seconds once you know it.
The Fix: Drop the Leading Zero When Typing the Card Number
The instruction from AIMA is precise and worth quoting exactly. In its 13 August 2026 notice the agency wrote that, when introducing the card number on the portal, "deve ignorar o primeiro zero (0) a esquerda" — you must ignore the first zero on the left. The worked example AIMA gives is unambiguous: "Se o cartao apresenta o numero 011641, o numero correto a inserir no Portal e 11641." A paper card that reads 011641 must be typed as 11641, with the leading zero stripped. If your card number has more than one leading zero, the instruction addresses only the first zero on the left; strip that one and try the submission before removing any others.
This matters because the portal validates the card number against AIMA's back-end record before it will let the renewal proceed. The paper cards were issued under the old SEF numbering, which printed the number with a padding zero that the new AIMA system does not store. When you type the number exactly as it appears on the card, the portal searches for a record that does not exist in that format and returns an error, or simply refuses to advance. Removing the leading zero aligns what you type with what AIMA holds, and the record is found. There is nothing wrong with your card, your status, or your eligibility — the mismatch is purely in how the number is formatted between the two systems.
Who This Affects: EU Nationals and Their Non-EU Family With Paper Cards
The people who hit this wall are a specific group: European Union nationals, and the third-country-national family members of EU nationals, who still hold Cartoes de Residencia issued on paper rather than the modern plastic card. AIMA named this group directly — "os nacionais da Uniao Europeia (UE) e os familiares de nacionais da UE com nacionalidade de pais terceiro que ainda possuam Cartoes de Residencia (CR) emitidos em papel." If you registered your EU residence years ago and were handed a paper certificate or card that you have never since replaced, you are in scope. The paper documents are perfectly valid; they simply predate the plastic-card and portal era, so their numbering does not line up with the renewals system.
This is a different document from the general third-country residence permit. EU nationals exercising free-movement rights, and their non-EU spouses, children, and dependent relatives, hold documents governed by Lei n.º 37/2006 (the free-movement law), not the general Foreigners Law regime. The distinction matters when you renew, because the EU-family track has its own portal flow and its own document set. For the underlying question of which identity document an EU national presents, see our note on the Lei 37/2006 ID-card-or-passport clarification. If your renewal is for the EU permanent-residence certificate specifically, the flow described in our Articles 16-17 permanent residence renewal guide applies alongside this leading-zero fix.
Why the Portal Rejects the Paper Card Number
The rejection is a legacy-numbering artefact of the SEF-to-AIMA migration, not a bug unique to your file. When SEF issued paper residence cards, the card number was printed in a zero-padded format — a fixed field width filled with a leading zero where the number itself was shorter. AIMA's renewal database stores the significant digits without that padding. The portal's lookup, therefore, expects the unpadded number, while the card in your hand shows the padded one. Typing what you see fails; typing what the database holds succeeds. AIMA chose to publish a data-entry instruction rather than reprogram the portal to strip the zero automatically, which is why the burden falls on the applicant to know the rule.
This places the paper-card issue in the same family as the other renewal-portal mismatches AIMA has patched by instruction rather than by fixing the software. Where solo adult renewers have been wrongly asked for guarantor documents, or EU-family renewers have been blocked by broken forms, the underlying pattern is the same: a legacy record that does not map cleanly onto the new platform, resolved through a workaround the applicant must apply. The paper-card leading-zero rule is the mildest version of that pattern — a single keystroke — but it belongs to the same cluster. If you renew several family members on paper cards, apply the same rule to each card number; the fix is per-card, and each paper card carries its own padded number.
When the Fix Fails: The geral@aima.gov.pt Escalation
AIMA anticipated that dropping the zero would not resolve every case, and published an escalation route in the same notice. If, even after following the leading-zero instruction, you still cannot complete the renewal on the portal, send an email to geral@aima.gov.pt. AIMA specifies the exact subject line to use: "Portal de Renovacoes, Agendamento CR papel, impossibilidade submeter pedido." Using that subject line verbatim routes your message to the team handling paper-card renewals and avoids it being lost in the general queue. In the body, AIMA asks for two things: your personal identification details (os seus dados pessoais) and a copy of the paper Cartao de Residencia (uma copia do CR em papel).
Attach a clear scan or photograph of both sides of the paper card, and state plainly that you attempted the portal renewal, applied the leading-zero instruction, and were still unable to submit. AIMA closed the notice by confirming it "permanece disponivel para apoiar quem necessite de renovar Cartoes de Residencia emitidos em papel" — it remains available to support paper-card holders — and that it is providing clear information and adequate contact channels to follow the process. Beyond getting your renewal moving, the dated email is valuable evidence: it establishes that you initiated renewal before your card expired, which protects you during the grace period discussed below. Keep the sent email and any AIMA reference number; do not rely on memory of the date.
Which Portal — Renovacoes vs services.aima.gov.pt
A large share of "the portal won't let me renew" problems come down to being on the wrong portal entirely, and paper-card holders are as exposed to this as anyone. Residence-document renewals go through the Portal de Renovacoes at portal-renovacoes.aima.gov.pt, the dedicated renewals platform AIMA rolled out in 2026. That is where the leading-zero card-number field lives. A separate system, services.aima.gov.pt, handles other services, and entering your card number there will not produce a valid renewal no matter how you format the number. Before you conclude that the leading-zero fix has failed, confirm you are actually on the renovacoes portal.
The two-portal split is a recurring source of confusion, and we have written a full comparison in AIMA’s two portals: renovacoes vs services. For the general step-by-step of the renewals platform — account creation, the payment step, the document-upload window — our AIMA renewal portal walkthrough covers the flow that surrounds this card-number step. Read the card number correctly, on the correct portal, and the paper-card renewal proceeds like any other. If you are on the right portal, have dropped the leading zero, and still cannot submit, that is precisely the situation the geral@aima.gov.pt escalation exists for — do not keep retrying the same failing submission indefinitely.
Timing Around the Six-Month Grace Window
Do not let a formatting quirk push you into an expired-card gap. For EU nationals and their family members, the right of residence flows from the Treaty and Lei n.º 37/2006; the card evidences that right but does not constitute it, so your legal residence does not evaporate the moment the paper card expires. That said, an expired card creates practical friction — at borders, with employers, with banks — and AIMA generally treats the period after expiry as a window in which you must show that renewal is under way. Carrying the expired paper card together with proof that you initiated renewal (the portal confirmation, or the dated geral@aima.gov.pt email) is what keeps you clearly on the right side of that line.
The practical rule is to start the renewal well before the card lapses, so that if the leading-zero fix does not work and you have to fall back to the email escalation, AIMA has time to respond before expiry. Budget two to three weeks of cushion. If your card has already expired and you are only now discovering the leading-zero issue, do not delay further: apply the fix, and if it fails, send the escalation email today so the dated record predates any enforcement question. For a fuller treatment of what protection an expired document gives you and how the grace period operates in practice, cross-reference the broader guidance on staying legal while a renewal is pending. The single most important thing is that your evidence of timely action is dated and preserved.
Frequently Asked Questions
My paper card number has two leading zeros. Do I remove both?
AIMA's instruction addresses "o primeiro zero (0) a esquerda" — the first zero on the left. Remove that one and attempt the submission. If the portal still does not find the record, try removing the next leading zero as well, but do not strip zeros that fall inside the number. If neither variation works, stop retrying and use the geral@aima.gov.pt escalation with a copy of the card, which lets AIMA resolve the number-matching on their side.
Does this mean my paper card is no longer valid?
No. The paper Cartao de Residencia remains a valid document; AIMA is renewing paper cards, not invalidating them. The leading-zero rule is only about how the number is typed into the renewals portal. Your underlying residence right and the card itself are unaffected. The notice exists precisely because AIMA continues to support paper-card holders through renewal rather than forcing an immediate replacement.
Should I switch to a plastic card instead of renewing the paper one?
The renewal AIMA is offering keeps you within the paper-card track through the portal, and for most holders that is the simplest path to a current document. Whether a renewal produces a plastic card or a further paper document depends on AIMA's current issuance practice for your category. If you specifically want to move to the plastic format, raise that in the process; but you do not need to switch formats to renew, and the leading-zero fix is what unblocks the renewal you already qualify for.
I dropped the zero and the portal accepted it — what happens next?
Once the card number is accepted, the renewal proceeds like any other on the Portal de Renovacoes: you complete the applicant details, pay the applicable fee, and upload the required documents within the portal's window. Keep the submission confirmation. From there the file enters AIMA's processing queue, and you track it through the portal. The leading-zero step is only the entry gate; the rest of the renewal follows the standard flow described in our renewal-portal walkthrough.
Can my lawyer submit the paper-card renewal for me?
Yes. A lawyer or solicitador with AIMA professional access can lodge the renewal on your behalf, and AIMA has opened dedicated professional facilities such as the lawyers-and-solicitadores room at the Lisboa II office. For a straightforward paper-card renewal the leading-zero fix usually makes self-service viable, but if you are managing renewals for several family members or the portal remains uncooperative, professional submission is a clean alternative to the email escalation.