What Just Happened
On 18 May 2026 Portugal's Diário da República n.º 95/2026, Série I, published Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, the long-awaited revision of the Nationality Law (Lei 37/81). The law entered into force the following day, 19 May 2026 — the day after publication, as required by Artigo 9.º of the Civil Code in the absence of any other entry-into-force clause in the law itself. Immigrant Invest reported on 20 May 2026: "The President of Portugal promulgated the new citizenship law and signed the decree on May 3rd, 2026. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, the new Portuguese Nationality Law, was published in Diário da República n.º 95/2026, Série I on May 18th, 2026, and entered into force on May 19th, 2026."
The substantive change every English-speaking expat client of ours has heard about by now is the extension of the qualifying-residence period from five years to seven years (for nationals of EU member states and CPLP countries) or ten years (for nationals of all other countries — Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, most non-EU and non-CPLP Western Europeans). What has been less covered in English-language press, but is the more important operational point in practice, is the change in when the residence clock starts. Under Lei 37/81 the dominant administrative practice was to count from the date the residence application or manifestation of interest was submitted; under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 the clock starts from the date the first residence permit is issued, not the application date.
The transitional rule in Artigo 7.º.2 of the new law preserves the previous regime for nationality applications already submitted to IRN — Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado — on or before 18 May 2026. Those files continue to be processed under Lei 37/81 with the five-year rule and the old clock-counting practice. Everyone else — meaning every expat residence-holder who had not yet submitted their nationality application to IRN by 18 May, regardless of how many years of residence they have already accrued — is under the new law. There is no grandfathering of residence time, only of files actually filed at IRN.
Who Is Grandfathered, Who Is Not
The single dispositive question is whether the nationality application was filed at IRN on or before 18 May 2026. The relevant evidence is the IRN comprovativo de pedido de nacionalidade — the receipt issued by IRN at the moment of filing, with a date and a process number (número de processo). If you hold that comprovativo with a date no later than 18 May, you are inside the transitional regime and your file is processed under Lei 37/81. If you do not, you are under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 regardless of how long you have been resident, regardless of whether your residence permit was issued before or after 19 May, and regardless of which visa category (D7, D8, Golden Visa, family reunification, Article 15) brought you to Portugal in the first place.
The IRN front-loaded a queue of filings in the final days before 18 May; press reports throughout April and May 2026 described conservatórias del registo civil booked solid through the deadline. Our piece on the citizenship-petition-before-promulgation strategy covered the rush in real time. The deadline has now passed; that route is closed. For applicants who tried to file before 18 May but were blocked by capacity at IRN, the legal position is clear but harsh: the file did not exist on 18 May, therefore the transitional rule does not apply. There is no equity exception in Artigo 7.º.2 for filings that were attempted but not accepted.
One category that deserves separate mention is investor-residence holders. The new law contains no specific transitional provision for Golden Visa applicants who had received their residence permit but not yet filed for nationality by 18 May. Some early commentary suggested that the existing rule allowing Golden Visa clock to count from the residence-application date might survive into the new regime, but the text of Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 does not preserve it. Golden Visa holders who did not file their nationality application by 18 May are under the new 10-year rule (or 7 years if EU/CPLP citizens), and their clock starts on the date the first Golden Visa card was physically issued, not on the date of the original investment or the manifestation of interest. Our companion piece on the Golden Visa constitutional challenge covers the litigation track for those investors.
The Clock: First Residence Permit Issued
Under the new law the qualifying residence period starts on the date the first residence permit was issued. The IRN reads this from the AIMA case file: the date stamped on the first physical card or, where the first credential was a digital-only authorisation, the date of issuance recorded in the AIMA database. For applicants who have held multiple consecutive residence permits — for example a D2 that became a TRC that became a permanent permit — the clock starts on the very first card, not on each renewal.
For most expats this is not the date they think it is. A D7 applicant who started the visa process at a Portuguese consulate in 2022, entered Portugal in early 2023, attended an AIMA biometric appointment in mid-2023 and received the first card by post in late 2023 has a clock that starts on the card-issuance date in late 2023 — not the consulate-application date in 2022 or the entry date in 2023. The roughly twelve-month gap matters: an applicant who thought they were "almost three years in" as of May 2026 may in fact be just two years into the qualifying period. For most files the practical effect is to extend the wait by 6-18 months relative to the applicant's assumed timeline.
For Golden Visa applicants the effect can be more dramatic. A Golden Visa investor who submitted the manifestation of interest in 2020, completed the qualifying investment in early 2021, and received the first physical card only in late 2024 due to AIMA backlog has a citizenship clock that started in late 2024. Even under the previous regime — where some commentary held that the clock should run from the manifestation-of-interest filing — the new law's explicit anchor on first card issuance forecloses that argument going forward. Our analysis of the card-issuance versus application clock covers the legal evolution.
New Evidence Pack for Post-19-May Applications
The Regulamento da Nacionalidade Portuguesa (Decreto-Lei 237-A/2006) has not yet been updated to reflect Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 — the government has 90 days from 19 May to publish the revised version. Until that publication, IRN's operational practice is to apply the old Regulamento's evidentiary requirements alongside the new statutory thresholds. The practical evidence pack therefore covers both layers.
The core documents remain: a current Portuguese criminal-record certificate (Certidão do Registo Criminal, requested via the IRN portal), criminal-record certificates from every country of residence in the past five years (apostilled where issued outside the EU, with certified Portuguese translations), proof of legal residence in Portugal across the qualifying period (residence cards, AIMA contagem de tempo statement, atestados de residência for any periods covered by EU CRUE registrations rather than AIMA cards), proof of integration through the A2 Portuguese language certificate (CIPLE A2 from Camões Institute or equivalent recognised by IRN, with the AIMA-Compliant A2 path explained in our A2 course guide), and civil-registry documents — apostilled birth certificate, marriage certificate where applicable, with certified translations.
New under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 is a heightened evidentiary expectation around integration. The statutory text refers to "ligação efectiva à comunidade nacional" — effective connection to the national community — and requires the applicant to substantiate this beyond the bare A2 certificate. The Regulamento update is expected to specify what evidence IRN will accept: civic-knowledge testing, employment in Portugal, property ownership, community involvement, family ties with Portuguese citizens or long-term residents. Until that text is published, lawyers are assembling integration files defensively: tax records (IRS submissions), evidence of NHR or other tax residency, school enrolment for children, healthcare-system enrolment via SNS, and ideally one or two letters from Portuguese-citizen community contacts (employer, neighbour-in-junta-de-freguesia, family member).
The 90-Day Regulamento Window
Artigo 8.º of Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 instructed the government to update the Regulamento da Nacionalidade Portuguesa (Decreto-Lei 237-A/2006) within 90 days of the law entering into force. Counting from 19 May 2026, that deadline lands on approximately 17 August 2026. The 90-day window matters operationally because the Regulamento is where the new statutory concepts — particularly "effective connection to the national community" — are translated into a documentary checklist that IRN officers actually apply at the counter. Until the Regulamento is published, applications filed under the new law face evidentiary uncertainty: the applicant assembles a defensive file and hopes IRN does not return it as incomplete under whatever the new test turns out to be.
The unanimous advice from Portuguese immigration counsel as of late May 2026 is that borderline applicants — those who would just barely meet the new residence threshold, or whose integration evidence is thin — should wait for the updated Regulamento before filing. The cost of waiting is small (90 days at most, in a process that runs 18-24 months at IRN under the best conditions). The cost of filing early on incomplete evidence is large (file rejection, lost fees, potential re-filing under even stricter rules if the Regulamento sets a high bar).
For applicants who are well over the residence threshold and have a strong integration record, there is no advantage in waiting. The new statutory thresholds are operative from 19 May, and a strong file filed on 20 May benefits from being early in the post-in-force queue at IRN — file numbers issued in May-July are likely to be processed ahead of the August-September wave that will arrive once the Regulamento is published.
Strategic Decisions for the Next 90 Days
Three groups of expats face distinct decisions in the 90 days following 19 May 2026. The first group is residence-holders who are not yet at the new threshold (7 or 10 years). For them the immediate question is not "when do I file" but "what do I do with my residence in the meantime." Renewing the residence permit on schedule remains essential; failure to renew breaks the qualifying-residence chain and resets the clock under most interpretations of the new law. Our analysis of renewing TRC versus applying for citizenship covers the operational mechanics.
The second group is residence-holders who are at or past the new threshold and have a strong integration file. Their decision is whether to file before or after the Regulamento update. For most files in this category, filing in late May or June 2026 is the right move: the statutory thresholds are clear, the documentary requirements under the old Regulamento are knowable, and being early in the queue confers a small but real processing-time advantage. For files that depend on borderline integration evidence, waiting until late August 2026 (after the Regulamento update) is the safer call.
The third group is residence-holders who are at or just past the threshold but whose evidence pack has gaps — incomplete A2 certification, criminal-record certificates from a country of past residence that takes months to issue, or recent travel patterns that may show breaks in qualifying residence. For this group the 90-day window is best used as evidence-assembly time: complete the A2 certificate, request the foreign criminal-record certificates with apostilles, document continuous Portuguese residence with atestados and AIMA contagem-de-tempo statements. By the time the Regulamento is published in August, the file is ready to be filed against whatever the new evidentiary baseline turns out to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the new law definitely in force?
Yes. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 was published in Diário da República n.º 95/2026, Série I, on 18 May 2026 and entered into force on 19 May 2026. There is no further administrative step required to make it operative.
Can my pending IRN file be re-opened under the new law?
No. Artigo 7.º.2 of the new law explicitly preserves the previous Lei 37/81 regime for files already submitted on or before 18 May 2026. IRN cannot retroactively re-class a pending file as a new-law file.
Does the new clock-counting rule apply to pending files too?
No. Pending files keep both the five-year threshold and the old clock-counting practice (which generally counted from the date the residence/visa application was submitted). The new card-issuance clock applies only to applications filed from 19 May 2026 onwards.
What if my Golden Visa card was issued before May 2026 but I have not yet filed for nationality?
You are under the new 10-year (or 7-year EU/CPLP) rule. Your clock starts on the date your first Golden Visa card was issued. The new law contains no transitional provision for residence-holders who had not yet filed for nationality by 18 May.
Should I file now or wait for the Regulamento update?
If you are clearly over the residence threshold and have a strong integration file, file now. If you are borderline on threshold or integration evidence, wait until after mid-August 2026 when the updated Regulamento da Nacionalidade is expected to be published — it will tell you exactly what IRN now requires.