Three Immigration Law Reforms in 18 Months: Why This Keeps Happening
Portugal's immigration legal framework has been in almost continuous legislative motion since late 2024. The first major reform — Lei 61/2025, enacted on October 22, 2025 — was a comprehensive overhaul of the Immigration Law (Lei 23/2007), covering family reunification requirements, residence permit categories, regularisation routes, and integration obligations. Less than three months after Lei 61/2025 took effect, the Work XXI labor market reform (Lei 75/2025) introduced further changes affecting how foreign workers are sponsored, how tech visa applicants are processed, and how the D8 digital nomad visa interacts with employment law. And now, as of June 2026, Parliament has approved in general terms a third package of amendments.
The volume of legislative change reflects several converging pressures: the Constitutional Court's partial veto of the July 2025 version of the immigration reform, which required Parliament to revise provisions before they could take effect; the EU's updated common immigration framework, which Portugal is aligning with; and domestic political dynamics in which the government's immigration policy continues to be contested across party lines. As immigration law firm LVP Advogados noted in June 2026, "the final impact of these measures will depend on the completion of the legislative process and, above all, on the exact wording of the law ultimately published." For foreign nationals in Portugal, this legislative churn creates real uncertainty — rules that apply today may change within months.
It is important to note upfront: the third reform described in this article is not yet in force as of July 13, 2026. Parliament approved the text "in general terms" in June 2026. The legislation must still complete its remaining stages — detailed committee review, potential amendment, and final plenary vote — before being sent for presidential promulgation and publication in the Diário da República. Until that publication, the current legal framework (Lei 61/2025 as amended) continues to govern. This article describes what is proposed and what it would mean if enacted in the form approved in general terms.
What the Parliament Approved in June 2026 (and What Still Has to Happen)
The Portuguese Parliament approved the third immigration reform package in general terms — meaning the broad thrust of the proposed changes received sufficient support to advance, but the text has not yet been finalised. General approval is the first major parliamentary stage; it means the reform is politically viable and will proceed. It does not mean the detailed wording has been settled. The next stages are: committee-level examination (where specific provisions may be amended, narrowed, or expanded); a final plenary vote on the full text as amended; and presidential promulgation. Any of these stages can alter specific provisions before the law is published.
The reform was described by government representatives and immigration law commentators as focused on four main areas: reinforcing the visa-before-arrival requirement; adjusting parental residence criteria; introducing work permit portability for employees and independent workers; and setting a 90-day processing target for AIMA decisions with limits on administrative silence. Each of these is described in more detail in the sections below.
For practical planning purposes, the advice from Portuguese immigration lawyers is to understand what is proposed but not to take irreversible decisions (for example, not to delay a visa application because you expect new rules to be more favourable) until the law is formally published. The history of this third reform — already the subject of multiple Parliamentary stages and political debate — suggests the timeline for final enactment is unlikely to be shorter than several months from the June 2026 general approval.
Visa-Before-Arrival: Reinforcement of an Existing Rule
One of the headline proposals in the third reform is a reinforcement of the requirement that immigration status should be obtained through the appropriate visa process before arrival in Portugal, rather than through post-arrival regularisation. In plain terms: the reform continues Portugal's move away from the model where foreign nationals could enter as tourists and convert their status to a residence permit from within Portugal.
This is not entirely new ground. Lei 61/2025 already introduced stricter requirements around visa-based entry, and the rules on tourist-to-residence conversions were significantly tightened in 2025. The third reform reinforces this direction rather than introducing a wholly new prohibition. The practical effect for people currently planning to move to Portugal is: obtain the correct national visa at your home country's Portuguese consulate before travelling. For those already in Portugal on any tourist or Schengen entry without a national visa, the window for post-arrival status regularisation has been narrowing with each reform, and the third reform continues that trend.
Exceptions for CPLP nationals and certain other categories are not abolished by the proposed reform, but the exceptions are narrower than they were before 2025. If you are relying on an exception to the visa-before-arrival rule, consult an immigration lawyer about whether that exception survives under the current legal framework before taking action.
Parental Residence Routes: What Is Changing
The proposed reform tightens the conditions under which a foreign national can obtain Portuguese residence on the basis of parenthood of a minor child. Under the existing framework, a foreign national who is the parent of a child connected to Portuguese territory may have grounds for a residence permit under certain circumstances. The proposed reform adds specificity to who qualifies: the child must be Portuguese (holding Portuguese nationality, not merely residing in Portugal); the child must actually reside in Portugal; and the applicant must demonstrate they are actively exercising parental responsibilities over that child.
The active-parental-responsibility requirement is the most significant new element. It means that a foreign national who has biological ties to a Portuguese child but has had no material involvement in that child's upbringing or daily life would no longer qualify for a parental residence route under the proposed framework. This change is aimed at closing a specific route that had been used for regularisation by people whose genuine connection to the child's life in Portugal was limited. It does not affect parents who are actively present and involved in their child's life in Portugal.
For parents who currently hold residence in Portugal under a parental route, the transition provisions in the final law will determine whether existing permits are affected at renewal. Until the law is enacted with its final transitional wording, existing permit holders should monitor the Diário da República publication and, if their permit is due for renewal before the new rules take effect, consult an immigration lawyer about timing.
Work Permit Portability: Changing Employers Without a New Card
The most practically significant proposal for working foreign residents is work permit portability. Under the proposed reform, an employee holding a work-based Portuguese residence permit would be able to change employers by notifying AIMA — rather than being required to apply for a new residence permit tied to the new employer. Similarly, self-employed professionals (trabalhadores independentes) who issue recibos verdes and hold a permit based on independent professional activity would be able to notify AIMA of a change in the nature or description of their activity without triggering a full new permit application.
Currently, the tight employer-linkage of many Portuguese work-based residence permits creates significant vulnerability for foreign workers: if an employment relationship ends unexpectedly — through redundancy, business closure, or voluntary departure — the legal basis for the worker's residence permit may be undermined. In practice, applicants with solid AIMA cases who lose a job have been able to navigate this through new applications or legal arguments, but the process is cumbersome and legally uncertain. Permit portability would materially reduce that risk.
The notification mechanism will depend on implementing regulations that have not yet been drafted or published. Key unknowns include: how long a worker has after changing employers to notify AIMA, what documentation is required for the notification, whether AIMA must acknowledge or approve the change before it is legally effective, and what happens to the permit if the notification is not made within the required period. These details will be critical for understanding how the portability right works in practice and will only be clear after the law and its regulations are published.
90-Day Processing Target and Administrative Silence Limits
The proposed reform includes a statutory commitment that AIMA should issue residence permit decisions within 90 days of a complete application, with an extension of up to 30 additional days available in exceptional circumstances. This 90-day target would represent a significant improvement over current effective timelines for complex cases, which can run to one or two years, though AIMA's processing of routine online renewals has already improved markedly in 2026 and many straightforward renewals are decided much faster.
The 90-day target matters primarily because it creates a legal hook for applicants whose cases are stalled. If AIMA fails to issue a decision within 90 days of a complete application (or 120 days in exceptional circumstances), the applicant has a stronger basis to seek court intervention through an administrative injunction. Currently, injunctions are filed on the basis of unreasonable delay under general administrative law principles; a statutory 90-day target would make the legal standard for "unreasonable delay" more concrete and easier to argue in court.
The reform also proposes limiting situations where administrative silence — AIMA's failure to decide — produces a legally favourable outcome for the applicant. The current legal principle that prolonged administrative silence can be treated as tacit approval (deferimento tácito) was already significantly narrowed by Lei 61/2025; the third reform continues this restriction. For applicants, this means that waiting for AIMA to act through inertia rather than actively pursuing your case is increasingly legally unproductive.
What to Watch and When These Changes Take Effect
The practical advice for foreign nationals planning their immigration strategy in Portugal in mid-2026 is to monitor the Diário da República at dre.pt for the official publication of the third reform. The publication date is when the new rules take effect (subject to any grace periods stated in the transitional provisions). Based on the legislative stages remaining as of July 2026, and taking into account summer Parliamentary recess patterns in Portugal, the realistic earliest publication date is likely late summer or autumn 2026 — though this is uncertain and could slip.
In the meantime, the current legal framework (Lei 61/2025) continues to apply fully. Do not delay visa applications, permit renewals, or family reunification applications in anticipation of the proposed changes — the reform is not yet in force, and some proposals may be amended before final enactment. If you have a time-sensitive decision to make (for example, whether to apply for citizenship under transitional provisions, or whether to trigger a family reunification application now or wait), consult an immigration lawyer who is tracking the legislative progress closely.
The most reliable ongoing source for official legal updates is the Diário da República itself. For practitioner analysis, Portuguese immigration law firms including LVP Advogados, Fragomen, and CCA Law regularly publish commentary on proposed and enacted changes. Cross-referencing official sources with practitioner analysis gives the most accurate picture of both what the law says and what it means in practice for individual cases.
Frequently Asked Questions
See the Q&A panel above for answers on whether the third reform is already in force, what the most important proposed change is, how parental residence routes are changing, what the 90-day processing target means for your application, and how this third reform differs from Lei 61/2025 and the Work XXI reform.