We found the group ‘Americans & Friends’ on FB lays everything out in simple instructions. We did ourselves and did not pay anyone. So far everything has worked fairly well. My husband did not receive his renewal card as CTT did not leave notification but we have time/date to pick up. Patience is key!
Nilse and RTP have helped us a TON during our relocation process. I'm very much a "DIY" type of person, so armed with what I've learned from RTP and others, we handled our own renewal. Our permits expired in December 2024, and we were caught up in the rather sloppy SEF to AIMA transition. It was a mess back then, and it eventually wound up taking us 17 months to get our new cards. I say this to point out that most of the problems you will hear about are specific to those whose permits expired prior to July 1, 2025. The process has improved dramatically since then. I've helped some friends with their recent renewal, and in both cases, the process was smooth and, dare I say, efficient.
AIMA seems to be fixing processes one thing at a time, based on the level of need. The permit renewal process is now fixed and running well. So for anyone anticipating a renewal, relax, you should not have any of the problems others have gone through. Now AIMA is moving on to other issues, like family reunification for adults, golden visa issues, and fixing permanent residency. AIMA recently rolled out a new portal system for handling permanent residency for EU citizens, and hopefully we'll soon have an online system in place for the rest of us to apply for permanent residency when we become eligible.
AIMA's online support contact form seems to be genuinely helpful now. I also had a lot of success calling AIMA while we were still waiting on our renewed residency permit cards, so their call center is actually up and running now. It does take some perseverance, but you actually can call AIMA and speak with a rep (in English, if needed). AIMA also has some resources on their website to help. Follow AIMA on Facebook, too. They frequently post important updates on their FB page.
I know we've all seen a lot of dysfunction over the last 2+ years, and I see a lot of people just assume that's the way it always was, and always will be, so some folks kinda give up on trying or expecting things to work. The good news is that the chaos of residency permit renewals is now behind us. For anyone facing a renewal, expect a much better process. Hopefully, we'll see similar improvements in other functions of AIMA soon, too.
Thank you for your informative column. I’m sure that we’ll be referring to it many times in the future……. of course by then things will have changed…….again!! Lol.
My spouse and I were lucky in renewal. We are in the pre July 1, 2025 group, Mission Structure. I got my renewal card 3 days before the 1-year anniversary of expiry. My spouse got his 2 days after that date.
Yes, even though you are retired, you need to get a NISS for renewal. AIMA posted that requirement at https://www.facebook.com/AgenciaAIMA on July 25, 2025. There are 12 Citizen Lojas where foreigners can get NISS
A quibble, because I retired from testing software. I did my renewal submission myself (with help from John E. and other folks in the big facebook group), AIMA usually wants the Certidão Permanente Predial not Caderneta Predial Urbana document. For lucky folks whose resident permits expired after July 1, 2025, AIMA wants your NIF and NISS and they check whether you owe funds to Finanças/IRS for income tax and Segurança Social through some IT process. I don't think you lucky folks have to download the Demonstração de Liquidação de IRS and Comprovativo de situacao contributiva regularizada.
We renewed our residency in February for the first time (so our first card was 2 years and the new one is 3 years). In the spirit of being forearmed, in Dec 25 I requested a letter from DWP in the UK to list my UK state pension, we applied online for documents listing our other, none-state pensions. I made sure I had statements from our Portuguese bank showing 3 months of deposits of our pensions.
The documents needed are listed on the AIMA website so I spent a rainy January Sunday gathering up all of the documents needed including applying for an online Land Registry code. We then visited our Advocada for her to copy our passports and sign our declarations.
It was all pretty straightforward really. I uploaded all of the documents onto the portal, three weeks later we were both approved and two weeks after that we received our cards.
Oh my, yes . . . we have been here 7 years and applied for citizenship over a year ago. The renewal vs. permanent residency question was resolved by our attorney advising we go for permanent. We are on the same August deadline as y'all. I think it's fair to say that what we are seeing is not just run-of-the-mill bureaucracy, but consciously created sludge to slow and deter people.
We received our Pedido Deferido emails this past Friday, hooray! We applied May 11 (DIY, using the files from the AFiP fb group), so almost exactly 60 days. Now we wait for the cards to arrive, which has been about 2 weeks for several friends who renewed about the same time. Huge difference compared to friends in the pre-July 2025 group, several of them had expired cards for over a year! So yes, things seem to be improving quite a bit.
One small detail: the QR code we got gave 60 day extensions, renewable automatically, but didn't say anything about 6 months. Our bank warned us about access to our account given our cards' expiration dates, so we had to use that document to keep it open. We were a little worried about needing to go through the bank's process again if things took longer than the 60 days.
We have always done our own applications and renewals. Hubby, myself and our adult son. Last year whilst AIMA was overwhelmed, IRN processed renewals to lighten AIMA's load but they have since stopped. We did not need to do anything online. We just made sure we had every document required. I flagged all my attachments with the document name. IRN was very impressed by our organised attachments. I waited about 2 months for my card, hubby somehow waited almost 7 months. Our son also waited about 5 months. It is quite easy when you flag your documents. I also made sure that we had other supporting documents, just in case they asked for it. Rather have it and not be asked for it than being asked and not having it. Actually doing things online with Government Departments is not too daunting. I successfully did an online Application for CSI (Complementary Subsidy for the Elderly - Social Security) for 2 of our elderly neighbours, in Portuguese (with a bit of help from Google Gemini).
Well at least you had the 50-page passports! Ours often got full of stamps so we’d get pages added…there were at least 100. Just imagine. You’d be scanning for a week.
Look at the newspaper site DN Brasil. They have a reporter who is collecting stories from immigrants having difficulties with AIMA. Their focus is on Brazilians, but they might be interested in your information. https://dnbrasil.dn.pt/collection/dn-brasil-home
AIMA made a post May 8, 2026 at https://www.facebook.com/AgenciaAIMA describing how to request an appointment. It is possible that you could visit this Porto location AIMA Porto II Store, located in the SEIVA premises, at Rua Calouste Gulbenkian, no. 176, in-person without an appointment.
really good advice. Also, calling works. 217 115 000 or 965 903 700. I was also in that pre-july group. We paid then had our in-person a couple weeks later (August of last year).
Thanks, I am a permanent resident, but many of my US friends who are now retiring ask me about moving to Portugal and what permits are needed. Now I know! It is not easy.
I absolutely would not do this on my own. We hired a lawyer also. My wife and I got appointments in two separate offices on two separate dates. She got her card after 4 weeks. I'm still waiting. Thank God this is the last residency I will be applying for..I'll be long gone from Portugal well before it expires !
We don't know all of the knowns and have good resources for the unknown knowns, it's the unknown unknowns that will get us every time! It seems these are becoming fewer. Progress=hope.
We are here on the GV regime, and our residence cards expired in June 2025. Since there was no online renewal option for GVs, we started attempting to get AIMA appointments in March 2025. I finally received an appointment date in September, my wife in December. My renewed card arrived on May 11, 2026 with an effective date of April 13; hers is yet to arrive.
We just received our temporary resident cards, are buying our first house and I can’t even allow myself to think of going through that in 2 years. We had help from an immigration assistance firm and will undoubtedly have their assistance again for renewal. I have to curb my impulse to destroy papers when I think they are no longer important and save every scrap for the possibility of future applications.
You don't need to keep the paperwork, just scan it and upload it to an online storage site like KDrive and Dropbox. You can use your phone to scan stuff it only takes a minute. You almost always need those documents in digital form anyway so it makes sense the digitise them for the beginning.
I suggest to keep everything in a binder. That will save you some occasional headache as there are a few documents that needs to be produced physically as originals. Not frequent, but a binder in a shelf is not much of a problem compared to having to chase a reissued original.
We found the group ‘Americans & Friends’ on FB lays everything out in simple instructions. We did ourselves and did not pay anyone. So far everything has worked fairly well. My husband did not receive his renewal card as CTT did not leave notification but we have time/date to pick up. Patience is key!
Nilse and RTP have helped us a TON during our relocation process. I'm very much a "DIY" type of person, so armed with what I've learned from RTP and others, we handled our own renewal. Our permits expired in December 2024, and we were caught up in the rather sloppy SEF to AIMA transition. It was a mess back then, and it eventually wound up taking us 17 months to get our new cards. I say this to point out that most of the problems you will hear about are specific to those whose permits expired prior to July 1, 2025. The process has improved dramatically since then. I've helped some friends with their recent renewal, and in both cases, the process was smooth and, dare I say, efficient.
AIMA seems to be fixing processes one thing at a time, based on the level of need. The permit renewal process is now fixed and running well. So for anyone anticipating a renewal, relax, you should not have any of the problems others have gone through. Now AIMA is moving on to other issues, like family reunification for adults, golden visa issues, and fixing permanent residency. AIMA recently rolled out a new portal system for handling permanent residency for EU citizens, and hopefully we'll soon have an online system in place for the rest of us to apply for permanent residency when we become eligible.
AIMA's online support contact form seems to be genuinely helpful now. I also had a lot of success calling AIMA while we were still waiting on our renewed residency permit cards, so their call center is actually up and running now. It does take some perseverance, but you actually can call AIMA and speak with a rep (in English, if needed). AIMA also has some resources on their website to help. Follow AIMA on Facebook, too. They frequently post important updates on their FB page.
I know we've all seen a lot of dysfunction over the last 2+ years, and I see a lot of people just assume that's the way it always was, and always will be, so some folks kinda give up on trying or expecting things to work. The good news is that the chaos of residency permit renewals is now behind us. For anyone facing a renewal, expect a much better process. Hopefully, we'll see similar improvements in other functions of AIMA soon, too.
Thank you for your informative column. I’m sure that we’ll be referring to it many times in the future……. of course by then things will have changed…….again!! Lol.
My spouse and I were lucky in renewal. We are in the pre July 1, 2025 group, Mission Structure. I got my renewal card 3 days before the 1-year anniversary of expiry. My spouse got his 2 days after that date.
Yes, even though you are retired, you need to get a NISS for renewal. AIMA posted that requirement at https://www.facebook.com/AgenciaAIMA on July 25, 2025. There are 12 Citizen Lojas where foreigners can get NISS
https://www.gov.pt/servicos/pedir-os-numeros-de-identificacao-fiscal-seguranca-social-e-nacional-de-utente-saude-para-estrangeiros You need to search the page for "como e onde pedir" and click to open that heading to see the list of locations.
A quibble, because I retired from testing software. I did my renewal submission myself (with help from John E. and other folks in the big facebook group), AIMA usually wants the Certidão Permanente Predial not Caderneta Predial Urbana document. For lucky folks whose resident permits expired after July 1, 2025, AIMA wants your NIF and NISS and they check whether you owe funds to Finanças/IRS for income tax and Segurança Social through some IT process. I don't think you lucky folks have to download the Demonstração de Liquidação de IRS and Comprovativo de situacao contributiva regularizada.
We renewed our residency in February for the first time (so our first card was 2 years and the new one is 3 years). In the spirit of being forearmed, in Dec 25 I requested a letter from DWP in the UK to list my UK state pension, we applied online for documents listing our other, none-state pensions. I made sure I had statements from our Portuguese bank showing 3 months of deposits of our pensions.
The documents needed are listed on the AIMA website so I spent a rainy January Sunday gathering up all of the documents needed including applying for an online Land Registry code. We then visited our Advocada for her to copy our passports and sign our declarations.
It was all pretty straightforward really. I uploaded all of the documents onto the portal, three weeks later we were both approved and two weeks after that we received our cards.
Oh my, yes . . . we have been here 7 years and applied for citizenship over a year ago. The renewal vs. permanent residency question was resolved by our attorney advising we go for permanent. We are on the same August deadline as y'all. I think it's fair to say that what we are seeing is not just run-of-the-mill bureaucracy, but consciously created sludge to slow and deter people.
We received our Pedido Deferido emails this past Friday, hooray! We applied May 11 (DIY, using the files from the AFiP fb group), so almost exactly 60 days. Now we wait for the cards to arrive, which has been about 2 weeks for several friends who renewed about the same time. Huge difference compared to friends in the pre-July 2025 group, several of them had expired cards for over a year! So yes, things seem to be improving quite a bit.
One small detail: the QR code we got gave 60 day extensions, renewable automatically, but didn't say anything about 6 months. Our bank warned us about access to our account given our cards' expiration dates, so we had to use that document to keep it open. We were a little worried about needing to go through the bank's process again if things took longer than the 60 days.
We have always done our own applications and renewals. Hubby, myself and our adult son. Last year whilst AIMA was overwhelmed, IRN processed renewals to lighten AIMA's load but they have since stopped. We did not need to do anything online. We just made sure we had every document required. I flagged all my attachments with the document name. IRN was very impressed by our organised attachments. I waited about 2 months for my card, hubby somehow waited almost 7 months. Our son also waited about 5 months. It is quite easy when you flag your documents. I also made sure that we had other supporting documents, just in case they asked for it. Rather have it and not be asked for it than being asked and not having it. Actually doing things online with Government Departments is not too daunting. I successfully did an online Application for CSI (Complementary Subsidy for the Elderly - Social Security) for 2 of our elderly neighbours, in Portuguese (with a bit of help from Google Gemini).
Well at least you had the 50-page passports! Ours often got full of stamps so we’d get pages added…there were at least 100. Just imagine. You’d be scanning for a week.
Very helpful-we just received our initial residency cards and your real life experience helps us know what to track (for now) going forward 👍
20 months expired.
Uploaded forms, paid fee October or 2025.
Nothing. No interview, nothing.
Yes, I'm pre July.
Talked to a lawyer. They can't do anything.
Look at the newspaper site DN Brasil. They have a reporter who is collecting stories from immigrants having difficulties with AIMA. Their focus is on Brazilians, but they might be interested in your information. https://dnbrasil.dn.pt/collection/dn-brasil-home
AIMA made a post May 8, 2026 at https://www.facebook.com/AgenciaAIMA describing how to request an appointment. It is possible that you could visit this Porto location AIMA Porto II Store, located in the SEIVA premises, at Rua Calouste Gulbenkian, no. 176, in-person without an appointment.
really good advice. Also, calling works. 217 115 000 or 965 903 700. I was also in that pre-july group. We paid then had our in-person a couple weeks later (August of last year).
Thank you for your suggestions. In my experience calling repeatedly for hours does not work.
Thanks, I am a permanent resident, but many of my US friends who are now retiring ask me about moving to Portugal and what permits are needed. Now I know! It is not easy.
It is really not hard and affordable advice is available… it cam be frustrating for a Type A American however
Thoughts on moving with a small dog? Planning a 6 week visit with pup in tow to get a real feel.
I absolutely would not do this on my own. We hired a lawyer also. My wife and I got appointments in two separate offices on two separate dates. She got her card after 4 weeks. I'm still waiting. Thank God this is the last residency I will be applying for..I'll be long gone from Portugal well before it expires !
We don't know all of the knowns and have good resources for the unknown knowns, it's the unknown unknowns that will get us every time! It seems these are becoming fewer. Progress=hope.
We are here on the GV regime, and our residence cards expired in June 2025. Since there was no online renewal option for GVs, we started attempting to get AIMA appointments in March 2025. I finally received an appointment date in September, my wife in December. My renewed card arrived on May 11, 2026 with an effective date of April 13; hers is yet to arrive.
We just received our temporary resident cards, are buying our first house and I can’t even allow myself to think of going through that in 2 years. We had help from an immigration assistance firm and will undoubtedly have their assistance again for renewal. I have to curb my impulse to destroy papers when I think they are no longer important and save every scrap for the possibility of future applications.
Like us I throw away paper. A big mistake in Portugal. I laughed the other day when the beach train guy gave me a receipt for the 1,50 euro ride.
You don't need to keep the paperwork, just scan it and upload it to an online storage site like KDrive and Dropbox. You can use your phone to scan stuff it only takes a minute. You almost always need those documents in digital form anyway so it makes sense the digitise them for the beginning.
I suggest to keep everything in a binder. That will save you some occasional headache as there are a few documents that needs to be produced physically as originals. Not frequent, but a binder in a shelf is not much of a problem compared to having to chase a reissued original.
I have had phone scans refused, but it is a good idea to scan and save documents. I do both…keep hard copies in a portfolio and scan to files.