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Counting Residence Time Fairly: Law 1/2024 and Portuguese Citizenship
Law 1/2024 clarifies that residence time for Portuguese citizenship now counts from the date of initial residence permit application submission, not just from card issuance, addressing administrative delays.
On 5 March 2024, Law no. 1/2024 was published in the Diário da República, bringing important clarifications and improvements to the Portuguese Nationality Law. One of the most relevant changes for foreign residents concerns how the required five years of legal residence for naturalisation are counted.
Until this reform, many applicants were disadvantaged by administrative delays. Only the period covered by the residence card itself was clearly counted, meaning that months – sometimes more than a year – spent waiting for SEF or AIMA to approve the initial residence application did not formally count towards the five-year period.
Law 1/2024 corrected this injustice. The law now explicitly states that, for the purposes of calculating the residence period required for Portuguese citizenship, time counts from the date on which the initial residence permit application was submitted, provided that the permit is ultimately granted. In addition, the law allows different periods of legal residence (even if based on different types of permits) to be aggregated within a 15-year reference window.
For foreign nationals – from retirees on D7 visas to digital nomads, workers, entrepreneurs and former Golden Visa holders – this change is highly favourable. It means that bureaucratic backlog will no longer push citizenship further into the future. If, for example, you applied for your first residence permit in January 2021 but only received the card in October 2021, all that time now counts towards the five years.
In practical terms, many residents will be able to apply for Portuguese nationality several months earlier than they would under the old interpretation. It also reduces the anxiety associated with system delays: as long as the application was filed and ultimately approved, the clock has been running.
This reform reinforces legal certainty and fairness in the naturalisation process, aligning the law with the lived reality of immigrants who have been in Portugal, working, paying taxes and integrating, even while waiting for their first card.
Official source: Diário da República, Law no. 1/2024, 5 March 2024 (https://dre.pt)