Portugal shut the property route of its golden visa in October 2023, and half the internet still hasn't updated. You can't buy an apartment in Lisbon and collect a residence permit for it. That door is closed. What remains is better for anyone who actually planned to live in the country: the D7 visa for people with passive income, and the D8 for people who work remotely. Both lead to the same residence card and the same five-year road to permanent residency, and both cost a few hundred euros in fees instead of half a million in fund units.
This guide goes deep on the D7, the route most retirees and landlords ask HomeNSearch about, then covers the D8 and how to pick between them. It also gets into the parts most guides skip: the savings cushion consulates quietly expect, why owning a home strengthens your file, and what replaced the famous NHR tax regime.
What closed in 2023, and what still works
Technically the golden visa survives. Investment funds, cultural donations, a few niche categories. But the real-estate option that made it famous was cut by the Mais Habitação law in October 2023, and Spain went further, ending its program entirely in April 2025. If your plan was to buy your way into southern Europe through property, that table has mostly been cleared.
Applications went where you'd expect: to the D7 and D8, which had been sitting there the whole time with far lower financial bars. The philosophy is different, though, and it matters. A golden visa wanted your money and about seven days of your presence a year. The D7 and D8 want a modest income and your actual life. You're supposed to move.
We compared the surviving investment programs in our guide to golden visa countries in 2026. If what you want is residency with minimal physical presence, start there instead. If you want to live in Portugal, keep reading.
What the D7 visa is
The D7 has existed since 2007. It was built for people who can support themselves in Portugal without taking a local job: retirees on a pension, landlords with rental income, investors living off a portfolio. The state's logic is plain. You bring steady money into the country and don't compete for Portuguese jobs, so you're welcome.
The income has to be passive and provable. Pensions are the classic case. Rent from property you own anywhere in the world counts. So do dividends, interest and royalties. What doesn't fit is a salary from remote employment; that's D8 territory, and consulates have grown stricter about keeping the two apart.
The income requirement moves with the minimum wage
Here's what most articles get wrong within a year of being published: the D7 threshold isn't a fixed number. It's pegged to the Portuguese minimum wage. The main applicant needs passive income of at least one minimum wage per month, which as of 2026 means roughly €920, or about €11,000 a year. Add 50% for a spouse and 30% for each dependent child.
A retired couple therefore needs around €1,380 a month in provable passive income. A family of four, about €1,930. Portugal has raised the minimum wage every January for years, and the visa threshold rises with it. Check the figure that applies when you file, not the one in a two-year-old blog post. Ours included.
Two practical notes. Consulates like margin: meeting the bare minimum is legal, but files that clear the bar by 30-50% move with less friction. And the income has to keep flowing. A pension award letter is gold. A one-off gain from selling something is not income at all in a consular officer's eyes.
The savings cushion nobody warns you about
The income rule gets all the attention. Then applicants get blindsided by a second number: savings. Practice varies between consulates, but the working rule is about one year of the required income sitting in a Portuguese bank account. For a single applicant that's around €11,000-12,000 deposited before you apply. For a couple, proportionally more. The reasoning is blunt: if your income hiccups, Portugal wants to know you won't be standing in a social services office by month three.
Yes, a Portuguese account, and opening one is among the awkward early steps. You'll need a NIF, the Portuguese tax number, before any bank will talk to you, and most branches want either an in-person visit or a lawyer holding power of attorney. Many applicants fold the NIF, the account and the housing hunt into one scouting week in Portugal. It's the most efficient way we know of doing it.
Housing: rent or own, and why owning reads better
Your file has to show where you'll live. Portugal accepts a long-term rental contract, typically twelve months, or a property you own. Both satisfy the rule. They don't read the same way to the person reviewing your application, though.
A lease says you've solved accommodation. A title deed says you've committed. Consular officers are assessing whether the move is genuine, and it's hard to look more genuine than having bought a home in the country. Ownership also spares you a real headache: plenty of Portuguese landlords hesitate to sign a year's lease with a foreigner who holds no residence permit yet, and those who agree often want six to twelve months of rent paid upfront.
Buying before you have residency is entirely legal; Portugal places no restrictions on foreign buyers. If that's your direction, our walkthrough on how to buy property in Portugal explains the NIF, the promissory contract and the notary stage, and you can browse current Portugal listings on HomeNSearch to calibrate prices. For the visa it makes no difference whether you bought a €140,000 flat in Caldas da Rainha or a €600,000 villa outside Lagos. The deed works the same.
You're expected to actually live there
This is where the D7 parts company with the visa it replaced in the public imagination. The residence permit rules expect you not to be away for more than six consecutive months, or eight months in total, within each permit period, unless you have good documented reasons. Nobody stands at the border with a stopwatch. Renewal is where absence catches up with people, because officers can and do ask why someone renewing a residence permit spent most of it somewhere else.
The D7 is a moving-to-Portugal visa, not a keeping-your-options-open visa. Applicants who blur that distinction usually discover it at renewal time.
There's a tax dimension too. Spend 183 days a year in Portugal and you're a Portuguese tax resident, taxable on worldwide income. For most D7 holders that isn't a trap but the plan itself. Budget for it either way; more on the tax picture below.
The timeline: two years, three years, permanent residency at five
The sequence runs like this. Your consulate issues a temporary visa, valid for 120 days with two entries, whose only job is to get you into Portugal for your residence-permit appointment. AIMA, the migration agency, takes your biometrics and eventually issues a residence card valid for two years. You renew it once, for three more. At the five-year mark you qualify for permanent residency, which ends the renewal treadmill; you'll need a certificate of basic Portuguese at A2 level, a low bar that a few months of classes clears comfortably.
Some people keep renewing temporary permits past year five instead. It works, but permanent residency is the stable milestone, and it's the one this whole route is really about.
Citizenship: read the law in force, not the marketing
For years the pitch wrote itself: five years of residence, A2 Portuguese, then an application for one of the world's most powerful passports. That five-year rule is precisely what's under political revision as we write. Parliament has been debating a substantial tightening of the nationality law, longer residence requirements included, and the draft has shifted shape more than once on its way through.
So we're deliberately not printing a number. Anything specific could be false by the time you read it. Treat citizenship as a possible bonus governed by whoever runs Portugal in five to ten years, not as an outcome you can bank today, and verify the law in force with a Portuguese immigration lawyer when you're close to eligible. Permanent residency at five years is solid. Citizenship timing is the moving part.
The D8: Portugal's digital nomad visa
The D8 arrived in late 2022 and covers exactly the case the D7 was never meant for: income you earn by working, remotely, for employers or clients outside Portugal. The financial bar sits around four times the Portuguese minimum wage per month, averaged over your recent bank statements. Like the D7 threshold, it floats with the wage, so look up the current figure rather than trusting a fixed one.
Four times sounds steep next to the D7's one. But it's active income, which most working-age applicants have anyway. The D8 comes in two versions: a temporary-stay visa for up to a year, and a residence version that mirrors the D7 track, with the same two-plus-three permit sequence and the same road to permanent residency. If the plan is to settle, you want the residence version.
The paperwork will look familiar by now: an employment contract or client contracts, three or so months of income statements at the threshold, savings, accommodation, a clean criminal record, health cover. One clear story, well documented, beats a clever mosaic of income sources.
D7 or D8: one question decides it
Where does your money come from? If it arrives whether or not you open a laptop, pensions, rents, dividends, interest, you're a D7 case. If it stops when you stop working, you're a D8 case. Retirees go D7. Working professionals go D8. A 45-year-old landlord living off rental income sits comfortably in D7 territory; so does an early-retired investor with a dividend portfolio. Mixed files, a small pension plus ongoing consulting, say, are possible but muddier, and consulates prefer applications that tell one story.
How Portugal compares next door
Spain's non-lucrative visa is the D7's closest cousin, but it bans all work, including remote work in practice at the consular stage, and asks for roughly double the income. Spain's digital nomad visa is the D8's rival and remains popular. Greece still runs a property golden visa, from €250,000 to €800,000 depending on the region, with almost no stay requirement, so it attracts a different buyer entirely. Portugal's edge is the lowest income bar of the three and, historically, the shortest road to a passport, whatever number parliament finally lands on. That mix keeps it the default choice for people who genuinely intend to relocate rather than collect permits.
Taxes: NHR is gone, and IFICI is not its twin
The old Non-Habitual Resident regime, with its 10% flat tax on foreign pensions and broad exemptions, closed to new arrivals at the end of 2023. It sold a decade's worth of D7 visas. It's finished; leftover transition cases aside, you can't get it.
The replacement, formally IFICI and inevitably nicknamed NHR 2.0, is a different animal. It offers a 20% flat rate on Portuguese earnings plus exemptions on most foreign income for ten years, but only to people working in qualifying activities: scientific research, higher education, certified startups, certain skilled professions. It's a talent incentive. Foreign pensions, the exact category the old regime pampered, are excluded.
In practice a retiree arriving on a D7 today pays normal Portuguese progressive rates on their pension, which run up to 48%, moderated by whatever tax treaty binds Portugal and the pension's source country. That's a real cost the 2019-era blogs never mention. Model it with a cross-border tax adviser before committing, not after. For plenty of people Portugal still comes out fine; for some, tax quietly eats what the lifestyle saved.
The application, step by step
- Get a NIF and open a Portuguese bank account. Possible remotely through a fiscal representative, faster in person.
- Secure housing: a twelve-month lease or a purchase, with the contract or deed as evidence.
- Move the savings cushion into your Portuguese account.
- File at the Portuguese consulate covering your country of residence: application forms, income proof, criminal record certificate, travel insurance, motivation letter. Official processing is around 60 days; real waits are often longer.
- Enter Portugal on the temporary visa and attend the AIMA appointment for biometrics.
- Receive the two-year residence card, renew for three years, then apply for permanent residency at year five.
A word about AIMA. The agency replaced SEF in 2023 and inherited a backlog measured in hundreds of thousands of cases. Appointment waits and card delays are the most common complaint among recent movers, so build slack into your plans, especially around travel while a card is pending. Annoying, but survivable.
Bringing your family
Both visas take the family along. A spouse or legal partner, dependent children and dependent parents can apply together with you at the consulate, which is the cleaner route, or join later through family reunification once you hold a permit. Each person raises the income requirement by the supplements above and adds paperwork: marriage and birth certificates, apostilled and translated.
Family members get residence permits tied to yours and the same five-year path. Children who land in Portuguese schools tend to pass the A2 requirement without ever noticing it exists.
FAQ: the Portugal D7 visa
How much income do I need for the D7 visa?
Passive income of at least one Portuguese minimum wage per month for the main applicant, roughly €920 as of 2026, plus 50% for a spouse and 30% per dependent child. The threshold resets whenever the minimum wage rises, so confirm the current figure before you file.
Can I get the D7 by buying property in Portugal?
Not by itself; the purchase grants nothing, and the golden visa's property route closed in October 2023. But an owned home satisfies the D7 accommodation requirement and reads as strong evidence of a genuine move, and rent from other property you own can serve as your qualifying income.
How long until permanent residency and citizenship?
Permanent residency comes after five years of legal residence plus an A2 Portuguese certificate. Citizenship historically followed at the same five-year mark, but the nationality law is under revision and the requirement may lengthen. Check the rules in force when you're ready to apply.
Can I work in Portugal on a D7?
Yes. Passive income gets you the visa, but the residence permit itself doesn't stop you working or running a business in Portugal. Just remember that at each renewal you'll need to show you can still support yourself, and that local earnings are taxed in Portugal.
What's the difference between the D7 and the D8?
Source of income. The D7 covers passive income such as pensions, rents and dividends, at a threshold of one minimum wage. The D8 covers remote work for non-Portuguese employers or clients, at roughly four times that. Both end at the same residence card and the same five-year road to permanent residency.