For a decade the choice between Portugal’s D7 and its golden visa came down to a trade. The D7 was cheap and required you to actually live there. The golden visa cost a few hundred thousand euros and required about a week a year, and both routes reached a Portuguese passport in five years.
On 19 May 2026 that stopped being true. Amendments to the nationality law extended the residency period for naturalisation to ten years for most nationalities, and seven for EU and CPLP nationals. The five-year passport, which was the golden visa’s entire commercial proposition, no longer exists on either route.
That does not make the golden visa pointless. It does mean the honest comparison is no longer about money, and a lot of what you will read about these two routes was written before the change.
What each one actually is
The D7 is a residence visa for people living on income they already receive: pensions, rent, dividends, royalties, returns on investments. You prove a monthly income against a threshold tied to the Portuguese minimum wage, currently €920 a month for a single applicant, plus twelve months of savings behind it. There is no investment and nothing to buy. I have written separately about what the D7 actually asks you to prove, including a discrepancy in the income figure worth knowing about before you file.
The golden visa, formally the ARI or residence permit for investment, is the opposite bargain. You commit capital, and in exchange the residency requirement is roughly seven days a year. It exists for people who want a European residence permit without relocating.
Those are genuinely different products. Most of the confusion comes from comparing them as if they were competing versions of the same thing.
The money gap is larger than people expect
The golden visa’s qualifying routes, after the 2023 overhaul, are:
- €500,000 into qualifying investment funds or venture capital
- €500,000 for scientific research
- €250,000 for arts and cultural heritage support
- Creation of ten jobs in Portugal
- €500,000 into eligible company capital, plus creation of five jobs
The D7 asks for savings of around €11,040 and a passive income of €920 a month.
So the entry cost differs by a factor of roughly twenty-five at the cheapest golden visa route, and closer to fifty at the common one. If you are going to live in Portugal, and your income clears the D7 threshold, there is no financial argument for the golden visa at all. That sounds obvious written down. It is not obvious in a market where most of the published comparisons are produced by firms that earn a commission on a €500,000 fund subscription and nothing on a D7.
Property no longer qualifies, and this catches people out
If you have read an older guide, or spoken to someone who did this in 2021, you may still believe you can buy an apartment and get residency. You cannot.
Law 56/2023 removed the real estate routes in October 2023. Residential purchase does not qualify at any price. Commercial purchase does not qualify. The rehabilitation route and the low-density-area discounts are gone. Property is now something you might buy because you want somewhere to live, not something that buys you a permit.
Whichever route you take, the household itself still has to get there. See what moving your home to Portugal would involve.
The real dividing line is presence
This is the question that actually decides it, and it is not about money at all.
The D7 requires you to be in Portugal for at least sixteen months during your first two-year permit. On each three-year renewal after that, you cannot be absent for more than six consecutive months, or eight months in total. That is a residence visa in the plain sense of the word: it expects you to reside.
The golden visa asks for roughly seven days a year.
So the question to answer before you compare anything else is simple. Are you moving to Portugal, or are you acquiring the right to move to Portugal later? If it is the first, the D7 is almost certainly your route and the golden visa is an expensive way to buy something you do not need. If it is the second, the D7 is not available to you in any practical sense, because you will fail the presence requirement and lose the permit at renewal.
People try to split the difference here and it rarely works. The sixteen-month rule is not a formality.
What the golden visa no longer buys
Until May 2026 the golden visa had a genuine advantage that justified the price for some people: five years of minimal presence, then eligibility for citizenship, and an EU passport at the end of it.
The nationality law amendments effective 19 May 2026 extended the qualifying residency period to ten years for most nationalities, and seven for EU and CPLP nationals. Applications already pending on that date continue under the old rules. Everyone else is on the new clock.
Both routes are affected identically. The golden visa did not lose an advantage over the D7 here; it lost an advantage over doing nothing. Ten years of holding an investment and flying in for a week a year is a different proposition from five, and anyone who modelled this in 2024 should model it again.
The same amendments added a requirement to demonstrate knowledge of Portuguese culture, history, national symbols, civic rights and duties, and a formal commitment to democratic principles. If your plan involved never really engaging with Portugal, the law has now noticed.
The clock change almost nobody is pricing in
Buried in the same reform is a detail with more practical bite than the headline number.
The qualifying period now starts on the date your residence permit is issued, not the date you applied. Previously the application date could be argued to count, which mattered enormously given how long Portuguese immigration processing takes.
Golden visa files currently run around twelve to eighteen months, and they sit at lower priority than humanitarian and work permits. Put those two facts together. Someone submitting a golden visa application in late 2026 might not have a permit issued until 2028, at which point a ten-year clock begins. Citizenship lands in the late 2030s.
That is the number to run before committing half a million euros, and it is not the number in most brochures.
Is the backlog getting better?
Partly, and it is worth being accurate about this rather than alarming.
AIMA, the agency that replaced SEF, inherited a backlog estimated at over 400,000 applications in 2024, around 350,000 of them from its predecessor. Delays beyond a year were routine. In 2025 it issued 386,000 residence permits, a 60% increase on the previous year, and it points to that as evidence the system is working.
Immigration lawyers push back on what that figure measures, noting that “resolved” includes archived and rejected files rather than approvals alone. Halfway through 2026 the honest position is that the backlog is neither the crisis it was in 2024 nor the solved problem it is sometimes described as. Plan for months, not weeks, and do not build a timeline that depends on a fast decision.
Which one you actually qualify for
Strip out the marketing and there are really three questions.
Will you live in Portugal more than half the time? If yes, and your passive income clears the threshold, take the D7. Nothing about the golden visa improves your position and it costs a quarter of a million euros more.
Do you have qualifying passive income at all? The D7 is specific about this. Salary from active employment is not passive income. If you are working remotely for a foreign employer, the D7 is the wrong instrument and you should be looking at the D8 rather than the golden visa.
Are you buying optionality rather than a home? Then the golden visa is the only one of the two that works, and you should price it against the new ten-year clock, the issue-date rule and the processing delay, not against the five-year timeline it was sold on.
There is a fourth case worth naming: people who want the golden visa because they believe the D7 income threshold is out of reach. Before you conclude that, check the reductions on the consular checklist. The requirement can be halved where accommodation is secured, and reduced by up to 90% where food is also secured. Some people who think they fall short do not.
Whichever route you take, get the real cost picture before you commit. I have set out why the golden visa’s published cost totals never agree, and how to build a number for your own household instead.
And whichever route gets you to residency, the citizenship process at the end of it has its own separate requirements. I have covered what naturalisation actually asks of you once your residency clock is done separately.
And once you have a route in mind, the actual monthly number matters more than either visa. I have set out what a month in Portugal really costs separately.
What does not differ
Both routes reach permanent residence at five years. Both give you Schengen mobility. Both allow family reunification. Both now face the same naturalisation period and the same civics requirements.
And neither is a tax status. This is the single most common conflation I see. A residence permit determines your right to be in Portugal. It says nothing about how your income is taxed, which is a separate application under a separate regime with its own eligibility rules. Getting a D7 does not give you a tax break, and getting a golden visa does not either.
What I would tell a client
If you are moving, take the D7 and spend the difference on a good lawyer and a better flat.
If you are not moving, understand that you are now buying a ten-year option rather than a five-year passport, and that the clock does not start when you pay. That may still be worth it. It is a materially worse deal than it was eighteen months ago, and anyone telling you otherwise has not updated their material since the spring.
Either way, the decision turns on facts about your own life, income and timeline that a general article cannot know. Both routes are administered by AIMA under legislation that has changed twice in three years. Pay someone licensed in Portugal for an hour before you commit to either.
Frequently asked questions
Is the D7 cheaper than the Portugal golden visa?
Substantially. The D7 requires around €11,040 in savings and a passive income of about €920 a month for a single applicant. The cheapest golden visa route requires a €250,000 investment, and the most common requires €500,000. If you intend to live in Portugal, there is no financial case for the golden visa.
Can I still get a Portugal golden visa by buying property?
No. Law 56/2023 removed the real estate routes in October 2023. Residential purchase does not qualify at any price, commercial purchase does not qualify, and the rehabilitation and low-density discounts no longer exist. The remaining routes are investment funds, scientific research, cultural heritage, job creation, and company capital combined with job creation.
How long until citizenship on the D7 or the golden visa?
Both are now the same. Amendments to the nationality law effective 19 May 2026 extended the qualifying residency period to ten years for most nationalities and seven for EU and CPLP nationals, replacing the previous five years. Applications pending on 19 May 2026 continue under the old rules.
When does the citizenship clock start?
On the date your residence permit is issued, not the date you applied. Because golden visa files typically take twelve to eighteen months at AIMA and sit at lower priority than work and humanitarian permits, the gap between applying and starting the clock can be substantial.
How much time do I have to spend in Portugal on each route?
The D7 requires at least sixteen months during the first two-year permit, and on each three-year renewal you must not be absent for more than six consecutive months or eight months in total. The golden visa requires roughly seven days a year.
Does a D7 or golden visa give me a tax benefit in Portugal?
No. A residence permit determines your right to live in Portugal and says nothing about how your income is taxed. Portugal’s tax regime for new residents is a separate application with its own eligibility rules, and holding either visa does not grant it.
Decided which route you are taking?
The visa is the paperwork. Moving a household to Portugal is the part with the lorry in it. Tell us where you are starting from and we will come back with a realistic picture.
Sources
- Clark Hill, Portugal nationality law changes: extended residency rules, 2026
- Portugal golden visa real estate rules in 2026, and why property no longer qualifies
- Portugal golden visa processing delays, 2026
- AIMA backlog and appointment situation, mid-2026
- AIMA, Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum
- Portaria n.º 1563/2007, the ordinance behind the D7 income threshold
- Government of Portugal, minimum wage increase to €920 for 2026
All sources accessed 28 August 2026. Portuguese immigration and nationality law changed materially in October 2023 and again in May 2026, and processing practice moves faster than published guidance. Check the current position and take advice from a professional licensed in Portugal before committing to either route.
