As it became known, in 2024, the number of applications for the Portugal Golden Visa for Investment from families increased by 83% and amounted to 2091. The number of individual applicants also increased by 21%. The main beneficiaries of the Portugal Golden Visa program are citizens of the USA, China and the UK.
Meanwhile, the situation with the speed of processing applications for residence permits remains difficult, due to high demand. The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) by mid-2025 should finish processing about 410,000 immigration cases that are stuck due to internal reforms and the reorganization of relevant departments.
Long-awaited digital renovations
In the fall of 2024, the Institute of Registers and Notaries (IRN) of Portugal plans to launch a new online platform to speed up the naturalization procedure (issuing citizenship), automation and digitization of documents. Using artificial intelligence, the platform allows to digitize documents, extract applicant identification data, and automatically classify the process depending on the type of request. This will increase the capacity of services to process citizenship processes by 50%.
