Portugal’s Golden Visa was, for years, the textbook example of «residency by investment»: you’d buy a property above a certain threshold and get a residence permit that, over time, could lead to citizenship. That path — the one that made the programme famous — no longer exists. Since 7 October 2023, real estate investment — residential, commercial, or renovation — stopped being a valid route for new applications.
Why this isn’t the same as the NHR/IFICI
It’s worth separating two things that constantly get confused: the Golden Visa is a residency-by-investment programme — it grants a residence permit (and Schengen-area mobility) in exchange for an investment, with very low minimum stay requirements (on average, about 7 days a year). The NHR and its successor, IFICI, are tax regimes — they reduce what you owe once you’re already a Portuguese tax resident. You can hold a Golden Visa without being a Portuguese tax resident (in fact, most holders aren’t, precisely because the stay requirement is so low), and you can be a tax resident with IFICI without ever having needed a Golden Visa. They’re two independent procedures solving different problems.
What counts as investment now
- Job creation (a minimum number of positions, depending on the project type).
- Support for scientific research or cultural activities, with donations starting at €200,000.
- Investment in venture capital funds or non-real-estate business capitalisation, starting at €500,000.
- Setting up a Portuguese company with associated job creation.
The logic behind the change is explicit: the Portuguese government wanted to stop channelling foreign investment into the residential property market — flagged for years as a factor pushing up prices in Lisbon and Porto — and redirect it towards economic activity with more direct impact: innovation, business capitalisation, research, and cultural heritage.
What a lot of people still don’t know
A fair amount of outdated content (from before October 2023) still presents buying a home as a valid route — a leftover from the era when that was, by far, the programme’s most popular path. Any guide or adviser still offering «Golden Visa by buying an apartment in Portugal» in 2026 is, at best, out of date, if not outright selling something that’s no longer legal.
The other nuance that often gets lost: the Golden Visa doesn’t speed up or replace the naturalisation process, which in Portugal requires a minimum number of years of legal residency (not necessarily tax residency or continuous physical residency, thanks to the programme’s low stay requirement) and, following recent changes, additional integration criteria worth checking case by case rather than assuming what was true a few years ago still holds.
In the comments: if you’ve applied for the Golden Visa after October 2023, share which investment route you chose (fund, job creation, cultural donation) and how long the process has actually taken. Real processing times are the figure that varies the most between what guides say and what people actually experience.
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Sources: Portuguese investment-residency regulations after the October 2023 reform, guides updated for 2026 (Global Citizen Solutions, Get Golden Visa, Bright!Tax). This isn’t legal or tax advice — the exact requirements for each investment route and processing times should be confirmed with a Portuguese immigration lawyer.