Lisbon
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So here we are in 2026 and again… things have stalled… We are not seeing applications getting finalized, there was one article which said that most IRNs process only one application per day - so technically there is not an arbitrary complete pause, but in practice it is almost like a complete pause.
Technically and theoretically, existing nationality applications should not be impacted from the changes in the law and the ongoing discussions. Yet in reality, whenever there is an excuse to postpone the final approval it seems to be the case..
We have seen the first arbitrary pause during the initial discussion of the nationality law - I think it caused a pause of processing for 6 weeks.
During July -August 2025, there was some progress and then starting from end of August, everything came to a halt till perhaps mid Nov 25.
This seems to be intentional, technically the existing applications should be continued to processed. However the reality is different.
When there was the 1st round of discussions things were delayed (June)
When there was the 2nd round of discussions again there was a pause (Sep-Oct)
Then there was a pause when TC was reviewing the objection (Nov)
Shortly after there was Christmas coupled with New Year..
To be more precise, in August 2025, we were seeing August 2023 applications getting final approval. Now it is Jan 2026, and processing of October 2023 applications are just underway.
In short, existing applications shouldn’t be impacted and should be processed normally but there seems to be an intentional slow down of processing.
In many countries, application processing for nationality is usually around one year - whereas in Portugal the already lengthy approval duration is getting even longer.
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What an unseemly process.
Granted I applied for UK citizenship over a dozen years ago, it took 8 months from initial application to having passport in hand. That seems a perfectly reasonable timeframe. This IRN debacle is next level chaotic.
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That’s shocking. Do you have a link to that article?
Here is the link.
If IRN solves 1 case/day, it means that it will take 20-30 years for someone applying today to get the result.
It’s typical that there are more than 20 people applying in person per IRN per day (20-30 minutes/person and 8 hours/day/IRN yields roughly 20 people) and people applying by post and online application thru lawyers. Overall it can be estimated that ther are 40-50 applications/day/IRN. With only one case solved daily, it means on average one IRN is behind at least 39-49 cases. In one month it is behind 1000 cases. If you apply now, it means that you are literally behind at least 10k-20k applicants (2 years). And you will have to wait at least 10k/365= 27 years to get the result!!!
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The government is very clear that they want fewer citizens. Slow IRN is not a problem for them, it is a solution!
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Yes, they want fewer citizens and fewer immigrants, without making any significant investment in productivity, that works until it doesn’t.
They’re fine with immigrants that don’t use any benefits and never become citizens, Dubai style
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You mean us 
I was thinking a bit about this. One way to deal with the pig going through the snake is to hire more IRN employees for processing in a timely manner, but then they would demobilize people to the number necessary to process the future level of applications. If the time to citizenship is extended from 5 to 10 years, though, won’t there be a drastic decline in applications for a five year period, before the snake eats again. I could see IRN staffing only to a level to process this pig over five years, and then “right-size” going forward.
Remember a large portion of immigrants are Brazilians who at 7 years residence will be able to get a head start on gumming up the works 3 years before everyone else
I believe things will speed up when the new law is published in the official gazette. This might be because i) there will be a need of a bit of good news of people getting citizenship (though one can simply dismiss these by saying, that opportunity is no longer the case, it is much harder) ii) there will be people who will argue that immigration is now under control.
Yet I don’t really see the logic of putting existing applications on hold (at least in practice) as they are expected to be subject to current laws in place, today, tomorrow, and in the future when the new legislation will be coming in. Therefore I don’t really see the point of this arbitrary pause for the current applications.
Please look at the data. It is way more than 1 per day. At the moment CRC is in Jan 2024. Porto has not put out a table yet.
Could you please post the CRC table here. CRC has consistently been way behind ACP, so a jump to Jan 2024 would be a very big deal.
Good news is that they are training new registrars (https://justica.gov.pt/Noticias/IRN-admissao-de-31-novos-Candidatos-a-Conservadores-de-Registos).
Bottom line is that the cadence of processing is unpredictable. I think people are also finally starting to realise that the only useful statistic is length of time to FINALISATION and nobody (except IRN) has definitive stats on that. What I can say from obsessively trawling for this info is that there are a lot of late 2022/early 2023 applications at Porto still waiting.
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This is correct, please do find the table of CRC Lisboa shows Dec 2023 (This was last month) so Jan 2024 it is…
Thanks, why some articles ahead of others ? Why art 2 which should be easier stuck at 2022
This makes no sense to me. In September CRC Lisboa was on January 2023 and they received all the Amadora applications in December. If you look at the other categories, they’re all chugging along at the usual snail’s pace. That’s a lot of 6.1 cases that would have had to have been processed in a very short time!
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Here are IRN’s general stats on outstanding citizenship applications (available here: https://partilha.justica.gov.pt/Transparencia/Dados-e-Estatisticas/pk_vid/61df1046c4ae775217679615786e0162#&organismo=irn&tematica=Nacionalidade
Pending cases increased from 489,780 in 2024 to 515,334 in 2025. Critically, decisions dropped from 228,515 in 2024 to 95,906 in 2025!
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