According to a post my someone who visited Porto they are down to 2 conservadores doing 6.1 which that are trying to process in the 24-29 mos timeframe and the only holdup appears to be non response from Aima.
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I wonder why. No one wants to work there? They don’t have funding for more staff? No one really cares?
They will have to import migrants but Portuguese speaking….
I no longer have full faith in what I hear, we’ve been hearing about so many people getting hired, trained for vacancies for IRNs repeatedly for over a year. Sometimes we would hear three digit figures, 150, 250 people who have joined or are doing their practical training… but the reality seems to be different as the pace of approvals are almost halted… and every time there is an open criticism about the IRNs, the news about new staff joining & getting trained are circulated almost as a way to fend off the criticism.
With regards to the sudden halt on processing unless 90% of employees haven’t quitted in full sync with the new citizenship law discussions, it seems as if there is an intentional, deliberate slowing down of the approval process. The trend of the final approvals is the one real data point that I consider, not what people have been told when they visit the IRN as I have a friend who’ve been told two different things when he visited the Porto IRN.
“waiting a response from AIMA” seems to be nowadays favorite line - even if you have submitted a contagem de tempo documentation showing the 5 year residency at the time of application, still IRNs will go back to AIMA for another round of confirmation, in my opinion this step is almost used as a control valve for citizenship approvals.
The big question is if someone has full-filled all the criteria and have applied with the full 5 year residency - then why would you make those people wait extra time. In my opinion it doesn’t help anyone.
It’s worth pointing out that IRN doesn’t accept a CdT as part of the application, and that the check with AIMA is standard practice. Not to say that you can’t include the document in the application, but they don’t ask for it and probably ignore it. It seems pretty clear that AIMA has always been the choke point, and that those who work there are constantly being reassigned duties based on political priority, and all of the inefficiencies that come with that. I suspect that the big hold up with citizenship processing has more to do with the current focus on biometrics rather than some nefarious plot.
If you have been paying any attention to speeches in Parliament by the government, they clearly, expressly want no more foreigners naturalizing as citizens. When they rail about how Portugal is for people with “Portuguese blood in their veins”, it should tell you something.
Slowing down the process seems like a logical way for them to pursue their goal of delaying or preventing foreigners from naturalizing.
Why should that be a goal? I don’t know; I don’t relate to the mindset of rabid ethnonationalists. But it is.
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I’m aware of Chega and PSD’s hyperbole, I’m just saying that an understaffed and overworked AIMA makes more sense than a work stoppage at IRN. That AIMA is understaffed and overworked is certainly a political choice, but one that seems likely to even out when the biometric backlog is worked through.
I am bit surprised that you wonder if irn’s staffs want to work or not. You even wonder if someone cares 
…
You have already given an answer for it in the same thread:
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Me (23/12/2025) and my wife(Dec 30 205) apply online with help of our lawyer in Lisbon . We still waiting for process no
The delays seems to continue despite few sporadic approvals, yet the route cause of all of this seems to be political and related to new nationality law.
Till the start of discussions about the new nationality law, there was almost a constant pace - e.g. Porto IRN was finalizing applications in roughly 24 months, sometimes it would be 23, sometimes it would be 25.. This was pretty much the norm.
I’m curious to see if things will speed up once the new legislation is finalized. For this to happen the new president needs to be elected, the law should be promulgated by him and then it should be published in the official gazette.
One can see a direct correlation between the arbitrary pausing and steps related nationality law discussions.
Right now there are two types of excuses used by IRN, we are understaffed or waiting to hear from AIMA - but this doesn’t explain how things stall when there is a discussion / voting on the nationality law and accelerate for vice versa.
This is exactly why I do not think any ‘early’ application for citizenship will work. They will just never give you an answer or more likely straight up reject you. The government organizations of portugal do not seem to be independent from the political government itself, and the political climate do not want me and you.
This photo was posted in Facebook’s group. One person applied for citzenship in Archive Center Porto and after waiting over two years, he emailed Aima asking why/how Aima responded to IRN Porto. The photo is a response from Aima regarding his citizenship. It shows that IRN Porto asked Aime to confirm 5 years residency in 2024 which Aima already confirmed 2 months later and just now IRN Porto wants to have another confirmation of 5 years residency. The recent request to Aima was sent by IRn Porto in Dec 2025.
It is a concrete proof that IRN could literally request Aima multiple times while processing the application. It really makes things go much slower. Not sure if they send repeated request to only Aima or they also send request to Police, Fbi, interpol. If they do repeatedly send requests to all external parties like they do with Aima, then God knows how long it is going to take to complete the process.
I used to think that IRN has a check list and if all boxes are ticked, then it’s done. But I am wrong, the boxes might need to be re-ticked multiple times until completion.
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I’m increasingly convinced that the delays we’re seeing are a result of stalling the progress until the new legislation takes effect. Based on what I hear and observe, here’s how I interpret the situation. While it’s certainly not the outcome I would want, it does help explain the otherwise arbitrary stagnation.
Although the rule to count residency from the date of application submission was approved in early 2024 (Feb–Mar), the implementing decree-law, which was legally required within 90 days, was never published.
This change was one of the final moves by the outgoing Socialist (PS) government. Responsibility for enacting the decree fell to the new PSD-led government, which has so far has not published it. The most straightforward reading is that the new government had plans to revise the nationality law—including the residency time calculation—and therefore held off on issuing the decree.
Now, unless a transitional clause is introduced, the new law is expected to revert the rule: residency will again be counted from the issuance date of the first residence permit, as was the case before 2024. Once the new law takes effect, the idea of counting from the submission date becomes obsolete. Existing applications would still be judged under the 5-year rule, but the clock may start only upon approval, not submission—disqualifying many who applied fulfilling 5 years based on submission date.
Some believe this is the intended strategy.
If that plays out, it’s almost certain we’ll see a wave of legal challenges, as many will argue this represents a retroactive and unfair change to the rules.
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Isn’t this one of the things that the constitutional court rejected? As far as i understand they opposed to force the new rules to the current applications. The Court decision was saying applying new rules to current applicants violates the constitutional principle of protection of legitimate expectations, which means people have a right to rely on the legal regime in place at the time they filed their application.
It is difficult to conclude the reason behind the scene. We also do not know a complete data. Lots of people do not join group or post/share their result.
Regarding the counting from submission (not from resident card), one person got citizenship by this new counting rule. He got passport last week. He applied in Vila Nova Gaia. It is a big surprise that he’s got citizenship just after waiting 11.5 months. Another case also from Gaia, applied in 07/2024, got citizenship in 01/2026.
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Great news, thank you.
If there happens anything like this, things will even get more complicated if thousands of applicants from the last two years who applied by counting from submission pass the five year mark from the card before the new law comes into force, which is a very probable thing.
Very recently, just about 7-10 days ago, there was one discussion in parliament about the “counting date” but no conclusion was drew from it. It seems that with the speed of turtle/snail the final verdict (i.e law lublished officially) will take years. Just prepare what you have to prepare under current law and forget about the rest.
Meanwhile in the Portuguese Nationality facebook group:
I decided to go to IRN in Coimbra and apply there.
I got there just after 10 am, took a number and sat down. I was called and an English-speaking lady told me they could take my docs and application and 250€ payment, but they would have to send everything to Lisbon. She said the process could take 7 or 8 years.
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7-8 years? That is criminal. They should pass a law that simply states that resident and citizenship applications are automatically approved if not decided after 1 year.
I recently applied for citizenship by descent from Taiwan. I was approved and received my passport in 3 weeks! Portugal is a joke.
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