Links to the revised nationality law:
Portuguese Parliament Amends Nationality Law: A Quicker Path to Citizenship? – Nomad Gate
The waiting time between an application and its approval will now count towards the 5-year residency requirement needed to apply for citizenship.
But it remains unknown which status date (application date, application accepted date, biometrics date) will be used when IRN asks AIMA for the contagem de tempo. So it is only from posters’ experiences in this thread that a better understanding is being obtained: Wait time now counts toward 5 year residency?.
Hi! Congrats on getting so far and posting. Do you mind sharing which lawyers you used for the citizenship process?
Hi Kari,
I still work with LegalSquare, though in my opinion as long as, the documents submitted are complete, it doesn’t matter who you work with - if you feel confident you can do it by yourself. Like many GV holders I work with lawyers. What makes a difference is if you work with someone who doesn’t submit a required document then they will slow down. e.g. contagem de tempo is needed, I believe it is better if you provide colored scanned version of your passport, not a black-white photocopy etc. So in POV lawyers won’t speed up the process, but they will eliminate unnecessary delays that are caused by silly mistakes.. The process is long enough you don’t need to lose time because of someone not submitting simple documents during the initial application.
PS: a quick update to my earlier post; Braga seems to be the fastest IRN to process the nationality applications
Porto seems to be processing applications around 24-25 months timeline from the day of the official submission date.
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As someone who hasn’t followed the citizenship application process much, to get processed by Braga do you need to submit your application there in person/on paper?
I think I recall seeing that all the online applications are sent to Porto, no?
Tkrunning, great question and catch; if I recall right till recently ALL online applications were simply forwarded to Porto IRN.. Guess what, Porto IRN was swamped by the sheer number of forwarded applications and that’s the reason why we have 7 temporary resources being assigned, in-person applications getting closed temporarily.. because of this, according to what I read somewhere they’ve stopped forwarding all the online applications to Porto.. While this would make sense, this needs to be verified..
There is also one watch-out that I need to mention; once an IRN is known to be significantly above average performer, e.g. Braga, then as can be expected that IRN is flooded with applications. I think this was the case with islands (Madeira & Azores) where there was a time in which applications were processed really fast but later on I read cases where applications were stuck..
There are some IRN which used to limit the number of applications for e.g. GV - so that there would never be an uncontrolled backlog. I recall Faro doing this.
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Yeah, I can imagine Braga getting flooded now—if it’s even possible to direct applications there. Or did you mean only in-person applications at Porto were closed, so people can still head to Braga if they want?
With the citizenship applications I guess you don’t really get notified when you progress to the next step, you just need to log in and check manually? The only exception being if IRN requests any additional documents or something?
Also, if you have an online application do you know which IRN it gets forwarded to? We should probably have a citizenship application tracker as well, but since I am not so familiar with the process I’m not sure how we’d best design it.
Again great questions
- Porto: still open for through post / online applications, they only closed the in-person applications
- The new online tracker really does not provide much info - there are only 4 levels, and most people are shown to be on stage 3.. This is like how most people were trapped in stage 4 of the previous 7 staged application.
- Perhaps my lawyers get a notification but I don’t see anything unless I manually check it
- In my mind, time has come for Nomadgate to develop an online tracker for citizenship. Hopefully there will be enough graduates to populate the tracker.. Btw I recall seeing few trackers (with the old 7 staged scheme) perhaps they were in fb groups..
- You find out the IRN once you check the system
- Right now the latest application that I’ve seen getting approved from Porto IRN is from 31st of August 2023.. That date is the official submission date on the system.
- For the moment it takes 23-26 months for online Porto applications to have it approved, there is the science of statistics and normal distribution, there are people waiting for much longer.. Though I haven’t heard many lucky ones..
- In the past 12-15 months approvals were something within reach.. Now only Braga seems to be outperformer… We’ll see how things will roll-out.
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Thank you!
We submitted our application in april to Lisbon office and our lawyer has not received the tracking number, so i guess we are still on the first stage.
If you applied in IRN Lisbon (rua fonseca), you should have got process number (to track online) right away (as reported here)
If you applied via lawyer, then it could take up to 6 months to get the process number (to track online). The lawyer who submits online gets the submission number. But the submission number cannot be used to track the process. Just wait if you apply via lawyer.
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Thank you for the information, i feel better now.
Thanks for the update.
I agree that a tracker like in GV would be a good idea.
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I would fully support an online tracker for citizenship on Nomadgate. There are likely enough people on this forum who have already started the nationality process to justify a tracker, and many more are in the pipeline.
There is information online from various Facebook and WhatsApp groups for Portuguese nationality, which is helpful, but the vast majority of them are not GV applicants (e.g., children/grandchildren of Portuguese citizens, those married to Portuguese citizens, Sephardic, etc.) and therefore have different processing times.
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My Lawyer applied for citizenship about 18 months ago and tracking it shows that it is in (state 4 concluido)- it’s in Porto archives, does anyone has experience when the result will be??and is this mean that all papers are Ok??
My regards
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It means simply that you are already portuguese congrats
You can ask for your citozen card
18 months !? Means that you apploed month 03/2024 ?
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Actually 01/2024 therefore 20 months
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Did you apply with the usual naturalization via 5 year-residency article 6.1?
Do you recall if your lawyer applied online, or was it transferred to Porto from some other IRN?
The reason why I’m raising these questions are you are a clear outlier, as the most recent approval that I’ve seen throughout facebook and whatsapp groups is from Aug 31st… So you are 5 months ahead of the main group.
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Yes , I applied via article 6.1( 5 years residency through GV , and my Lawyer applied online
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Most of the trackings on those groups aren’t correct. My close friend gotten approved within 14-Months in Porto. We went together to get the printed version of Birth Certificate and did apply for the cartão cidadao on the same day.
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That’s great for your friend, I don’t really check trackers, but for me the credible source of data is screen-shots of application process that people voluntarily share. Just to let you know few legal companies in Lisbon also indicate that 24-25 months to be the current average process time for online applications (Porto), but from what we see here there seems to be outliers.
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