Please share your timeline to help make sense of the SEF Portimão office workings for others in the same situation as you from the time you submit your biometrics till you receive your resident card. Thanks, I appreciate your input, I’ll start:
Biometrics: 13 October 2021
Final Doc Submission: 23 November 2021
Approval received: Not yet or Yes (date)
Payment made: Not yet or Yes (date)
Card/s received: Not yet or Yes (date)
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Is the portimão location notably slow or something?
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Not necessarily, started this post specifically to help people who have applied to the Portimão SEF office for their GV to compare/share their timelines.
Biometric taken 12 Nov 2021
Updated docs Submitted 20 Dec 2021
Still waiting
It seems only very few did the Biometric here . If there are others here it will help to know the timelines
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Thought I’d post my question here as this thread was specifically dedicated to the SEF Portimao timeline. Judging from how quiet this thread has been either not many people have done biometrics in Portimao or else they are just not on this thread - most likely the latter!
So my question - just wondering if anyone has recently done their biometrics at SEF Portimao and if so what their timeline has been from biometrics to issuance/receipt of residence card?
We (family of four) have our biometrics appointment this coming Monday 6 March in Portimao. Happy to post afterwards as to how it went and update with our timeline in future.
Might be important to know if anyone did biometrics and DIDNT have to submit updated paperwork a month later. Anyone show up with everything they need and get final approval more quickly?
Just completed biometrics today. All went smoothly and staff were very friendly. Lawyer estimates 3-6 months from biometrics to cards at this office. Fingers crossed! I will update as to when we get our final approval and cards.
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We completed our biometrics at Portimao on Feb 17th. We had a few documents that took us until March 15th and receive confirmation.
Haven’t heard any further info on this yet. Now we just wait according to our lawyer.
Biometrics: 17 February 2023
Final Doc Submission: 15 March 2023
Approval received: Not yet
Payment made: Not yet
Card/s received: Not yet
Anecdotal evidence indicates lower volume biometric sites like Portimao have had better turn around times. So we are hoping for the better. 
They have also been very accommodating - I had an appointment, my wife did not. But after a little bit of back and forth, they accepted her biometrics even though she didn’t have an appointment the same day. (We were both pre-approved on the same date, something got lost in the system)