Yes. Our lawyer made it very clear (as does the AIMA email) that fee must be paid at appointment.
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Just for my daughter’s appointment in March 2026. Wife/son and I have our GV from 2024 (me) and early 2025 them. My daughter could not make first appointment so she now has hers.
Main issue is with new rules they age out
I wonder when this policy (if you can call it that) changed? We paid the DUC for our cards in mid March '24 and received them the end of April '24. I’d be extremely reticent to pay AIMA €6000 at biometrics. There would then be zero impetus for them to grant final approval and send the cards.
For everyone planning to go ahead I wish you all great fortune and the best of luck with it. 
In the email my lawyer sent (correction) December 30th telling clients to refresh their documents to get a biometrics appointment in 2025 (lol) they said to be prepared to pay at the appointment. I don’t remember if it was true before then as well.
It started in mid-January this year. We paid the fees in January, and haven’t heard anything since.
We applied in May and just received appointments in mid-January for main investors only.
Is it a money grab? Maybe. I doubt 6K Euros is very meaningful to a government. A more optimistic view is that for everyone who previously believed that “my clock already started” they want to rush to get the clock started again. Perhaps that is why they focus on main investors.
The recent legal changes are negative for the program, however other countries are also tightening their programs. I think it remains the best of a slim set of options for eventual citizenship mainly because the required time on the ground is only one week per year (assuming they keep that). If they do not uphold that then we would leave.
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I had my renewal appointment in October 2025, and my children are in November 2025, one month after mine. My residency card expired in January 2025, and my childrens expired in February 2025. Received my appointments in August 2025 for the above mentioned dates.
You’re probably right, however the government is expecting to collect around €85 million in fees from these appointments. And since they recently approved a budget that allocates €74 million for AIMA, it could lead one to think that they are somewhat reliant on people paying up.
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I wonder if the €85m is overly optimistic. Like some of the folks above and probably many in the program this no longer works for my kids due to the 10 years. Not sure if grandfathering doesn’t get put back in if this GV makes any sense. Greece is easier and cheaper on paper. I can see the €85m becoming a much smaller number quickly.
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There is a thread on this. The short answer is that it doesn’t need to Portuguese bank card. For example, if you use Bison, you can get a Spanish bank card that has been reported to work just fine. Others have reported other debit cards work well (some have even had success with credit cards, but I think that should only be a last line of defense).
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We wired the money to our lawyer and they paid. You should not need to have your own Portuguese bank card.
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Thanks Melissa! I read more and gathered this as well…It used to be Final and I was hoping 
I learned from our attorney (in Lisbon) last week that my biometrics appointment (but not my wife’s) has been scheduled for mid-Febr in Cascais. I did not receive a notice directly from AIMA. Info from the law office included the following statment about family members:
“We have not yet received appointments for the family members, but AIMA confirmed these will be sent at a second stage, although they will be for around the same time and place.”
I started the process in Jan/Febr & application was submitted AUG 2025.
All of the new biometric appointments go me thinking, is there an AIMA regulation that requires a decision on final approval within a specific time? I ask because that going to become really relevant to everyone in this thread really quickly.
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We’ve been waiting almost a year since our Bios in Lisbon… so if there is a limit it’s very long!
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Or, AIMA is not abiding with their own regulations. Not unheard of, consider ARI pre-approval is supposed to be done within 90 days of the initial application (and we all know how that went).
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Submitted an application for myself (primary) + my husband (dependent) on May 13th, and received an email this morning from our lawyers (NSM) that I’ve been scheduled for Jan 15th in Cascais. Like everyone else, Husband’s appt is TBD and we were told none of their clients (or clients from other firms they’re talked with) have had any dependents scheduled yet.
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Same here….
The payment is due at the time of appointment. And the process could ‘slow’ down from that time to the issue of the card itself - which is when one atleast starts the clock as per the proposed new regulations.
If I was not into the process with the first card, I would look for ways to wind this process down and walk away. Even now, I am on the fence if I want to pay for the next renewal (and the one afer that etc even as the ‘moral clause’ of the minister will likely result in more changes to when one can ever get a passport)
Applied (as primary) on Sep 30 2025 and just received notification of biometrics in Faro on Apr 23 2026. My wife’s application was made on 10 Oct and is still in “Awaiting Application Submission” despite payment, haven’t heard back re. progress or an appointment for her.
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