Key figures — as of 2026-09-27: 1,585,854 foreign citizens residing in Portugal at end-2025 — up 38,000 (2.7%) on 2024 — AIMA issued over 500,000 residence permits during the year: 337,880 new grants and 189,331 renewals — Brazilians remain the largest group at 493,622 (31.1%) — asylum applications fell from 2,677 to 1,765.
The headline number
Portugal's foreign resident population passed 1,585,854 at the end of 2025, according to AIMA's newly published Migration and Asylum Report 2025. At the end of 2025, Portugal had a total of 1,585,854 foreign citizens residing in the country, 38,000 more than the previous year, according to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum. That's the figure making headlines this week, but the more useful story for anyone currently stuck in the AIMA queue is what's happening underneath it: growth has slammed on the brakes after three years of extraordinary expansion.
The 2.7% year-on-year increase marks a significant deceleration compared with the growth registered in 2023 and 2024. AIMA itself frames this as intentional. In the report, AIMA says the slight increase reflects the "stabilisation of new entries into national territory and the consolidation of a foreign community structurally integrated into the economic and social life of the country". The government went further: the Secretary of State for Immigration described it as a "total reversal" ("inversão total") of what he called the "uncontrolled" immigration policy that persisted until 2024.
What actually happened at AIMA's counters
Behind the population number is an agency that spent 2025 processing an enormous backlog rather than opening the door to genuinely new arrivals at the previous pace. During 2025, AIMA issued more than 500,000 residence permits — with a focus on grants, with 337,880 permits issued, and renewals, with 189,331 permits — and throughout the year the agency continued the work of correction, validation, and statistical updating begun the previous year, aiming for greater accuracy in characterising the resident foreign population.
That correction effort matters for interpreting the topline figure. AIMA notes that "the issuance date may not coincide with the citizen's entry date into the country, given the complexity and volume of processes under analysis" — in plain terms, a permit stamped in 2025 could reflect someone who arrived years earlier and is only now being processed through the legacy queue.
GrowIN's read on the numbers: Portugal's foreign population grew by roughly 499,000 between the 2023 and 2024 counts (from 1,044,606 to 1,543,697), largely a statistical catch-up as AIMA cleared the SEF-era backlog. The 2025 increase of just 38,000 represents a drop of over 90% in net annual growth year-on-year — the sharpest deceleration since AIMA replaced SEF in October 2023. Put another way, AIMA processed permit activity (500,000+ grants and renewals) equivalent to roughly a third of the entire foreign resident stock in a single year, even as the net population barely moved. That gap between enormous processing volume and flat population growth is the real story of 2025.
The service-desk numbers back up the scale of the operation: 671,273 appointments were registered and 605,890 consultations were carried out over the year.
Who's actually here
Of the 1,585,854 foreign nationals residing in Portugal, 493,622 are Brazilian (31.1%) — still by far the largest community. They are followed by Angola (99,050), India (91,405), Ukraine (84,889), Cabo Verde (71,005), Bangladesh (55,579), Nepal (53,304), Guinea-Bissau (51,935), the United Kingdom (47,726), Italy (42,418), Pakistan (42,042) and São Tomé (41,800). There's some reshuffling near the top: Angolans overtook Indians in the rankings, while a further 2,000 Italians pushed Italy just ahead of Pakistan and São Tomé.
The population skews heavily working-age: 84.6% are of working age (18–64), and the majority are men (55.6%). Asylum flows, by contrast, are shrinking fast — applications for international protection fell from 2,677 in 2024 to 1,765 in 2025, and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum dropped 69.6%, from 204 to 62.
What "stabilising" means if you're waiting on AIMA
For someone mid-process right now — a D7 retiree waiting on a first residence card, a Startup Visa founder chasing a renewal, a family stuck since 2023 — "stabilisation" doesn't mean instant relief. It means the historic flood of backlog cases is finally draining, but the agency is still running near capacity. Our own visas hub goes through what to actually expect at each stage of the AIMA process, including realistic timelines for grants versus renewals: see our [visas guide](/visas/).
"A record permit count and a near-flat population figure aren't a contradiction — they're proof AIMA spent 2025 catching up on the past rather than opening the door to a new wave," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
Practically, that means: renewals should keep moving through the online Portal das Renovações at a decent clip given the 189,331 processed in 2025 alone; new grants remain the bottleneck, since 337,880 were issued but plenty of applications from the pre-2024 surge are still working through validation. Anyone filing fresh paperwork should expect the agency's stated processing windows to be optimistic rather than guaranteed — AIMA's own report acknowledges the gap between issuance dates and actual arrival dates.
What to watch next
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) is expected to publish its own independent count in the coming months, which should either confirm or complicate AIMA's figures — officials have previously flagged discrepancies between administrative permit data and actual residency. Also worth tracking: how the tightened 2026 Nationality Law, which extended naturalisation residency requirements to seven or ten years, interacts with this now-larger cohort of long-term residents approaching citizenship eligibility. If you're navigating AIMA appointments, renewals, or a nationality application built on this changing baseline, our team can help you plan around the current bottlenecks — visit our /services/ page for support.
Portugal's foreign population isn't shrinking, and it isn't exploding either — for the first time since SEF's dissolution, it's just holding steady.