Key figures — as of 2026-08-25: AIMA inherited roughly 50,000–55,000 pending Golden Visa cases (investors and family members) when it replaced SEF in October 2023 — the government has pledged to resolve all outstanding files during 2026, projecting €85 million in associated revenue — average processing currently runs 12–18 months from submission to first residence card — AIMA issued 4,990 Golden Visa-related permits in 2025 (2,081 to investors, 2,909 to family members).
A pledge with a deadline attached
Portugal's Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, told parliament during 2026 State Budget hearings that the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) will resolve outstanding golden visa applications in 2026, generating 85 million euros in revenue. That single sentence carries weight for the tens of thousands of investors who bought into Portugal's residency-by-investment route years ago and are still waiting for a card.
The backlog itself is well documented. When AIMA took over from SEF, it inherited more than 50,000 pending applications, and in 2024 issued 2,081 permits to main investors and 2,909 to family members. Other tallies put the figure closer to 55,000 once renewals and family reunification cases already logged for 2025 are folded in. Either way, the scale is the story: a single administrative queue holding tens of thousands of files, each attached to a family whose long-term plans in Portugal are on hold.
Why this year, why now
The timing of the pledge has drawn sharp criticism. It landed just one day after parliament approved a controversial change to the nationality law, extending citizenship eligibility to seven years for EU and CPLP nationals and ten years for others. Lawyers quoted in the immigration press have called the sequencing "shameless" — a promise of speed arriving in the same week as a rule that makes the overall path to citizenship longer. Under the new law, in force since 19 May 2026, the residency clock only starts once the residence card is actually issued — which means every extra month AIMA takes to process a Golden Visa file pushes back the naturalisation date by exactly that much.
AIMA has not been idle. The agency recruited 300 new staff members — 100 specialists, 150 technical assistants, and 50 operational assistants — representing a 25% increase in the team handling investor cases, and the government reported that 93% of all pending immigration cases across all visa types had been resolved by late 2025. Golden Visa files, though, were deliberately left until last — the minister has said as much publicly, framing it as a matter of social equity: the wealthiest applicants waited longest while more vulnerable cases were cleared first.
The maths behind the pledge
Here is where the promise gets tested against arithmetic. AIMA processed 4,990 Golden Visa-related permits across the whole of 2025 — investors and family members combined. GrowIN Portugal's own reading of that pace: if AIMA is to resolve even half of the roughly 50,000-case backlog by 31 December 2026, it would need to clear somewhere in the region of 25,000 files in a matter of months — a rate several times faster than anything the agency managed in 2025. That's not necessarily impossible given the staffing increase and the new online renewals portal, but it is a very different order of magnitude from last year's output, and it explains why lawyers are treating the "by year's end" language with caution rather than relief.
A promise to clear a backlog and actually clearing it are two different calendars — and investors have learned to trust neither blindly, as GrowIN Portugal Editorial puts it.
What's actually improved
It isn't all scepticism. Since 2 February 2026, it is possible for Golden Visa applicants to renew their residency permit on the online renewal portal, cutting down in-person visits for straightforward renewals. Applicants who filed in late 2025 have started receiving biometric appointment slots for the first half of 2026, and the realistic processing window has narrowed from the 24-months-plus horror stories of 2023–24 to something closer to 12–18 months on average, though some reports vary from 3 to 15 months depending on priority and workload. AIMA also now issues interim proof-of-approval documents so approved applicants aren't left in limbo while waiting for the physical card.
The litigation numbers tell their own story about how much trust remains. Reporting from January 2026 put pending court cases against AIMA at close to 125,000, prompting the courts to open an emergency competition for 50 temporary judicial posts. That's not a sign of an agency that has fully won back investor confidence, even as headline resolution rates climb.
What to watch next
Three things matter for anyone with a pending Golden Visa file: whether AIMA publishes interim progress figures before December rather than a single year-end announcement; whether biometric appointment invitations extend to family members at the same pace as main applicants, since family cases have lagged; and whether the government offers any transitional protection for applicants caught between the old and new nationality residency clocks. None of that is guaranteed, and outcomes ultimately rest with AIMA's own processing decisions. For a fuller breakdown of current Golden Visa routes and realistic timelines, see our visas hub, and for country-specific guidance our team can review at services.
Investors currently in the queue should keep documentation current, respond immediately to any AIMA request, and treat "by year's end" as an aspiration to monitor rather than a date to plan around.