Key figures — as of 2026-08-27: Portugal's minimum wage rose to €920/month on 1 January 2026 — up from €870 — automatically lifting the D7 passive-income threshold to €920/month plus €11,040 in savings; family supplements add 50% for a spouse and 30% per child; the D3 "Highly Qualified Activity" visa now requires roughly €1,611–€2,100/month depending on occupation category; the Digital Nomad (D8) floor sits at €3,680/month.
The number that moves everything else
Portugal's minimum wage went up €50 a month this year, to €920, but that single figure ripples through nearly every passive-income and skilled-worker visa route AIMA processes. Portugal's D7 visa requirements in 2026 are anchored to the national minimum wage, which rose to €920 per month with effect from January 1, 2026 under Decree-Law No. 139/2025. Because the threshold is a multiple of the minimum wage rather than a fixed euro figure set once and forgotten, nobody has to pass new legislation to raise it — it simply moves every January.
For the D7, the passive-income visa aimed at retirees, remote landlords and anyone living off dividends or pensions, the mechanics are straightforward. The minimum passive income to obtain the D7 visa is tied to the minimum salary in Portugal — in 2026, €920 per month — and the sum must be increased by 50% for a spouse or parent and by 30% for each child. On top of the income test, the minimum passive income requirement for a single applicant is €920 per month and savings of €11,040 per year, with the same family multipliers applied to the savings cushion consulates and AIMA expect to see in a bank statement.
What this means for families
Run the maths on a couple with two children — the profile most likely to feel this. The family multiplier for a spouse plus two children is 1 + 0.5 + 0.3 + 0.3 = 2.1 times the base figure. In 2025, with the minimum wage at €870, that household needed to show roughly €1,827 a month in passive income. In 2026, at €920, the same household needs about €1,932 — an increase of €105 a month, or €1,260 a year, purely from the wage adjustment, before anyone's cost of living has changed at all. The savings requirement moves in exact lockstep: a family of four now needs to demonstrate close to €23,184 in reserve rather than roughly €21,924 last year. That's GrowIN's own calculation from the published multipliers, not a figure any authority states directly — but it's the real-world number an applicant's accountant or lawyer will use.
"A minimum-wage adjustment that looks minor on a payslip becomes a meaningful jump in the paperwork a family of four has to produce for AIMA," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
The "Global Talent" route works differently — but the pressure is similar
The D3, sometimes marketed informally as a "global talent" or highly qualified activity visa, isn't pegged to the minimum wage at all — it moves with the national average or median wage and the Social Support Index (IAS) instead. To meet the Portugal D3 Visa salary requirement, you must earn a gross monthly salary of at least €1,611.39 — three times the IAS, or 1.5 times higher than the national average gross salary. Depending on how the occupation is classified, that floor can run higher still: with Portugal's 2026 minimum wage at €920 and the national median gross salary at approximately €1,400, the general D3 threshold sits at approximately €2,100 per month gross. The related EU Blue Card route sits close by, with a minimum threshold for the EU Blue Card in Portugal of €1,750 per month in 2026. The genuine Global Talent Programme (GTP), which channels applicants through university or research partnerships rather than a private-sector job, does not rely on a single fixed salary threshold and is instead assessed through the quality of the highly qualified activity itself — worth knowing before assuming every "talent" route works like the D3.
By contrast, the D8 digital nomad visa stays anchored to four times the minimum wage. Applicants must earn four times the national minimum wage, or €3,680 per month in 2026, so that threshold rose by €200 a month this year for the same reason the D7 did.
Practical implications
None of this changes eligibility criteria in a legal sense — it just raises the bar applicants must clear with the same paperwork they'd have prepared last year. Anyone gathering six months of bank statements or pension letters for a late-2025 application should check the figure that will apply at their actual AIMA appointment date, not the date they started collecting documents, since assessments generally use the rate in force when the case is reviewed. Our visas hub has the current breakdown by route, and outcomes always depend on AIMA's own assessment of the file — this isn't a guarantee of approval.
What to watch next
The minimum wage typically rises again each January under multi-year government targets, so expect another automatic increase to D7, D8 and savings thresholds at the start of 2027. Anyone budgeting a move should build in a buffer above this year's minimum rather than the exact figure, because by the time a visa appointment lands, the bar may already have moved again.
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