# Golden Visa Lawyers Split on When Portugal's New Citizenship Clock Starts

> Portugal's 2026 nationality law moved the citizenship clock to permit issuance, not application — but lawyers disagree on how it applies to Golden Visa holders already waiting.

- Source: https://www.growinportugal.com/news/golden-visa-holders-confused-over-when-their-citizenship-clo-2026-10-07
- Publisher: GrowIN Portugal (https://www.growinportugal.com)
- Published: 2026-10-07
- Last reviewed: 2026-10-07
- Language: en

> **Key figures — as of 2026-10-07:** Nationality Law (Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026) in force since **19 May 2026** — residency requirement now **10 years** for most non-EU, non-CPLP nationals, **7 years** for EU/CPLP nationals, up from 5 — clock now starts at **residence-permit issuance**, not application date — some investors have waited **3–6 years** for AIMA to issue a first Golden Visa card, meaning a worst-case reading could push real wait times past **13 years**.

## A rule change with no instruction manual

Portugal's citizenship reform landed with a clear headline — five years became ten — but the detail now causing sleepless nights among immigration lawyers is a different clause entirely: where the clock starts. The law tightens how residence time is calculated by counting only periods of lawful residence supported by valid work/residence permits and by starting the clock on the date the residence permit is issued rather than the date of application.

For a Golden Visa holder, that single word — "issued" — is the difference between planning for a passport in the early 2030s or the late 2030s.

## Why lawyers disagree

The statute itself doesn't settle what happens to people already mid-process. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 explicitly grandfathers nationality applications filed on or before 18 May 2026, but is silent on residency-stage holders who have not yet filed, and AIMA has published no position on whether prior residency time counts toward the new clock. That silence has split the legal community into roughly three camps.

One reading, echoed by several advisory firms, treats the rule mechanically: the qualifying period is counted from the date the first residence permit is issued, meaning the date printed on the card, not the application submission date — full stop, no exceptions for anyone who hasn't already filed for nationality.

A second, more favourable interpretation ties eligibility to when the Golden Visa paperwork was lodged relative to the law's publication. Under this reading, if submission fees were paid before gazetting, the citizenship clock continues to run from the date of fee payment, even though the duration is now 10 years, and AIMA processing delays will not push the clock back. Only files opened after the law's gazetting, on this view, fall under the stricter issuance-date rule.

A third, more combative argument is building inside law firms rather than government guidance. It is currently untested in practice, but Portuguese administrative law requires the State to decide a residence permit application within 90 days, so arguably the citizenship clock should begin on day 91 from submission, regardless of when AIMA actually issues the card. Nobody has taken that argument before a judge successfully yet, but it's the one investors' counsel keep raising in client calls.

## The backlog makes this existential, not academic

This wouldn't matter much if AIMA processed cases quickly. It doesn't. AIMA has been processing Golden Visa applications well outside its 90-day legal requirement, with lawyers representing investors reporting waits of three to six years for a decision. That has pushed more than 500 investors — a group mobilised largely through WhatsApp and drawn predominantly from American investors — toward collective legal action against the state.

**GrowIN's own calculation:** take the fact sheet's documented AIMA Golden Visa processing range of roughly 12–36 months and apply the issuance-date reading. An investor applying today, facing a mid-range 24-month wait for a first card, wouldn't start the 10-year citizenship clock until 2028 — meaning no nationality application before 2038, a full 12 years after their original investment application. Under the pre-2026 rules, the same investor would have been eligible around 2031. That's not a modest delay; it's roughly a 140% increase in total time-to-passport for someone applying from scratch right now, before even touching the disputed grandfathering question for people already in the pipeline.

If investors' reading prevails, an applicant who applied in 2022 and is still waiting for AIMA to issue a card in 2026 sees the practical timeline to citizenship eligibility shift from five years to closer to 13 or 14 years.

## What to watch next

The statute is silent on whether residency time already accrued before 19 May 2026 carries forward to the new clock, and the Portuguese Government has 90 days from publication to update the Regulamento da Nacionalidade Portuguesa. That regulation — not the law itself — is where the practical answer will likely surface. Until it does, AIMA's online renewals portal and IRN's registry offices are operating on administrative discretion rather than published rule.

As GrowIN Portugal Editorial puts it: *Portugal didn't just double the citizenship wait — it also moved the starting line, and no one in government has yet said exactly where it now stands.*

Golden Visa holders uncertain where they fall should hold off on assumptions until implementing guidance appears, and should treat any firm promising a guaranteed timeline with scepticism — this is advisory territory, not settled law. For a fuller walkthrough of the current residency-to-citizenship pathway, see our [visas](/visas/) hub, and speak to our [services](/services/) team before filing a nationality application under the new rules.

## Sources

- [AIMA](https://aima.gov.pt)
- [IRN / Justiça](https://irn.justica.gov.pt)
- [Global Residence Index](https://globalresidenceindex.com/portugal-golden-residency/)
- [American Emigration](https://americanemigration.com/news/americans-lead-500-strong-lawsuit-against-portugals-golden-visa-shift)

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© GrowIN Portugal. Cite as: GrowIN Portugal, "Golden Visa Lawyers Split on When Portugal's New Citizenship Clock Starts", https://www.growinportugal.com/news/golden-visa-holders-confused-over-when-their-citizenship-clo-2026-10-07