Key figures — as of 2026-10-17: AIMA has resolved 98% of 940,000 notifications handled by its legacy mission structure, leaving roughly 5,000 of 445,000 old manifestação de interesse files unprocessed — but only 6,000 of 46,000 pending Golden Visa applications (about 13%) have actually been decided, despite 30,000 biometric appointments already scheduled; the government also cited an 85% slowdown in migration-flow growth between 2024 and 2025.
What was actually said on October 7
Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro gave Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs a tally designed to show the backlog crisis is over. He told the parliamentary committee that 98% of the 940,000 notifications handled by AIMA's temporary mission structure have been resolved. On the older regularisation queue specifically, just 5,000 of 445,000 pending applications still unresolved, he said — a queue that relates to the former "expressions of interest" system, which allowed people to seek regularisation after arriving in Portugal without a residence visa.
On migration itself, the minister argued the real story is deceleration rather than retreat. Portugal's foreign population continued to grow between 2024 and 2025, increasing by around 50,000, which he described as an 85% slowdown in the flow, while insisting enforcement needs to continue. He framed this as the end of one chapter: Portugal is entering a "second phase" of immigration policy, with approval of the Law of Return marking the final major legislative step of the first phase.
The session also confirmed a leadership change — board member César Teixeira is taking over as AIMA president from Pedro Portugal Gaspar, who is departing for the Competition Authority.
The number that matters more: Golden Visa decisions
The 98% figure applies to a specific legacy bucket, not to every file sitting on an AIMA desk. The Golden Visa queue tells a very different story. On October 7, the minister told the committee that AIMA had processed approximately 6,000 of 46,000 pending Golden Visa applications, or around 13%, while the agency had also scheduled approximately 30,000 biometric appointments. That gap between appointments booked and decisions issued is the real bottleneck now. As Get Golden Visa partner Werner Gruner put it, "the constraint has moved to the stage between biometrics and the decision itself."
That matters because the government previously committed to clearing the Golden Visa backlog by the end of 2026, and with approximately 40,000 of the reported 46,000 applications still awaiting processing as of October 7, meeting that target depends on the pace of decisions.
GrowIN's read: do the arithmetic on the government's own deadline. Forty thousand applications remaining, roughly eleven weeks left in the year, means AIMA would need to decide well over 3,500 cases a month for the rest of 2026 to hit its self-imposed target — more than double the total it has managed across the whole year to date (6,000). Nothing in the minister's testimony suggests resourcing has scaled to match that.
Why the headline figure doesn't mean what it sounds like
AIMA's "resolved" statistic has been contested before, and nothing in October's testimony changes that. Earlier this year the agency cited a similar headline figure for the wider caseload, and immigration lawyers pointed out that "resolved" bundles approvals together with archived and rejected files — not only cases where a residence permit was actually issued. The same caution applies to the 98%/5,000 figure: it measures notifications processed by a temporary structure, not necessarily permits in applicants' hands.
The migration slowdown claim rests on a similarly selective comparison. Compared to 2022 and 2023, where the rise in the immigrant population was 326,090 and 275,929 new entries respectively, the contrast with 2025 is evident, with only 59,113 new foreign citizens residing in the country. That is a real deceleration — but it's measured against two unusually high years driven by the old expressions-of-interest system, not against a long-run baseline.
"A near-cleared legacy queue and a barely-started Golden Visa queue are two different stories wearing the same press release," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
What this means if you're waiting on a file
If your case sits inside the old manifestação de interesse system, the odds of a resolution this year are genuinely high — only a few thousand files remain nationally. If you're one of the roughly 40,000 people still waiting on a Golden Visa decision, October's testimony confirms the wait is not over: having a biometric appointment booked is no longer the hard part, getting a decision afterward is. Anyone navigating either track should keep documentation airtight, since AIMA's strict complete-file policy means a single missing document can still send an application to the back of the queue. For a fuller breakdown of current visa routes and what AIMA actually requires at each stage, see our visas hub.
What to watch next
Expect the new AIMA president, César Teixeira, to face early questions on whether the Golden Visa pace can realistically double before December 31. Parliament is also due to review a new statelessness law, and the promised "national integration plan" — flagged as the centrepiece of the second phase — has not yet been published. Until both land, the practical experience for newcomers will keep depending less on national percentages and more on which specific queue their file happens to be sitting in.