What happened
A special task force of 28 judges has cleared roughly a fifth of the enormous pile of lawsuits that foreign residents have filed against AIMA, Portugal’s immigration agency. According to figures reported by Diário de Notícias and confirmed by the Superior Council of Administrative and Tax Courts (CSTAF), the council issued rulings for 22,436 cases over a three-month period. That represents the clearance of approximately one-fifth of the total backlog, which stood at 124,000 cases when the special group began its work in April.
For anyone who has already gone to court because AIMA sat on a permit renewal, an interview request or a family reunification file, this is the first real evidence that the queue is moving — but it’s still a very long queue.
The numbers, month by month
The judges work in acumulação, meaning this is on top of their regular caseload, not instead of it. A task force comprising 28 judges, working on these cases alongside their regular duties, resolved 18% of the total lawsuits filed by immigrants against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum.
Output climbed steadily. After 5,691 rulings were handed down in April, May saw a peak of 8,705 decisions, and high productivity was maintained in June, with 8,040 cases concluded. The pace of resolution averaged 247 rulings per day across the group, or roughly eight per judge.
The task force itself was created earlier this year, when CSTAF opened 50 places for volunteer judges but only 28 came forward. According to CSTAF’s own figures reported in March, at the point the initiative was approved there were 130,946 processes pending at the Lisbon Administrative Court (TACL) — the vast majority of them, 129,239, being intimações (summons demanding AIMA act to protect rights, freedoms and guarantees), with smaller numbers of administrative actions, precautionary proceedings and nationality/asylum cases. The plan runs on an initial six-month cycle with two formal reviews — one at three months, one at six — and it is scheduled to resume for its second phase in September.
Why a lawsuit alone doesn’t fix your status
This is the part that matters most if you’re one of the litigants. Filing a case against AIMA gets you a receipt proving the lawsuit exists — it does not, by itself, prove you’re legally resident. Without such a final ruling, many foreigners possess only proof of the lawsuit, a document that police authorities do not consider sufficient to prove legal residency, thereby exposing these individuals to orders to voluntarily leave the country. In other words, until a judge actually decides your case — usually ordering AIMA to schedule an interview, issue a decision, or hand over a residence card — you remain in a grey zone that GNR or SEF-successor checks can flag as irregular.
There’s a wrinkle that could work in your favour, though. Judges overseeing the effort have said publicly that a meaningful share of pending lawsuits may already be moot in practice, because AIMA resolved the underlying case administratively without telling the court. One appellate judge involved in coordinating the effort estimated that as many as 80,000 of the pending files could already be settled outside the courtroom, simply awaiting the paperwork that formally closes them. If that’s your situation, it’s worth checking your AIMA process status directly and asking your lawyer to confirm with the court registry whether your case can be closed rather than litigated.
The bigger backlog context
This judicial push sits inside a much larger story. AIMA’s own Mission Structure, created to work through the post-SEF handover backlog, formally wound down at the end of 2025, though a residual unit in Porto keeps handling unresolved files. As of early July, officials told parliament roughly 30,000 more complex cases were still awaiting a decision within that structure. Meanwhile, the court backlog that spawned this judicial task force has its own volatile history — from around 50,000 pending cases reported in June 2025 to well over 130,000 by early 2026, driven by hundreds of new filings arriving daily.
The strain runs both directions. In May, the president of the Supreme Administrative Court described AIMA as being in “total panic” after the surge of rulings hit the agency faster than it could process them, warning that dozens more judges — not just 28 — would be needed to clear the underlying court backlog by the government’s own 2029 target.
What to watch next
The task force pauses for the judicial summer recess and resumes in September for the second half of its six-month mandate. Whether the pace holds — or whether AIMA’s own capacity to actually execute rulings (issuing cards, booking interviews) keeps up with the judgments — will determine if this becomes a genuine unblocking rather than a paper exercise. If you’ve filed or are considering filing a case, keep your lawyer updated on any direct communication from AIMA, since a quiet administrative resolution could reach you before the court ruling does.
For background on how residence permit renewals and AIMA’s online portal work, see our visas hub. If your case is heading to litigation or you’re unsure whether to sue at all, it’s worth getting a proper legal opinion before committing — outcomes still depend entirely on the courts and the agency, and nothing here should be read as a guarantee of any particular timeline or result.
This article was produced with AI assistance and editorial oversight in line with our editorial policy. It is general information, not legal or tax advice.