Key figures — as of 2026-09-17: Manifestação de interesse abolished since 3 June 2024 (Decree-Law 37-A/2024) — Parliament voted 11 June 2026 to also end residency-via-professional-course applications filed from inside Portugal — President Seguro promulgated the new Lei de Estrangeiros e de Concessão de Asilo on 31 August 2026 after the Constitutional Court unanimously cleared it — detention for removal extended from 60 to 180 days, renewable for another 180, and re-entry bans for those forcibly removed rise to 5 years.
The last loophole closes
Foreigners hoping to land in Portugal on a tourist visa, enrol in a technical course, and quietly convert that into a residence permit no longer have that option. Parliament voted on 11 June 2026 to strike out the provision that let people the possibility of requesting a residence permit within national territory through attendance at a vocational course — a route that, ironically, only opened wider in April 2026 when AIMA briefly started accepting appointment requests for it through its online contact form, before the government moved to shut it for good. The same package eliminates regularisation via a resident minor child and scraps the "deferimento tácito" (tacit approval) that used to protect applicants from AIMA's own delays.
This is the final nail in a coffin that started closing on 3 June 2024, when the manifestação de interesse — the mechanism that let people already working informally in Portugal file for residency without ever visiting a consulate — was revoked. Since then, alternative "backdoors" like the professional course route had quietly absorbed demand, particularly among Brazilians, who make up Portugal's largest foreign community. Officials at the Diário de Notícias were candid about why they moved pre-emptively: the government anticipated the trend and removed the possibility from the law, even though the route was not, at the time, being used abusively.
What the Constitutional Court and President decided
The broader reform — officially the Lei de Estrangeiros e de Concessão de Asilo — cleared its last hurdle when the Constitutional Court, ruling on President António José Seguro's referral, decided by unanimous vote that the 11 contested provisions were not unconstitutional. Seguro then promulgated the law intended to accelerate the removal of foreign nationals living in the country illegally, signing the text on 31 August 2026. It takes effect once published in the Diário da República.
The text also confirms that residence permits for study — including vocational study — now require a prior consular visa for certain residence authorisations for study, formalising what the government first floated in May 2026. Anyone still weighing a course-based path from abroad should assume it no longer exists and start at the nearest Portuguese consulate instead — see our visas hub for the current legal routes.
Faster removals, longer bans
The enforcement side is just as consequential. The law raises the maximum stay in temporary installation centres from 60 to 180 days, renewable for a further 180 where a person refuses to cooperate or where third countries delay travel documents. Deportees now face a longer freeze-out: earlier drafts described the Government's proposal now goes to Parliament to extend the re-entry ban after forced removal, and the final text sets that ban at five years, with room to increase it in aggravated cases. The government's stated motive is blunt — minister António Leitão Amaro argued "there must be consequences for illegality, and that implies removal, and faster removal," adding "Portugal was among the European countries with the lowest removal rates".
GrowIN's analysis
Here's the practical gap this creates. Under the old course route, an applicant could get an AIMA foothold for the cost of enrolment fees, sometimes a few hundred euros, before ever proving stable income. Now that door is shut, the realistic legal alternatives are the D7 (income at least the €920 minimum wage, plus savings) or the D8 digital nomad visa, which demands roughly €3,680 a month in foreign income and about €11,040 in savings before a visa is even issued. In other words, GrowIN Portugal's calculation puts the "entry bar" for a solo applicant roughly twelve times higher in verified monthly income than what the course loophole ever required — a gap that will push far more people toward the consulate route or out of the system altogether.
"Portugal has traded an administrative shortcut for a much narrower, much slower front door — and there's no shortcut left for those who miss it," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
What to watch next
Publication in the Diário da República will fix the exact entry-into-force date; transitional rules for people already mid-process (course enrolments, pending AIMA appointments) remain the open legal question, and Portuguese courts may yet see challenges from those who built their move around rules that existed weeks ago. Check AIMA's official channel (aima.gov.pt) before making any decision, and if you're already in Portugal without status, get professional legal advice now rather than after a notification arrives.
Anyone planning a move should treat the visa-first rule as non-negotiable from today: apply at a Portuguese consulate in your country of residence before travelling, not after.