# Portuguese Universities Expand CLAIM Network for Foreign Students

> Aveiro, Porto and Lusófona join a national CLAIM network, giving international students and researchers on-campus help with AIMA paperwork.

- Source: https://www.growinportugal.com/news/universities-launch-joint-network-to-support-international-s-2026-10-17
- Publisher: GrowIN Portugal (https://www.growinportugal.com)
- Published: 2026-10-17
- Last reviewed: 2026-10-17
- Language: en

> **Key figures — as of 2026-10-17:** Portugal's CLAIM network now covers **more than 150 centres nationwide**, with on-campus desks confirmed at **Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade do Porto and Universidade Lusófona** — AIMA acted as the trigger by replacing SEF in October 2023 — **University of Porto reports ~22% of its 33,000+ students are international**, and **NOVA Lisbon counts 5,620 international students from 125 nationalities (≈22% of its total)**.

## What's actually changed on campus

The headline figure is simple: more than 150 **CLAIM** centres — Centro Local de Apoio à Integração de Migrantes — now operate across Portugal, and a growing number of universities have installed one directly on campus rather than leaving students to queue at a municipal office. Aveiro ran the first CLAIM to appear at a Portuguese university, the result of a partnership with the Alto Comissariado para as Migrações, integrating the national network of more than 150 centres. Porto and Lusófona have since followed with their own desks, effectively stitching together a parallel support system that sits inside the institutions where most foreign students and researchers already spend their days.

This isn't a single press-conference launch — it's cumulative, campus-by-campus rollout that has quietly turned into a de facto national network for academic migrants.

## What the desks actually do

The practical value is concrete, not symbolic. CLAIM_UA supports the international community with document regularisation, obtaining and renewing residence permits, changing visa status — for example from temporary stay to student, or from student to worker — and other procedures with AIMA, coordinating actively to speed up appointments and processes. At the University of Porto, the equivalent office is positioned centrally: the CLAIM U.Porto, based at the Reitoria, provides support and information on matters such as visas, stay regularisation, family reunification, health and work, among other everyday issues.

Lusófona runs its version slightly differently, through EU funding rather than purely institutional budget. The programme is financed by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, under the name "Apoiar e Integrar Migrantes" (AIM), with COFAC/Universidade Lusófona as beneficiary. That funding model matters for foreigners because it signals these aren't short-term pilot projects dependent on one rector's term — they're tied to multi-year EU integration budgets.

## Why this matters for foreigners specifically

Anyone who has tried to book an AIMA appointment independently knows the bottleneck: slots are scarce, and non-EU students arriving for the first time often don't know which permit category applies to them, or what happens when a study permit needs to convert into a work permit after graduation. A campus-based CLAIM desk removes a layer of guesswork by sitting a trained adviser between the student and AIMA's portal, with a direct line for scheduling. For researchers on fixed-term contracts — a group that frequently renews residence documentation annually — having that contact point inside the same institution that employs them is a meaningful reduction in administrative friction, even if it doesn't change the underlying processing times at AIMA itself (see our [visas](/visas/) hub for the current national permit categories and timelines).

## GrowIN's reading of the numbers

The scale here is bigger than it first looks. The University of Porto's 2024 activity report counted more than 33,000 students, of whom roughly 22% were international. That alone works out to over 7,000 foreign students on a single campus. Add NOVA's 2024/25 cohort of approximately 25,300 students, including 5,620 international students from 125 nationalities — around 22% of its student body — and just these two institutions account for close to 13,000 foreign students who may, at some point, need AIMA-related support. Multiply that pattern across Porto, Lisbon, Aveiro and Coimbra's combined international enrolment, and it becomes clear why universities have an incentive to run their own CLAIM desks rather than send thousands of students to already-stretched municipal queues each September. **This is a GrowIN Portugal calculation based on published institutional enrolment data, not an official network-wide figure.**

"When a university puts an AIMA-facing desk on campus, it's effectively pre-empting the bottleneck that hits every intake in September," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.

## What to watch next

Porto's own strategic documents point toward higher international enrolment targets in the coming years, which will increase pressure on these desks rather than ease it. Whether CRUP — the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities — formalises CLAIM participation as a standard requirement across all public institutions, or leaves it to individual universities to opt in, will determine whether this becomes a genuinely nationwide standard or stays concentrated in a handful of larger campuses. Students and researchers should still confirm residence permit requirements directly with AIMA's own portal, since a campus CLAIM desk advises and facilitates — it does not replace the authority's final decision on any application.

For now, the trend is real and growing: Portuguese universities are no longer treating immigration paperwork as something that happens to international students off-campus. They're bringing it inside the gates.

## Sources

- [Universidade de Aveiro](https://www.ua.pt/pt/servicos-apoio)
- [Universidade do Porto](https://www.up.pt/portal/pt/estudar/estudantes-internacionais/informacoes-uteis/)
- [Universidade Lusófona](https://www.ulusofona.pt/claim)
- [AIMA](https://aima.gov.pt)

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© GrowIN Portugal. Cite as: GrowIN Portugal, "Portuguese Universities Expand CLAIM Network for Foreign Students", https://www.growinportugal.com/news/universities-launch-joint-network-to-support-international-s-2026-10-17