The 23 June 2025 reforms: what was announced, what became law

• 23 June 2025: the Council of Ministers approved two bills — a stricter Nationality Act and a tighter Foreigners Act — plus a decree extending expired residence permits to 15 October 2025 and a bill creating a foreigners-and-borders unit in the PSP
• What became law: the Foreigners Act amendment as Lei n.º 61/2025 (in force 23 October 2025); the nationality reform as Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 (in force 19 May 2026)
• Naturalisation now takes 7 years of legal residence for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and 10 years for others, plus language, culture and civic knowledge — files lodged before 19 May 2026 keep the old five-year rule
• Immigration: the job-seeker visa was limited to qualified profiles, the CPLP permit now requires a consular visa first, and family reunification was reshaped

On 23 June 2025 the newly formed Government used its first Council of Ministers to announce the tightest package of nationality and immigration rules in two decades. This article records what was announced that day, from the Council’s own communiqué, and what each announcement became once Parliament had voted — because the two are not identical, and files are decided on the law, not on the press conference.

What the Council of Ministers announced

The communiqué of 23 June 2025 lists four measures on migration:

1. A bill amending the Nationality Act, “with more demanding requirements”: naturalisation after legal residence of 7 or 10 years, “depending on whether the citizens are Lusophone or not”; new requirements of knowledge of Portuguese culture, of the fundamental rights and duties attached to nationality and of the political organisation of the State; the possibility of loss of nationality for persons naturalised less than ten years earlier and sentenced to five years or more of effective prison for serious crimes; and, for children born in Portugal to foreign parents, a requirement of three years of the parent’s legal residence.
2. A bill creating the Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras in the PSP police, to run airport border control, returns and the inspection of foreigners.
3. A bill amending the Foreigners Act “to regulate and limit migration flows”: restricting the job-seeker visa to highly qualified activities, limiting the CPLP residence permit to holders of a CPLP residence visa, and adjusting the requirements, conditions and procedure of family reunification in line with the EU directive.
4. A decree-law extending residence permits that expired between 22 February 2020 and 30 June 2025, accepted “on the same terms” until 15 October 2025 — the last of the automatic extensions begun in the pandemic (Decreto-Lei n.º 85-B/2025).

What Parliament made of it

Immigration: Lei n.º 61/2025 of 22 October. The Foreigners Act amendment passed largely as announced and entered into force the day after publication. The general job-seeker visa disappeared (no applications from 23 October 2025), replaced by a visa for qualified job-seekers (art. 57.º-A) with an AIMA appointment date written into the visa; the CPLP residence permit is now requested at AIMA by holders of a CPLP residence visa (arts 75.º n.º 2 and 87.º-A); family reunification requires the sponsor to have held a permit for two years — 15 months for a spouse who cohabited for 18 months before arrival — with children and the parents of Portuguese children exempt, and a 180-day window let families already in Portugal apply from inside; and the deadline for pending expression-of-interest files was fixed at 31 December 2025 (see the end of the expression of interest).

Nationality: Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 of 18 May. The nationality bill took longer — approved by Parliament on 1 April 2026, promulgated on 3 May, published on 18 May and in force on 19 May 2026 — and its final text differs from the June announcement on several points:

The practical consequences for each route — residence, marriage, descent, children born in Portugal — are in our Portuguese citizenship guides.

What it means in 2026

• Anyone who reached five years of legal residence and lodged the naturalisation file before 19 May 2026 is judged under the old rule; anyone who reached it later waits for seven or ten.
• Time counts only under valid residence titles; tourist stays and lapsed permits do not — one reason the 2025 renewal reforms (online portal, end of automatic extensions on 15 October 2025) matter for the nationality clock. See renewing a residence permit.
• The language requirement stays at A2 (CIPLE or a recognised course); the culture test is new and regulated separately — see Portuguese language certificates.
• Marriage to a Portuguese citizen still opens nationality by declaration after three years (art. 3.º), now subject to the criminal-record bars of art. 6.º.