Portugal Golden Visa Statistics

Portugal Golden Visa statistics by year

Investor permits peaked at 1,526 in 2014 under SEF, dipped to 865 in 2021, then rose under AIMA to 2,081 in 2024 and 2,685 in 2025. SEF published investment and route detail for every year to September 2023. AIMA publishes only permit counts and nationalities, once a year.

Programme overview

Portugal's Golden Visa is the public name for the ARI residence permit. It gives eligible third-country nationals a Portuguese residence route, with family reunification and a pathway to permanent residence or citizenship if the separate legal conditions are met. Portuguese, EU/EEA, Andorran, and Swiss nationals cannot apply under ARI.

The programme is still open after the 2023 housing reforms, but its centre of gravity changed. New filings can no longer use real estate acquisition or capital-transfer routes.

Golden Visa investment by route

Real estate explains most of the historical capital: 88.2% of the €7.32 billion recorded by SEF to September 2023 went through the two property routes, which are now closed to new applicants. The fund route was small in total (€260.8M and 723 permits) but grew fastest in the last years before the reform.

For fund-level data (fees, minimums, maturity and verification status of the funds open to Golden Visa investors today), see the Movingto Funds research hub, which publishes its own quarterly editions under CC BY 4.0.

Portugal Golden Visa statistics by nationality

The United States topped AIMA's nationality chart in both 2024 and 2025. In 2025 it led with 535 investor permits, then China (392), the United Kingdom (252), Turkey (188) and India (170). Russian permits fell from 248 to 160. Over the whole SEF era China dominated, with 5,407 of 12,718 permits (42.5%).

2023 reforms

The Mais Habitação law removed the routes that shaped most of the historical statistics. For new applicants, the baseline after 7 October 2023 is a smaller and more specialised investment menu.

Approval rate, refusals and processing times

There is no official Golden Visa approval rate. AIMA reports permits granted, but not applications received, refusals or observed decision times, so any approval rate or average processing time quoted online comes from firms' own case files, not from official data.

The only official clock is a legal deadline. AIMA's ARI FAQ tells applicants to "wait for the legal decision period of 90 days" after the in-person application, which is the biometrics appointment (checked 24 October 2026).

What AIMA has published: its 2026 activity plan sets a target to cut pending Golden Visa applications by 50%, and since 16 February 2026 Golden Visa renewals are filed online through the Portal de Renovações. For realistic waiting times by stage, see our Portugal Golden Visa timeline.

Movingto also publishes its own anonymised case timings, separately from these official figures, in the Portugal Golden Visa processing time tracker: across 13 Movingto cases, AIMA scheduled biometrics a median 11.7 months after submission.

Why Golden Visa numbers differ between sources

Different totals circulate because sources mix counting bases. The official records support these readings:

• 17,484investor permits is SEF to September 2023 plus AIMA's 2024 and 2025 figures. It leaves out October to December 2023, which no official source published separately.
• 19,202 adds SEF's 2012 to 2022 maps to AIMA's 2023, 2024 and 2025 reports. AIMA's 2023 report (2,901 grants, 1,554 family) does not match SEF's own January to September 2023 maps (1,183 investor and 1,615 family permits), so this total mixes two bases.
• 4,990 (2024) and 6,652 (2025) are investors plus family members, not investors alone.
• €6.45 billion is the real estate share only. The full investment figure to September 2023 is €7.32 billion.
• Any investment total after September 2023 is an estimate. AIMA has not published one.

What the statistics mean for 2026 applicants

The historical totals show demand, but they are not a guide to today's route choice. Most of the €7.32 billion came from real estate, and that route is closed to new applications. Demand has not fallen with it: AIMA granted more investor permits in 2025 than SEF did in any single year.

The nationality rules also changed in 2026. Under the rules in force from 19 May 2026, Portugal requires seven years of legal residence for EU and Portuguese-speaking (CPLP) nationals and ten years for most other foreign nationals before naturalisation. Applications already pending on 18 May 2026 continue under the previous law. Source: Nationality Law 1/2026.

• For the requirements and the routes still open, start with the Portugal Golden Visa guide.
• For government fees and the total budget per route, see Portugal Golden Visa cost.
• For fund-route applicants, the practical questions are eligibility, source-of-funds evidence, fund term, regulated status, and the rule that qualifying funds cannot be directly or indirectly dedicated to real estate.
• Compare culture, research, company capitalisation and job creation on documentation burden and fit, not only on the headline minimum.

For fund-level detail, the live index of Portugal Golden Visa investment funds tracks eligibility basis, fees, maturity and verification status per fund, and the CMVM-registered fund manager directory covers the firms behind them.

Download the data

• By year, 2012 to 2025 portugal-golden-visa-statistics-by-year.csv. Main investor permits, family permits, investment and route split for every year from 2012 to 2025. The non_real_estate columns include fund, company, research and culture permits; do not add fund_permits to them.
• By route, 2012 to September 2023 portugal-golden-visa-statistics-by-route.csv. Permits and investment by investment route, October 2012 to September 2023 (SEF's last cumulative map).
• By nationality, 2024 and 2025 portugal-golden-visa-statistics-by-nationality.csv. Main investor permits by nationality: AIMA's top eight for 2025 and 2024, and SEF's cumulative top five to September 2023.

Free to reuse under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) with a link to this page. Edition 24 October 2026. Blank cells mean the official source published nothing; no value is estimated. In the by-year file, the non_real_estate columns include fund, company, research and culture permits; do not add fund_permits to them.

Methodology and caveats

We use official sources only and keep investors, family members, permits and investment value separate. Every figure on this page was checked 16 October 2026 against the source document linked beside it; figures added on 24 October 2026 were checked that day. All Movingto datasets, licences and citation formats are on Movingto Research.

Portugal Golden Visa statistics FAQ

How to cite this data

Movingto. (2026, October 24). Portugal Golden Visa statistics 2012-2025: Official AIMA and SEF data. https://movingto.com/statistics/portugal-golden-visa-statistics

@misc{movingto2026portugalgoldenvisastatistics,
  author = {{Movingto}},
  title = {Portugal Golden Visa Statistics 2012-2025: Official AIMA and SEF Data},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  howpublished = {\url{https://movingto.com/statistics/portugal-golden-visa-statistics}},
  note = {Last updated 24 October 2026. Compiled by Radica Maneva. Data licensed CC BY 4.0}
}

When you quote a single official figure, please cite the AIMA or SEF document as well.

Changelog

1. 24 October 2026Added AIMA's 2023 top five nationalities, four FAQs (2024, 2023, Americans, share of all permits) and AIMA's 90-day legal decision period. Renamed the by-year CSV capital_transfer_bucket columns to non_real_estate, which include fund permits. Fixed number formatting and rounding in the route table.
2. 16 October 2026Added AIMA's 2025 figures (2,685 main investor permits, 3,967 family permits, top eight nationalities), a year-by-year series from 2012 to 2025 with route split, CSV downloads under CC BY 4.0, a chart, an FAQ and citation formats. Re-checked every figure against SEF and AIMA documents. SEF's site is offline, so SEF maps now link to archived copies on Arquivo.pt. Removed an uncited 'other nationalities' total.
3. 14 August 2026Added AIMA's 2024 permit counts and the 2026 nationality law change.
4. 22 June 2026First published.