The wait for citizenship was doubled from five years to ten, including for people already living in the country, and the years spent waiting for the card were not counted towards it at all.
Portugal is still open at the door: the work route asks only for the minimum wage, routes for freelancers and remote workers are alive, there are no integration requirements for living in the country, a spouse on a family permit may work at once, and children attend state school whatever their parents' status.
The real pain is delivery. The immigration agency AIMA does not meet the law: about 130,000 files are stuck, 124,000 lawsuits have been filed against it, and a special court task force closed 22,400 of them in three months. For many people, access to the procedure runs through the courts. The state does not publish refusal statistics.
The second pain is rules changed retroactively. Since May 2026 citizenship takes 10 years instead of 5, including for people already living there, and years spent waiting for a card do not count. Law 61/2025 introduced a two-year wait for family reunification, and in 2026 the state began winding down the automatic extensions of expired permits that people waiting for renewals had relied on. We found no mass campaign against legal foreign residents.
Losing a job does not by itself end your status: you need to show means of support through a new contract or unemployment benefit. Renewals must be filed no later than 30 days before the card expires, and after filing you may live and work until the decision. A permit can be cancelled, among other grounds, for more than 6 months of continuous absence, and that decision can be appealed in court with suspensive effect.
Day to day, there is no address registration requirement, and a bank account can be opened with a passport and NIF tax number before residency, but in person and with friction: community reports say some banks turn non-residents away.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free short stays, as in the rest of the Schengen area (up to 90 days within 180). For living there, the same D1, D2, D7 or D8 visas as for other non-EU citizens.
Citizenship after 7 years instead of 10. The simplified channel for CPLP citizens remains, but Law 61/2025 narrowed it.
EU temporary protection is extended to 4 March 2028. Since 31 July 2026 new applicants must show they left in line with their military obligations; people who already hold the status are not affected.
When we checked on 3 August 2026 we found no route closed by nationality: D1, D2, D7 and D8 are formally open to all non-EU citizens. Expat communities report that some banks turn away clients of certain nationalities; there is no systematic data.
The place interval 40-57 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Access to entry: 80 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 65.7. The weakest is Agency processing: 27 against 48.7. Above the world average: 3 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
90 calendar days from filing by law. In practice the wait after biometrics alone is 3-6 months or more, with a separate wait for the appointment before it; the full path takes 6-9 months or longer, and some people obtain a decision through the courts.
Yes: the D2 visa for entrepreneurs and freelancers or the D8 digital nomad visa with a threshold of €3,680 a month. Both are in force and issued.
€110 consular fee, then at AIMA €133 to file and €307.20 for each issue or renewal; these rates apply from 1 March 2026. About €857 per applicant and about €2,400 for a family of three over five years, one of the most expensive in the EU.
Losing a job does not by itself cancel the permit, but at renewal you must show means of support through a new contract or benefits. It can be cancelled for more than 6 months of continuous absence or 8 months in total, and that decision can be appealed in court.
Permanent residence after 5 years. Since 19 May 2026 citizenship takes 10 years (7 for EU and Portuguese-speaking countries' citizens), counted from the card; you need A2 Portuguese, a new test on rights, duties and culture and a declaration of commitment.
The door is open, but living inside the system is hard: the agency is overloaded, and the 2025-2026 rules on citizenship and family were tightened even for people already there. We found no hostile campaigns against legal foreign residents.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.