Portugal D7 Visa 2026: Income Rules, Costs & US Guide

The D7 is the national visa category Portugal reserves for people who can support themselves without working in Portugal. Per the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE), the legal category covers residence for retirement, for religious purposes, or for people living on their own passive income. You will also see it called the Portugal passive income visa or the Portugal retirement visa; both names refer to the same D7 category.

Two features define it in practice. First, eligibility is based on income, not investment: there is no €500,000 to deploy, you prove recurring passive income instead. Second, it is a two-stage process: a consulate in your home country issues a residence visa, then AIMA in Portugal converts it into a residence permit. It suits retirees and passive-income earners who genuinely intend to live in Portugal, which is also its main difference from the Golden Visa.

The D7 income requirement is pegged to the Portuguese minimum wage, which in 2026 is €920 per month net of social contributions (source: MNE, Regulatory Decree 139/2025). The main applicant must show 100% of it, and family members add a percentage on top:

Worked examples, calculated from the table above: a couple needs €1,380 per month (€16,560 per year), and a couple with two children needs €1,932 per month (€23,184 per year).

What changed vs 2025: the 2025 minimum wage was €870 per month, so the old D7 threshold was €10,440 per year. Many guides still quote it. For 2026, the correct figures are €920 per month and about €11,040 per year.

One deliberate clarification: the D7 requires 1x the minimum wage. Do not confuse it with the D8 digital nomad visa, which requires 4x.

The D7 is built on passive income. Based on the MNE category and what law firms report consulates accepting in practice, the generally accepted income types are:

• pensions and retirement income (state, occupational, private);
• rental income from property you own;
• dividends and distributions;
• royalties and intellectual property income;
• interest from savings and bonds.

What does not count is active work income: a salary or freelance revenue points you to a different visa, typically the D8 digital nomad visa. Treat this list as guidance rather than statute: the legal text defines the category, while the accepted-income detail comes from practitioner experience, so confirm your specific income mix with the consulate handling your file.

Here is the honest answer most guides skip: there is no fixed legal savings amount for the D7 on the primary sources. The legal criterion is "means of subsistence", which the income scale above defines.

In practice, consulates often like to see a deposit of roughly one year of the required income in a Portuguese bank account, but this is consular practice, not a published rule, and it varies from one consulate to another. Treat any guide that states an exact mandatory savings figure with suspicion, and ask your consulate what they expect before you apply.

Government fees are small; the real money goes to the file around them. Verified figures first (sources: MNE and the AIMA fee table):

Caveat on the AIMA ranges: the AIMA fee table lists these lines with two price columns (€133.00/€99.80 for analysis, €114.30/€85.80 for issuance), but the exact label of each column (standard versus reduced or online rate) is not clear on the captured text. Budget at the top of each range and confirm with AIMA.

There are two waits: the consulate stage and the AIMA stage. Processing times vary by consulate, and once in Portugal, appointment availability at AIMA varies as well; neither publishes a firm service-level commitment. What is fixed is the visa itself: 2 entries, 4 months of validity, and your permit application must be lodged inside that window. Build slack into your plans, especially around the lease start date, and confirm current waiting times with your consulate before booking anything non-refundable.

This is the most confused point on the English-language web, so let us separate the two rules cleanly.

The immigration rule is an absence limit. Practitioners, citing the immigration law, state that a temporary residence holder should not be absent from Portugal for more than 6 consecutive months or more than 8 non-consecutive months over the permit's validity. We could not verify the exact wording on the primary text, so confirm the current limits with AIMA. Either way, the D7 expects you to actually live in Portugal, unlike the Golden Visa, which asks for only about 7 days of presence per year.

The 183-day threshold is a tax concept. Spending 183 days or more in Portugal in a year generally makes you Portuguese tax resident. It is not the D7's stay requirement, and claims that you must spend "183 consecutive days" in Portugal to keep the visa are simply wrong. The two rules interact in practice (living in Portugal under the absence limits usually means crossing the tax threshold), but they are different tests with different consequences.

Permanent residency becomes available after 5 years of temporary residence, per the practitioner consensus built on the immigration law; confirm the requirement with AIMA, as we could not verify it on the primary text.

Citizenship changed in 2026. Under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 of 18 May, in force since 19 May 2026 (Diário da República; Ministério da Justiça), the residence requirement for naturalization is now:

• 7 years for CPLP (Portuguese-speaking) and EU nationals;
• 10 years for all other nationalities, including Americans.

The government has 90 days from publication to adapt the implementing regulation, and the language requirement remains A2-level Portuguese. The 2026 reform also repealed the former rule (Article 15.º/4 of the Nationality Law) that let applicants count residence time from the date they applied for a permit, so for new applications only periods of actual legal residence count, and time spent waiting for a first permit no longer counts. Applications already pending on 19 May 2026 keep the previous count-from-application rule. Note also that family reunification now carries a reported 2-year waiting period (Lei 61/2025, per practitioner reporting; verify before relying on it).

If you move to Portugal on a D7, you will generally become Portuguese tax resident under the 183-day rule, and your worldwide income enters the picture. Four points matter, especially for Americans:

1. NHR is over; IFICI is narrower. The old non-habitual resident regime is closed to most new applicants, and its successor, the IFICI tax regime, targets specific profiles. Do not assume a tax holiday.
2. The US-Portugal tax treaty governs how pensions and Social Security benefits are allocated between the two countries. The practical outcome depends on your income mix, so model it before you move.
3. FEIE will not help much here. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion shelters earned income, not pensions and passive income, which is exactly what a D7 household lives on.
4. The PFIC trap. For US persons, non-US funds and ETFs, including Portuguese and EU-domiciled ones, are usually PFICs (passive foreign investment companies), a severely tax-inefficient regime with annual Form 8621 reporting. FBAR and FATCA reporting of your Portuguese accounts sits on top. Review your portfolio before becoming US-tax-resident abroad, not after.

None of this is tax advice. Consult a US tax professional who knows PFIC and FBAR rules before you relocate.

All three can lead to permanent residency at year 5 and citizenship under the same 7/10-year rules. What differs is what you qualify with, what it costs, and how much you must live in Portugal.

The decision logic: if you have passive income and will actually live in Portugal, the D7 is the cheapest serious route. If you will not relocate, look at the Golden Visa route instead. If your income is active remote work, the D8 is your category. For the full routing view, see all Portugal residency visas.