Kevin Goff was fewer than six weeks away from completing the five-year period required to apply for Portuguese citizenship when the new Nationality Law was given the thumbs-up. Overnight, a goal he believed was within reach turned into an eight-year wait, according to a report in the Expresso newspaper.
The American lawyer moved to Portugal in the summer of 2021 with his husband and their two children, then aged six and four, under an investment residence permit, widely known as the ARI or “golden visa”. Under the rules in force at the time, eligibility for citizenship came after five years, counted from the submission of the residence permit application.
The new legislation changes that calculation. Time will now only begin to count from the issuance of the residence card, whilst the qualifying period rises to seven years for citizens of the CPLP and the European Union, and to ten years for nationals of other countries. Most golden visa holders fall into the latter category.
“When I learned these changes were being prepared, it was overwhelming. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us,” Goff says. “We made the investment based on the Government’s promise that if we maintained it for five years, we could apply for citizenship. We moved our entire lives here, we trusted the country’s stability.”
His case is far from unique. More than 500 foreign nationals who relocated to Portugal attracted by the golden visa scheme are preparing a collective legal action against the Portuguese state. The group, represented by several law firms, is expected to proceed once the final regulatory framework is published.
“We are not angry people,” says one of the initiative’s organisers, speaking anonymously to the weekly newspaper. “We are an organised group of residents in Portugal who simply need the Portuguese state to honour the agreements it made.” The expectation, he adds, had been clear: citizenship after five years.
Legal challenges to the amendments to the Nationality Law had already reached the Constitutional Court by the end of 2025, with golden visa beneficiaries arguing that the new rules introduce unacceptable legal uncertainty.
The changes carry not only legal consequences but also economic ones for investors who committed funds on the basis of a defined timetable.
Goff explains that he will now have to keep his investment in place far longer than anticipated. Capital that was expected to begin generating dividends this year may remain tied up until 2030. Even so, he submitted his citizenship application just days before the law was promulgated.
As a lawyer, he believes the process contains several legal vulnerabilities and says he is prepared to pursue the matter “to the highest courts”. Other golden visa holders are preparing to do the same.
In 2024, Portugal’s Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) granted 4,990 investment residence permits, of which 2,909 related to family reunification. Those affected are predominantly American citizens, though investors of many other nationalities are also included. For lawyers handling these cases, one of the central issues concerns how waiting time is now calculated.
Madalena Monteiro, a lawyer at Liberty Legal, says she receives daily enquiries from investors wishing to initiate legal proceedings. One complication concerns investment funds: many beneficiaries will be required to maintain their investments for longer than originally planned, while some closed-end funds do not even have a lifespan sufficient to cover the newly extended route to citizenship.
Added to this are the costs of visa renewals. Each renewal costs €3,700 per person every two years. For a family of four, the total approaches €15,000.
Monteiro argues that the new regime undermines principles of equality and human dignity. In court, she intends to argue that the qualifying period should begin 90 days after submission of the residence application, the statutory deadline for AIMA to issue a decision.
“I have clients who have been waiting since 2020. That time cannot simply be erased, because it results from administrative failure,” she says.
The legislative changes are already affecting the market. According to Monteiro, there are “several withdrawals a day”, including investors who had already made payments.
She questions the economic impact of the measure, noting that each abandoned process often represents the loss of a €500,000 investment in Portugal. Some of those investments were linked to funds and cultural projects.
Stephan Morais, president of the Portuguese Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, is even more critical. He describes the situation as “a fraud” against investors and points to administrative delays at AIMA as a central factor.
Last year, the venture capital sector saw a surge of investment into funds eligible for golden visas amid expectations of tighter restrictions. The difficulty now, observers say, is that the new rules also apply to applications already in progress.
Although the legal actions being prepared are directed at the Portuguese state, some specialists believe fund management companies could also face scrutiny.
Zeev Fischer, lawyer and founder of Fresh Portugal, argues that investors should have been clearly informed that the timeline to citizenship depended on legislation in force at any given moment, and that the law could change, potentially affecting ongoing applications.
Should failures of disclosure be demonstrated, Portugal’s securities regulator, the CMVM, may be called upon to intervene. The regulator has not clarified whether supervisory actions or sanction proceedings are under way, but litigation could lead to contract annulments, compensation claims, penalties or reimbursement of fees.
The possibility of intervention by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also been raised, particularly in cases involving American investors and private entities. The SEC declined to comment when approached.
For Sara Sousa Rebolo, a lawyer at Prime Legal, however, the core issue remains the state itself. Most promoters and funds, she argues, communicated the conditions that were valid at the time. The controversy, she says, centres on the imposition of more onerous rules on situations already under way.
The new Nationality Law has therefore transformed what was presented as a promise of stability into a legal dispute with economic, political, and reputational consequences. For many golden visa beneficiaries, the question is no longer merely how long they must wait for a Portuguese passport, but whether the state can change the rules halfway through the process.
