The Portugal D7 visa lets you move to Portugal if you can show a steady income you do not have to work for, such as a pension, rent, dividends, or other regular payments. It was built for retirees and other people living on passive income, and it has become the most popular way for Americans and other non-EU citizens to relocate to Portugal without investing a large sum. If you plan to actually live in Portugal and you can prove you can support yourself, the D7 is usually the route to look at first.
This is the hub guide to the whole route. It answers the questions people ask most: who qualifies, how much income you need, how you apply, how long it takes, what it costs, whether you have to live in Portugal, and where the D7 leads over five and ten years. The visa is a national residence visa handled by Portuguese consulates and then by AIMA, the immigration agency that replaced SEF in late 2023, under the country's immigration law (Lei 23/2007). Some sections summarize a topic and point you to a dedicated guide where the detail lives, so this page stays readable end to end.
Getting help with this A D7 application comes down to assembling clean income evidence, proof of accommodation, and a complete consular file, then registering with AIMA once you arrive. Applicants who enjoy paperwork and have time often file it themselves, and that is a perfectly valid route. In practice, the advantage of the assisted route is a realistic fit assessment before you commit, income evidence packaged the way consulates expect, and someone managing the AIMA appointment stage where the backlog is worst. Roots Global prepares and files D7 applications and handles the AIMA stage for clients, remotely where possible.
What is the Portugal D7 visa?
The D7 visa is Portugal's residence route for people who can support themselves from passive income and want to live in the country. You do not invest anything and you do not need a job offer. You prove that money comes in regularly without you having to work for it, and in exchange Portugal grants you residence. Because it fits pensioners so well, it is often called the Portugal retirement visa or the passive income visa, but those are three names for the same thing.
The principle behind it is simple. Portugal wants residents who will not become a burden on the state, so the D7 asks you to demonstrate a stable, recurring income and enough savings to see you through. The classic D7 holder is a retiree living on a pension, but the route also fits people living on rental income from property they own, dividends from an investment portfolio, royalties, annuities, or a mix of these. The income has to be genuinely passive: money you receive rather than a salary you earn day to day.
The D7 is a national visa, which means it is specific to Portugal rather than a general Schengen visa. You apply at a Portuguese consulate in your home country for the visa itself, enter Portugal, and then convert it into a residence permit with AIMA. From there it renews and, over time, opens the door to permanent residency and citizenship. The legal backbone is Portugal's immigration act, Lei 23/2007, and the per-subtype document rules are published on the consular visa portal, vistos.mne.gov.pt.
Here is the whole route at a glance before we take each piece in turn.
| Feature | Portugal D7 visa |
|---|---|
| Who it is for | Non-EU/EEA citizens with steady passive income who will live in Portugal |
| Financial basis | Passive income, no investment required |
| Income floor | At least the Portuguese minimum wage (about EUR 920/month in 2026), plus increments for family |
| Must you live there? | Yes, genuine residence is expected |
| Tax residency | Yes, you become a Portuguese tax resident |
| Family included? | Yes, spouse, dependent children, and dependent parents |
| Permit length | Initial 2-year residence permit, renewable for 3 years |
| Leads to | Permanent residency at 5 years, then citizenship |
Broadly, the D7 suits the following people:
- Retirees living on a pension, whether state, occupational, or private.
- People living on rental income from property they own anywhere in the world.
- Investors living on dividends, interest, or other portfolio income.
- People with royalties or intellectual-property income that pays regularly.
- Remote earners with genuinely passive or semi-passive income who intend to make Portugal home, though active remote workers are usually a better fit for the D8 (more on that below).
Who qualifies for the D7 visa?
You qualify for the D7 if you are a non-EU citizen, you can prove stable passive income at or above the required floor, you have somewhere to live in Portugal, and you have a clean criminal record. Those four things are the core of every D7 file. Everything else in the application supports one of them.
Take them one at a time. First, nationality: the D7 is for citizens of countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area, because EU and EEA citizens already have the right to live in Portugal and do not need a visa. Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, and Brazilians are all typical D7 applicants.
Second, income: you show recurring passive income at least equal to the Portuguese national minimum wage, with more required for each family member who joins you. The exact figures and how they scale by household size are covered in the next section, and in depth in the Portugal D7 requirements & minimum income guide.
Third, accommodation: you need proof of somewhere to live in Portugal, which can be a 12-month rental contract, a property you have bought, or in some cases a formal invitation letter. Consulates want to see that you have a genuine base in the country, consistent with the D7 being a route for people who will actually live there.
Fourth, a clean record and the supporting pieces: a criminal-record certificate from your home country (and anywhere you have lived recently), apostilled and translated, plus valid travel or health insurance covering Portugal, and a Portuguese tax number (NIF) and usually a Portuguese bank account.
One point causes a lot of confusion, so it is worth stating plainly. The D7 is not a work visa, but it does not forbid you from working. It is built around passive income, and that passive income is what you must prove to qualify. Once you are resident, you can generally also work remotely for a non-Portuguese employer, freelance, or run a small activity, as long as the passive income that justified the visa remains in place. If your income is mostly active remote-work salary rather than passive income, the sibling route is the Portugal D8 digital nomad visa, which is designed for exactly that.
How much income do you need for the D7?
You need passive income at least equal to the Portuguese national minimum wage, which is about EUR 920 a month in 2026, and you add a set percentage for each family member. Because the requirement tracks the minimum wage rather than a fixed number, it rises a little each year, so always check the current figure before you apply.
The increments work like this: the main applicant shows 100% of the minimum wage, you add 50% for a spouse or other adult dependent, and you add 30% for each dependent child, so a couple needs roughly EUR 1,380 a month and a couple with two children about EUR 1,932. These are floor figures, not a target: consulates want to see comfortable margin above the minimum, and in our experience an application that only just clears the line is weaker than one that clears it easily. The full household-by-household breakdown, with annual equivalents and the per-child increment, lives in the Portugal D7 requirements & minimum income guide, which owns the income detail.
On top of the monthly income, you are expected to hold savings roughly equal to twelve months of that minimum wage in a Portuguese bank account, on the order of EUR 11,000 for a single applicant, as a cushion the consulate can see. The full breakdown, including how different income types are documented and what counts as acceptable proof, is in the Portugal D7 requirements & minimum income guide.
What our client files show about D7 income
In Roots Global's client base of 2,200+ relocations to Spain and Portugal, the D7 is the single most common route clients take, chosen by 32.3% of them, more than any other visa. That matters for one practical reason: it means we see a lot of approved D7 files, and the income on them is consistently well above the legal floor. Among approved Portugal D7 clients, the median household showed about EUR 3,900 a month in passive income, with the middle half falling between roughly EUR 3,000 and EUR 5,100. In other words, successful applicants typically arrive with income several times the minimum-wage requirement, not right at it.
Source: Roots Global internal client data: aggregated and anonymized from more than 2,200 client engagements (completed visa and residency applications plus consultation records, 2019 to June 2026). These figures describe Roots Global's clients, not all applicants, and are not official government statistics.
How do you apply for the D7, step by step?
You apply in two stages: first you get the D7 visa from a Portuguese consulate in your home country, then you turn it into a residence permit with AIMA after you arrive in Portugal. The visa gets you into the country; the residence permit is what actually lets you stay. Missing that second stage is one of the most common mistakes, so it is worth understanding the whole sequence before you start.
Here is the order most applicants follow:
- Get a Portuguese tax number (NIF). You need a NIF for almost everything else, including opening a bank account and signing a lease. You can get one remotely through a fiscal representative.
- Open a Portuguese bank account and deposit your savings, so you can show both the account and the balance in your application.
- Line up your accommodation, usually a 12-month rental contract or proof of a property you own.
- Gather and legalize your documents, including the criminal-record certificate (apostilled and translated), proof of income, proof of savings, and health insurance.
- Book and attend your consular appointment, submitting the D7 national visa application (often through the consulate's contractor, such as VFS) with your full file.
- Receive the entry visa, which is typically valid for a set number of months and includes an appointment or instruction to register with AIMA.
- Travel to Portugal and attend your AIMA appointment, where your residence permit is issued. This is the step that converts the visa into residence.
The document checklist is broadly the same for every applicant, though the exact list can vary a little by consulate. You will generally need:
- A valid passport and passport photographs.
- The completed national visa application form.
- Proof of stable passive income (pension statements, rental contracts, dividend records, bank statements).
- Proof of savings in a Portuguese bank account.
- Proof of accommodation in Portugal.
- A criminal-record certificate, apostilled and translated into Portuguese.
- Health or travel insurance covering Portugal.
- Your Portuguese NIF.
The per-subtype requirements are published by the Portuguese foreign ministry on the consular visa portal (vistos.mne.gov.pt), and the residence-permit stage is handled by AIMA. Because the second stage runs through AIMA, and because AIMA inherited a heavy appointment backlog when it replaced SEF, the residence-permit step is where timelines stretch and where an assisted application most often earns its keep.
How long does the D7 take, and what does it cost?
The consular visa stage usually takes a couple of months, and the residence-permit stage with AIMA adds more time on top, so plan for the whole process to run several months rather than weeks. The cost is modest compared with the Golden Visa, because the D7 asks for no investment: you pay government and service fees, not a capital commitment.
On timing, the consular D7 decision commonly lands in about 60 to 120 days, though it varies by consulate and by how complete your file is. In our own client data, the median observed time from application to decision on a recent Portugal D7 file was 93 days, with most falling between about 73 and 116 days. That is the visa stage. The AIMA residence-permit stage is separate, and the appointment backlog that built up after AIMA replaced SEF means the wait for a first residence card can run longer than the legal maximum. This backlog is real and well documented, and it is the single biggest source of frustration on the route, but it is a scheduling problem rather than a sign that the D7 itself is at risk. The full timeline, including the AIMA stage and how the D7 compares with the D8, is in the D7 vs D8 processing time guide.
On cost, the headline is that there is no investment at all. You pay the consular visa fee, the AIMA residence-permit fee, the cost of legalizing and translating documents, health insurance, and, if you use one, legal or service fees. Set against the Golden Visa's EUR 500,000 fund commitment, the D7 is inexpensive, which is exactly why most people who genuinely intend to move choose it. The full itemized breakdown, including the per-family-member fees and typical service costs, is in the Portugal D7 visa cost guide.
The honest way to think about the D7's cost is not the fees, which are small, but the move itself. The real commitment is relocating your life to Portugal and becoming a tax resident, which is the subject of the next section.
Do you have to live in Portugal on a D7?
Yes. The D7 is designed for people relocating, so it expects you to genuinely live in Portugal, and that is the single biggest difference between it and the Golden Visa. You cannot hold a D7 while continuing to live abroad and visiting occasionally; the route is built around actually moving.
In concrete terms, Portugal expects D7 residence permits to reflect real presence. You cannot be absent from Portugal for more than six consecutive months, or more than eight non-consecutive months, within the permit's validity, or you risk losing the permit. In practice, most D7 holders spend the large majority of the year in Portugal, which is the point of the route.
Because you are living there, you become a Portuguese tax resident, and that has real consequences worth planning for. Portugal treats you as a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days a year in the country or keep a permanent home there, and a tax resident is taxed on worldwide income, not just Portuguese income. The tax-residency rules are set out by the tax authority (portaldasfinancas.gov.pt).
Becoming a tax resident is not a bad thing in itself, and it is a normal part of relocating; it simply needs planning, especially for Americans, who keep filing US returns because the United States taxes on citizenship. The old Non-Habitual Resident (NHR) regime that gave many new arrivals a decade of tax breaks is now closed to new entrants, and its successor is the IFICI regime, sometimes called NHR 2.0, which offers tax incentives to a narrower group. If you are moving from the United States, the interaction between Portuguese tax residency and US filing is the part most worth getting right, and it is covered in the retiring in Portugal and D7 for US retirees on Social Security guides.
D7 vs D8 vs the Golden Visa: which route fits?
Choose the D7 if you will live in Portugal on passive income, the D8 if you will live there on active remote-work income, and the Golden Visa if you want European residence without moving and can invest. That one sentence resolves most of the decision, because these three routes are built for three different situations.
The D7 and the D8 are close cousins. Both require you to genuinely move to Portugal and both make you a tax resident, but they differ on the kind of income they are built around. The D7 is for passive income, such as a pension or rent. The D8, Portugal's digital nomad visa, is for active remote-work income, such as a salary from a foreign employer or freelance fees, and it asks for a higher income floor, around four times the minimum wage rather than one. If you are a retiree, the D7 is almost always the answer; if you are a working remote employee or freelancer, look at the D8 first.
The Golden Visa is a different animal entirely. It is an investment route: you commit EUR 500,000 to a qualifying fund and, in exchange, you keep European residence while spending only about a week a year in Portugal, which usually means you never become a Portuguese tax resident. It costs far more but asks almost nothing of your time or your life. The head-to-head between the D7 and the Golden Visa, including the cost and tax math, is covered in the Portugal Golden Visa vs D7 comparison.
| What | D7 visa | D8 (digital nomad) | Golden Visa |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial basis | Passive income (pension, rent, dividends) | Active remote-work income | EUR 500,000 into a qualifying fund |
| Income floor | About the minimum wage (EUR 920/month, 2026) | About four times the minimum wage | No income test; you invest instead |
| Must you live in Portugal? | Yes, genuine residence | Yes, genuine residence | No, about 7 days a year |
| Portuguese tax resident? | Yes, on worldwide income | Yes | Usually no |
| Best for | Retirees and passive-income earners moving | Remote workers and freelancers moving | Investors wanting EU access without moving |
| Path to PR and citizenship | PR at 5 years, then citizenship | The same | The same |
The most useful thing you can do before comparing these routes on detail is to answer one honest question: are you actually going to live in Portugal, and is your income passive or active? Once you know that, the route usually picks itself. Where people go wrong is trying to make one visa serve two goals, for example choosing the Golden Visa to avoid tax while also planning to move, which defeats the point of both routes.
What happens after five years on a D7?
After five years of legal residence on the D7, you can apply for permanent residency, and Portuguese citizenship becomes available later. The D7 is not just a way to live in Portugal for a while; it is a genuine path to permanent status and, eventually, an EU passport, which is a large part of why people choose it.
The residence permit itself runs on a two-then-three structure. Your first D7 residence permit is valid for two years, you renew it for a further three years, and at the end of that five-year period of legal residence you become eligible to apply for permanent residency, provided you have kept up genuine residence and a clean record.
Citizenship is a separate, later step, and the timeline changed in 2026, so it is important to get right. Five years of legal residence earns permanent residency, not citizenship. Under Portugal's 2026 nationality reform, naturalization now generally requires about ten years of legal residence, or seven years for nationals of EU and Portuguese-speaking (CPLP) countries, counted from the date your first residence card is issued. Naturalization also requires an A2-level Portuguese language qualification and a clean record. The full year-by-year path and the detail of the reform sit in the Portugal Golden Visa vs D7 and the broader moving to Portugal from the USA guides.
Your family travels the same path. A spouse, dependent children, and dependent parents can be included through family reunification, so a household reaches residence, and eventually permanent residency and citizenship, together rather than one member at a time.
See also
- Portugal D7 requirements & minimum income for the full income rules, documents, and proof standards.
- Portugal D7 visa cost for the itemized fee and per-family-member breakdown.
- D7 vs D8 processing time for the full timeline and the AIMA stage.
- retiring in Portugal and D7 for US retirees on Social Security for the retiree and US cross-border angle.
- Portugal Golden Visa vs D7 for the investment-route comparison.
Frequently asked questions
How hard is it to get a D7 visa in Portugal? The D7 is one of Portugal's more accessible residence routes if you genuinely meet the requirements: stable passive income at or above the minimum wage, savings, accommodation, and a clean record. Most refusals come from an incomplete file or income that only just clears the floor, rather than from the bar being high. A well-prepared application from someone with comfortable passive income is usually straightforward.
Who is eligible for a D7 visa? Non-EU and non-EEA citizens who can show stable, recurring passive income at least equal to the Portuguese minimum wage (about EUR 920 a month in 2026), plus more for family members, who have accommodation in Portugal, health insurance, and a clean criminal record. Retirees on a pension and people living on rent or dividends are the classic applicants. EU and EEA citizens do not need it, as they can already live in Portugal.
What are the disadvantages of a D7 visa? The main trade-offs are that you must actually move to Portugal and become a Portuguese tax resident on your worldwide income, and that the AIMA residence-permit stage is affected by an appointment backlog that can stretch timelines. It is also not an investment route, so it does not suit anyone who wants European residence without relocating; for that, the Golden Visa fits better. For people who genuinely intend to live in Portugal, these are manageable.
Can I work on a D7 visa? The D7 is a passive-income route, not a work visa, so you qualify on passive income rather than a job. Once you are resident, you can generally also work, including remotely for a foreign employer or as a freelancer, as long as the passive income that justified the visa stays in place. If your income is mainly active remote-work salary, the D8 digital nomad visa is usually the better fit.
How much money do I need in the bank for a D7? On top of your monthly passive income, consulates expect savings of roughly twelve months of the Portuguese minimum wage, on the order of EUR 11,000 for a single applicant, held in a Portuguese bank account. More is better, and the figure rises with family size and as the minimum wage increases each year. This savings buffer sits alongside the income requirement, not instead of it.
What happens after 5 years on a D7 visa? After five years of legal residence you can apply for permanent residency. Citizenship is a later step: under Portugal's 2026 nationality reform, naturalization generally requires about ten years of legal residence, or seven years for nationals of EU and Portuguese-speaking countries, counted from when your first residence card was issued, plus an A2 Portuguese language qualification. Five years earns permanent residency, not a passport.
Is Portugal still welcoming US citizens? Yes. Americans remain among the largest groups of D7 applicants, and the route is open to US citizens on the same terms as other non-EU nationals. The practical considerations for Americans are the US filing obligation that continues after you move, since the United States taxes on citizenship, and planning around Portuguese tax residency. Those are covered in the retiring-in-Portugal and US-retiree guides linked above.
Is the D7 the same as the retirement visa or the passive income visa? Yes. "D7 visa", "Portugal retirement visa", and "passive income visa" are three names for the same route. It is called the retirement visa because it suits pensioners so well, and the passive income visa because that is the income it is built around, but they all refer to the D7 under Lei 23/2007. There is no separate Portuguese retirement visa distinct from the D7.
Does a D7 lead to an EU passport? Yes, eventually. The D7 reaches permanent residency at five years and Portuguese citizenship later, and Portuguese citizenship is EU citizenship, so it leads to an EU passport with the right to live and work anywhere in the European Union. The citizenship step now generally takes about ten years of residence, or seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals, counted from your first residence card.
Disclaimer
This article is for general information only and is not legal or tax advice. Visa, residence, and tax rules change, and the D7 income figures track the annual minimum wage, so verify current requirements with the relevant authority or a qualified professional before acting. Last updated: July 2026.
About the author
Vanessa Mororó is Head of Legal, Portugal at Roots Global, where she advises HNWI and US cross-border clients on Portuguese residency and immigration matters, including the D7 passive-income visa, the D8, the Golden Visa, and the route to permanent residency and citizenship. Connect on LinkedIn.
