Portugal’s retired applicants are named in a decree, not in the act

Reformado, the Portuguese word for a retired person, appears nowhere in the consolidated text of Portugal’s immigration act. It appears in the regulation made under that act, and in the ministerial order that regulation points to, which between them name the retired applicant and fix the financial evidence required of that category. The sum they turn on is in neither: it tracks the national minimum wage.

What the act creates, and what it does not

Lei n.º 23/2007 of 4 July, the Lei de Estrangeiros, creates Portugal’s residence visas in a single subsection of its consolidated text. Article 58 is the general provision. Eight further articles attach a residence visa to a named purpose: employed work at 59; self-employment and entrepreneur immigrants at 60; teaching, highly qualified or cultural activity at 61; highly qualified employment at 61-A; work performed remotely for a natural or legal person domiciled or seated abroad at 61-B; research, study, school exchange, traineeship and volunteering at 62; higher-education mobility at 63; and family reunification at 64.

None of those eight is for a retired person or for someone living on investment income. Article 58 names no purpose of its own; under article 58(3) a residence-visa application is assessed by reference to the purpose intended with the establishment of residence, subject to any specific conditions. The subsection ends at article 65, which is procedural. The act’s residence-permit chapter is organised the same way, nine subsections by category, and none of them is for retirement.

That is a finding about the text, and it was tested as one. Searched across the whole consolidated act — 465,767 characters — the terms reformado, pensionista and aposentado return nothing, and so do rendimentos de bens, propriedade intelectual and aplicações financeiras. The 2007 enacted text returns nothing for them either.

The act does contain one route built on money arriving from abroad. Article 61-B, added by Lei n.º 18/2022 in August 2022, grants a residence visa for professional activity performed remotely for natural or legal persons domiciled or seated outside the national territory. It is a route for work done abroad, not for income that arrives without work.

Where the retired applicant is named

The first of the two instruments is Decreto Regulamentar n.º 84/2007, the regulation made under the act. Its article 24(1) lists five categories of residence-visa applicant for which a ministerial order must define the proof of means of subsistence. The first covers applicants coming to work, study, train or volunteer; the last covers ministers of religion and members of religious institutes. Between them sit three: foreign citizens who are retired — cidadãos estrangeiros reformados — those who live on income from movable or immovable property or from intellectual property, and those who live on income from financial investments. Article 24 was amended by Decreto Regulamentar n.º 4/2022, in force since 30 October 2022.

The second instrument is Portaria n.º 1563/2007 of 11 December, the order those paragraphs point to, which names article 52(1)(d) of the act and article 24 of the regulation among its own authorities. Its article 5(6) applies without prejudice to the provisions before it, and requires a residence-visa applicant to hold means of subsistence assured for a period of not less than twelve months. For a retired applicant the proof is a document evidencing their income, together with a guarantee that it will be received, or evidence of other income available in national territory. For an applicant living on income from property, intellectual property or financial investments, it is a document evidencing the existence and amount of that income, and its availability in Portugal.

The money test, and the wage it borrows

The order names no sum. It names a criterion: the reference is the guaranteed minimum monthly wage, taken net of social security contributions, valued per head of household on the OECD’s modified scale for poverty thresholds — 100 per cent for the first adult, 50 per cent for each further adult, and 30 per cent for children under 18 and dependent adult children.

The wage comes from labour law. Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025 of 29 December sets it at €920.00 from 1 January 2026 for mainland Portugal, and records the agreed path: €870 in 2025, rising to a target of €1,020 by 2028. Article 13 of the order then updates the order’s own amounts automatically, by the percentage increase in that wage, so the figure can change without the order being amended.

How the published figure relates to that criterion is not explained where the two instruments meet. The order’s reference is the minimum wage net of social security contributions; the foreign ministry’s visa portal publishes €920, which is the gross figure the decree-law sets. Neither page states what calculation a consular officer performs on an applicant’s income.

The retired applicant is tested over a longer horizon than the worker

Article 5 of the order sets different horizons for different applicants. For someone applying in order to work, employed or self-employed, article 5(1) requires means for not less than the maximum admissible period under article 58(2) of the act read together with article 72(1)(c) — four months of authorised stay, plus the extension of up to 90 days that article 72(1)(c) allows a residence-visa holder. A retired applicant, and an applicant living on investment income, must show twelve months under article 5(6). Twelve months is the stated figure across most of article 5 — investment at 5(2), research and teaching at 5(3), study at 5(4), and ministers of religion at 5(7). The worker at 5(1) is measured against the visa’s own maximum instead, and the trainee or volunteer at 5(5) against the foreseeable length of the stay, as is an exchange participant under 5(4). Paragraphs 5(3), 5(4), 5(5) and 5(7) each go on to allow the figure to fall where the means, the accommodation or the meals are assured. Article 5(6), the paragraph that covers the retired applicant, sets out no such reduction.

Neither the act, nor the regulation, nor the order prescribes a bank balance. What article 5(6) requires is means assured for the period. The requirement to hold an account at a Portuguese bank appears on a consular page, and in none of the three.

The permit is a second decision on the same financial test

Under article 58(1) the visa exists to let its holder enter Portugal in order to apply for a residence permit. That permit is a separate decision by the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo under article 77(1), on ten cumulative conditions — among them a valid residence visa, means of subsistence as defined by the same order, and accommodation.

The financial test carries through. Article 7(1) of the order requires an applicant for the grant or renewal of a temporary permit to show they still hold the means determined under article 5, having regard to the purpose of the permit. AIMA’s page for the general regime gives its legal basis as article 77(1) read with the regulation and the order, so the agency that decides the permit cites the instrument that names the retiree. That page puts the temporary permit at two years from issue, renewable for successive three-year periods, unless special provisions apply.

What this article does not establish

“D7” appears in none of the legal instruments read here, and on none of the central visa-portal or agency pages read. It does appear on the consular page of at least one Portuguese embassy, which sets out a requirement list for it and cites no article of law.

Article 77(1)(a) requires the residence visa to have been granted for one of the purposes provided for in the act. No article of the act names a pension or investment income as such a purpose, and nothing read for this article explains how an applicant admitted under the categories the regulation names satisfies that condition. No interpretation by a court or by the agency was located.

Whether Portaria n.º 1563/2007 has ever been amended is not established. The Diário da República lists it as in force and displays no amending act, which is an indication rather than proof.

What follows

Four instruments carry this route between them, and they have four different authors. Parliament wrote the act, which names the purposes a residence visa can carry and does not name retirement among them. The Government wrote the regulation that names the retired applicant. Two ministers signed the order that fixes what the category must prove. The fourth was written for labour policy, and sets the wage the order borrows. Under article 13 of the order, the amount tracks that wage, by the percentage of its increase, without any of the four being amended.