Rishta in Portugal

What a family needs to establish first

Two years: what Law 61/2025 changed

This section matters more than anything else on this page, because Portugal reorganised family reunification very recently and a great deal of what families believe about it is now wrong.

Portugal passed Law 61/2025, published on 22 October 2025 and in force from the following day. Under it, the general rule is that the sponsor’s residence permit must have been valid for at least two years before family members can be brought to Portugal. Before this, Portugal was one of the easier countries in Europe for reunification; it is no longer.

Two details decide individual cases. First, the two years are counted from when the residence permit was actually issued, not from when it was applied for — and because AIMA, the immigration agency, has had significant processing backlogs, the gap between those two dates can be long. A man who applied three years ago but only received his card last year is at the start of the two years, not the end. Second, the amendments apply to procedures started after 23 October 2025, so a file already pending before that date should not automatically fall under the new waiting rules.

There are exemptions, and they are worth knowing. The waiting period does not apply to dependent minor children or incapable dependants, to certain parents or adopters of those dependants, or to family members of holders of certain permits including the Golden Visa and the EU Blue Card. The minister may also reduce or waive the period in exceptional, properly reasoned cases, and recognised refugees have separate protection. None of those routinely help an ordinary Pakistani household bringing a wife.

One piece of history worth having, because it explains the shape of the law. An earlier version imposed an absolute two-year wait with no special provision for spouses, and the Constitutional Court rejected parts of it in ruling 785/2025. Parliament revised the bill before enacting it, which is where the spouse exception in the next section came from.

The fifteen-month spouse exception, and why it rarely helps a rishta

There is a shorter route for spouses, and families hear about it and assume it applies to them. Usually it does not, and understanding why saves a wasted year.

A spouse or partner can qualify after fifteen months instead of two years — but only if the couple lived together for at least eighteen months before the sponsor entered Portugal. Read that condition carefully. It is designed for couples who were already a household before the move: a man who married in Pakistan, lived with his wife for a year and a half, and then came to Portugal to work.

That is the opposite of how most rishtas on this site are arranged. If the marriage takes place after he is already in Portugal — which is the normal pattern — the eighteen months of prior cohabitation cannot exist, so the exception is unavailable and the full two years apply. A family being told otherwise by an agent should ask to see the provision.

Which makes the honest sequence this. Find out the exact date on his residence card. Add two years. That is the earliest a wife can realistically join him, subject to everything else being in order. If that date is eighteen months away, say so plainly to the bride and to both families at the start — a long engagement that everyone has agreed to is a very different thing from a bride sitting in Pakistan wondering why no date has come. This is the single most useful sentence a family considering a Portuguese proposal can hear.

AIMA, and the route that closed

Two changes in Portugal’s immigration machinery that older relatives will not know about, and that matter for how a household’s paperwork actually stands.

SEF no longer exists. The old Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras was dissolved and its work passed to AIMA, the agency for integration, migration and asylum. If someone is still talking about their SEF appointment, that is a sign the information is years out of date. AIMA has carried a large backlog, which is why the issue date on a card can lag so far behind the application.

And the manifestação de interesse has gone. For years Portugal allowed people who were already in the country working and paying social security to regularise their position through an expression of interest, with no prior work visa. It was the route a very large share of Pakistani Portugal used, and it was closed to new applications in 2024. Anyone planning to arrive in Portugal and sort the papers out afterwards is working from a situation that no longer exists. For a rishta, the practical consequence is blunt: a groom in Portugal without a residence permit now has a much harder and longer road than his cousin did, and no family should assume a path from arrival to papers that has been removed.

So the questions, in order. Does he hold a residence permit at all, or an application receipt? What type, and what does the card say? What is the issue date — ask to see the card on a video call rather than taking a description. How many times has it been renewed? And is the social-security and tax record consistent with the work he describes, because the file will be read from those.

Means, housing, and the documents

Beyond the waiting period, an ordinary application needs suitable accommodation and sufficient means, assured for at least twelve months.

The reference amounts are set as percentages of the Portuguese reference income, commonly read as 100 per cent for the first adult, 50 per cent for each additional adult and 30 per cent for each child. Measured against the 2026 minimum wage of about 920 euros, that works out around 920 euros for the sponsor, a further 460 for a spouse and 276 per child — so a couple with no children lands near 1,380 euros a month. Treat those as indicative rather than an official AIMA table, and confirm the current figures and the accommodation standard with AIMA before relying on them. Portugal is cheaper to live in than Spain or France, but Lisbon rents have risen steeply and the means test does not adjust for that.

Then the Pakistani document chain, which is the same everywhere and just as slow. The nikah registered with the union council, the computerised marriage certificate from NADRA, legalisation by the Pakistani foreign ministry and then the Portuguese mission, and certified translation into Portuguese. Check that every name matches the passports exactly, including spellings — a mismatch between the nikah nama, the NADRA certificate and a passport will stop a file. Collect several legalised copies while you are still in Pakistan, because obtaining one more from Lisbon takes weeks.

And as everywhere in Europe: both parties must be present at the ceremony. A nikah conducted by proxy or over the telephone, perfectly ordinary in parts of Pakistan, creates serious problems for recognition and should not be contemplated where one side is in Europe.

Lisbon, the Alentejo, and the countries next door

Pakistani Portugal is not only Lisbon, and a family searching should know where else it is.

Lisbon and its surrounding municipalities hold the largest share — Martim Moniz and Arroios in the centre, then outward to Odivelas, Amadora and Sintra. But there is a second geography that surprises people: the intensive agriculture of the Alentejo, around Odemira and the southwest coast, employs a substantial South Asian workforce including many Pakistanis, often in difficult housing conditions and on seasonal terms. A profile from that part of the country is a different proposition from a Lisbon shopkeeper, and it is worth asking about directly and without judgement: what the work is, whether it is seasonal, where he lives and what the permit position is. There are also smaller communities around Porto and the northern towns. A country-wide search is the way to reach all of them, since only Lisbon has its own page here.

Beyond Portugal the widening is short. Madrid is about an hour and a half by air and Barcelona a little over two, and Spain holds a far larger and longer-established Pakistani community — for most families here that is the first place to widen to. Paris is roughly two and a half hours, London about the same, and Milan comparable.

One caution if the match is cross-border: Portugal and Spain are neighbours with quite different rules, and Portugal is now the stricter of the two on waiting periods while Spain asks only a year. Decide which country the couple will actually live in before anything else, because that determines whose conditions have to be met — and a couple who assume they can choose later may satisfy neither.

And Pakistan. There is no direct service from Lisbon, so the journey runs through the Gulf, Istanbul or another European hub and takes most of a day — longer than from almost anywhere else in Europe. Portugal runs five hours behind Pakistan in winter and four in summer, because Portugal keeps Western European time and changes its clocks while Pakistan does not, so an evening call in Lisbon lands very late in Punjab. Set your own country to Portugal and the partner preference to Pakistan, establish the residence-card date first, and arrange a video call early and one proper visit before anything is fixed.