Portuguese residency in 2 months!

Aside from the clickbait title, this is purely based on my experience applying for a Portuguese residency. I’m a remote worker for a company based out of the US and an Indian citizen. Having said that the process should be fairly similar while applying from most countries.

I personally started hearing a lot about Portugal as a place to be at the start of 2022. At that same time products like baseflow.io (Alex) and rebase.co (Pieter) was set up to help make the move happen using the D7 visa. The D7 visa was initially meant for retirees having passive income. But through the Pandemic, it was being used by Digital Nomads to enter Portugal as residents based on passive income. Oct 30th, 2022, the Portuguese government formalized a visa for Digital Nomads — DR (Digital Nomds/Remote Work Visa for residency) and ER(Temporary long-term stay for Digital Nomads/Remote Work). This made it easier for Remote Workers to apply as the requirements for the D7 visa included having a NIF(Portuguese tax number), a Portuguese Bank Account, and a one-year rental agreement while applying for the D7 which was hard to obtain without being in Portugal.

The whys

• It’s one of the cheaper countries in western Europe.
• Great central location globally as it’s 6 hours to New York and about 8 hours to Asia.
• Moderate weather compared to the rest of Europe with Access to good beaches right from the cities.
• Portugal is the new hot place for digital nomads! So there would already be a good community of ex-pats to have a local support/social system
• After nomad-ing around the world for 2–3 years this seemed like a great new base to have where I wouldn’t have to move around too much on shorter-term visas.
• All of the above are my selling points, there are a bunch more around taxation, healthcare, the upcoming economy, the fastest route to an EU passport, etc that may be on your list as well.

Steps to apply for the DR Visa

• Apply for a Police Clearance Certificate(PCC) from your local country.
• Get the official Portuguese translation for the PCC.
• Get apostille attestation done for both the English and Portuguese versions of the PCC.
• Collect all your documents. The detailed checklist is below.
• Take an appointment with VFS for the visa, if they don’t have the category listed, which was my case they asked me to take an appointment under a work visa.
• Submit the application with your documents at the VFS office. You’ll get another date and time to come back for an interview.
• Attend the interview at the VFS office. You only need to carry your interview slip for this. Some interview questions are below.
• Wait for the decision and the passport to come back. I got my passport back in 30 days.

Documentation checklist

• Your original passport and a copy.
• 2 passport-size photos with the recommended dimensions.
• Visa application form — either online or physical form. Check with VFS.
• Additional local identification — In India that was Pan and Aadhar.
• VFS-approved travel insurance. They should have a list. Safety wings and other nomad insurance weren’t accepted for this. This should be valid from the date of travel for up to 6 months after.
• Both English and Portuguese attested PCCs.
• A work contract stating the nature of work, how much you earn, and the start date. The official recommendation is that income should be over €2820 per month.
• A letter from the company specifically stating that you are allowed to work from outside your country, your designation, your start date, and your salary.
• Last 3 invoices you made for the company. (This was an additional document I provided, and may not be required)
• Provide bank statements for the last 6 months. This should be stamped by your bank. This is to show regular income for the last few months. There isn’t an official recommendation but try and keep a balance of around $5000 in your account.
• One-way air ticket. Dummy reservation. I had a return ticket and they did not accept that. Depart date was recommended to be 60 days out as it takes about 30 days for them to get back.
• Dummy reservation for a stay for 4–6 months. Can be made from booking.com.
• The documents last 3 years of income tax filing in your country of residency.

In my experience, I was the first one to be applying for this specific visa at a VFS office in India so the agents there weren’t sure about everything. Need to be patient and politely ask them to confirm the information with the consulate that’d be accepting the application and follow what the consulate says.

Some interview questions

• Why Portugal?
• How long are you going for?
• Are you going to be working there?
• Are you married?
• If yes, what about your wife?
• How are you going to support yourself?
• Do you plan to travel to other countries?

What is a DR Visa? And what are the next steps?

I have applied for the DR visa which is a residency visa for Digital Nomad/Remote work. Once you receive your passport with the Visa it is valid for 4 months, it allows 2 entries into Portugal. Once you enter Portugal you have to start the process of applying for your residency with SEF(Portugal immigration). Once you have an appointment you can stay in the country longer post the official end date of the visa used to enter. Once you get the residency it is valid for 2 years. This can be renewed for an additional 3 years. You can be out of the country for up to 6 consecutive months or 8 non-consecutive months in the 2 and 3-year period respectively. After 5 years you can apply for a Portuguese passport.

This is all the information I have at the moment. I will be looking into the steps required once you arrive in Portugal and the documentation required by SEF. If anyone out there has gone through this and would like to connect please reach out!

As always, do your own research, YMMV.
Happy to answer any questions you may have!

#DigitalNomad #RemoteWork #Portugal #PortugueseResidency #PR #D7Visa #D7 #DRVisa #D8 #D8Visa

If you think this was helpful you could consider buying me a coffee! :) This also is the fastest way to get your question answered.

EDIT: The link to part 2 is here. Consider checking my service out here.