Data from the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), reported by Público, shows that 17,359 permits were granted through family reunification in 2025. That was 31% fewer than the 25,093 issued in 2024. In 2023, the figure had been much higher, at 44,878.

Family reunification is the route that allows eligible relatives to join someone who is already living legally in Portugal. For families waiting to be together, the number of applications still in the system matters as much as the number approved: AIMA had 24,476 family reunification requests pending at the end of 2025. That was just 20 fewer than at the end of 2024.

AIMA issued 337,880 new residence permits in 2025, 55% more than the year before. But only 5.1% were for family reunification. In 2024, that share was 11.5%.

Rules restricting access to family reunification came into effect in October 2025, late in the year covered by these figures. The figures show a drop in permits granted, but do not establish how much of it was caused by the change in the law.

A wider backlog at AIMA

Family reunification was only one of the areas where applications remained unresolved. AIMA ended 2025 with 194,703 cases awaiting a decision across its services.

The largest group was residence permit renewals, with 76,907 cases pending. Another 50,695 concerned older expressions of interest and transitional regularisation procedures. There were also 42,521 pending cases involving residence permits for citizens of countries in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.

Despite that backlog, AIMA issued more than 500,000 residence permits during the year when new permits and other types of issuance are counted together. The agency links the rise in new permits partly to its work on applications that had been waiting for a decision.

Foreign residents in Portugal

AIMA’s annual figures put the number of foreign residents in Portugal at 1,585,854. Most were of working age: 84.6% were between 18 and 64, while 9.1% were minors and 6.3% were aged 65 or over.

Lisbon, Setúbal, Faro and Porto accounted for 1,114,402 foreign residents between them, or 70.3% of the national total. Among people granted new residence permits, the largest age group was 18 to 34, with 177,906 permits.

More notices to leave the country

The report also records a steep rise in notices ordering people to leave Portugal voluntarily. AIMA, the PSP and the GNR issued 23,133 such notices in 2025, compared with 446 in 2024.

Indian nationals received the most notices, with 3,984 cases, followed by people from Bangladesh, with 2,934, and Brazil, with 2,354. A notice to leave voluntarily is separate from a forced removal.

For forced removals, the figures cited in the report run only to 21 August 2026. They record 298 administrative expulsions by that date, compared with 195 during the whole of 2025.