Portuguese residence card expiring soon? Check this now

Residence permits that expire by the end of January can now be renewed online. It’s Tuesday, 27 October. Twenty-one degrees. Air quality: 25 to 56 (Good to Moderate). Here’s what you need to know.

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RESIDENCE PERMITS EXPIRING BY JANUARY CAN NOW BE RENEWED ONLINE

AIMA, the Agency for Migration, Integration and Asylum, has opened online renewals for residence permits that expire by 31 January 2027. The idea is to spread the load over more weeks and cut waiting times, so if your card runs out in the next three months, you can start now.

Which portal you use depends on when your permit expires. Most people whose permits expired after 30 June 2025, or will expire by 31 January 2027, should use the AIMA Renewals Portal. It also handles eligible renewals of investment residence permits, the golden visas, as well as permanent residence certificates for EU citizens and permanent residence cards for their non-EU family members. If your standard permit expired between 22 February 2020 and 30 June 2025, you need the separate AIMA Services platform instead.

Two details can trip people up. AIMA posts new cards to the address it has on file, so if you’ve moved, update it first through its online contact form, under Renewals Portal and then “Communicate/correct address”, with supporting documents. AIMA says these changes are processed within two working days. Check your email address too, since much of the process happens by email, and make sure every scan you upload is readable.

Don’t assume an expired card is still valid. Since 15 October 2025, permits that run out no longer get the automatic extensions introduced during the pandemic unless their holders have started renewing. Once AIMA registers your request and you’ve paid the fees, it issues a receipt valid for 180 days.

Even if your card isn’t due, this tells you how renewals now work. AIMA inherited a backlog of more than 350,000 cases when it replaced the old borders and immigration service in 2023, and since launching the renewals portal in July 2025 it has been moving renewals online and opening them months in advance.

In May, it opened the portal for permits expiring in July and August, and said it would keep trying to open each window earlier. Golden visa renewals have been online-only since February, with no in-person appointments for submitting them, and EU citizens’ residence certificates moved to the portal in July. If the pattern holds, permits expiring after January will be added in the coming months, so it’s worth checking the portal well before your own date.

Bottom line: If your card expires by the end of January, the window to renew is open now, and an expired card no longer stays valid by default.

⚡ QUICK HITS

The police response to the housing camp clearances is now under investigation. The internal affairs inspectorate, which oversees the police, has opened an inquiry into Sunday’s operations in Rossio and Porto’s Praça D. João I, after reports and images of the dispersals. Police now put the injured at 33, 27 of them in Lisbon, with more than 30 arrests. President António José Seguro, who sees the parties one by one on Thursday ahead of a Council of State on 2 November, has called on them to set aside their differences, arguing that families need immediate help as well as long-term reforms. Hours earlier, the finance minister, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, had told parliament the government had done almost all it could. The Lisbon camp has decided not to put its tents back up for now, detainees from both clearances face court hearings this week, and the activist group Casa para Viver, Homes to Live, has called a protest outside parliament today. MPs hold the first vote on the 2027 budget tomorrow.

The insurer of Lisbon’s transport company has told a court the Glória funicular was not a highly reliable form of transport. Fidelidade, which insures Carris, Lisbon’s public transport company, is contesting a claim of around €1 million from the widower of Ana Paula Lopes, an employee of Santa Casa da Misericórdia, the Lisbon charity, who was killed when the funicular derailed on 3 September 2025. The crash killed 16 people, most of them foreign tourists, and injured 24. In its defence at the Lisbon Administrative Court, reported by Correio da Manhã, the insurer argued that such a disaster could not be considered entirely unforeseeable. The family’s lawyer called it a clear admission that the funicular was unreliable, and one that could help establish who is liable. Compensation cases and investigations into the cause are still under way.

Bolt wants to keep its shared e-scooters in Lisbon under a new model. The company is asking for talks after the council voted last week to remove shared scooters by the end of the year. Bolt says 78% of trips in 2025 were made by residents, mostly short journeys to and from public transport, and that it has kept to the 20km/h speed limit and designated parking. It points out that about 70% of the roughly 1,900 parking spots, which are set by the council, are on pavements, and says it has offered to pay for better ones. Mayor Carlos Moedas called the suspension necessary, citing scooters blocking pavements for older people, disabled people and families with pushchairs. Bolt’s scooters stay until the deadline, and it plans to expand its e-bikes in the meantime.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

FAUNA & FLORA (ANJOS)

Fauna & Flora is the kind of café people photograph before they order: mini palms, succulents and cacti, plants trailing from hanging planters, old wooden tables and a counter built from pastel-painted Lisbon doors. The first one opened in Madragoa at the end of 2017 and became one of the city’s go-to brunch spots. The Anjos branch, in the LACS coworking building on Rua Febo Moniz, has the same look.

Breakfast, brunch and lunch are all à la carte. The menu has included matcha pancakes with lemon curd, French toast with halloumi, cottage cheese pancakes with homemade caramel, eggs Benedict and açaí bowls, alongside heartier roast beef focaccia and burgers with sweet potato chips. It leans towards vegetables and fruit, and vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diners are well looked after, but it isn’t a vegetarian restaurant. There are cocktails and wine too.

Worth knowing before you go: it’s open every day from 9am to 6pm, it’s mid-range on price, and weekends get busy enough that you may have to queue.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: at weekends, get there soon after it opens at 9am, when you can still get a table before the brunch queue builds. Or skip the queue entirely and go on a weekday.

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