Given the international public health emergency caused by COVID 19, the Portuguese Government has recently published several laws and regulations.

In this regard, we want to highlight the following:

Residence permit cards, which may be renewed and whose validity expired on or after February 24th,2020 must be accepted for all legal purposes until March 31st 2021

However, our advice would be to come and renew within the validity mentioned on the residence cards. Why ? You should have no problem with a direct entry to Portugal from outside the Schengen area. But, if you entry Portugal via a Schengen point of entry, this new extension may not be recognized by the officials of that country and you may be returned to your country without possession of a short-term visitor’s VISA or a valid Schengen VISA .

Also, the Portuguese government has recently implemented common sense measures to slowdown the increase of the virus, without slowing down the economy.

So, in Portugal, banks, SEF, and GV process has no changes, until now. Everything will still be running as usual with safety .

We will be on top of this subject and give feedback in the coming weeks for future developments.