If you have anything pending with AIMA right now, there is a real chance the most important email of your year lands in your spam folder at four in the morning this week.
That is not an exaggeration. AIMA has started sending out thousands of appointment emails, and they go out overnight on purpose to keep the system from collapsing under the load. Some of the families now being called paid their fees in January.
So, before anything else: whitelist AIMA's domain and check your spam folder every morning until your date arrives.
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The appointment emails
If you applied for family reunification, this is your month. AIMA is sending scheduling emails to thousands of families across roughly a two-week window, running from late July into August. The appointments themselves are being booked out to the end of the year.
One thing AIMA said directly, and it matters more than it sounds: do not submit your request through multiple channels at once. Plenty of families applied through the portal and through the transitional regime, hedging their bets. Those duplicates actively slow down processing, including your own. Pick one route and wait.
The NISS just got a lot easier
This one is genuinely good news. Until now, you regularised your status at AIMA, and then made a completely separate trip to Segurança Social to get your NISS. Two appointments, two queues. And because the NISS became mandatory for renewals, not having it could block your entire renewal.
From the end of July, that second trip is gone. The systems are connected now, and your NISS is assigned automatically, in real time, the moment AIMA validates your process.
I have a personal grudge with this one. My own NISS took over four months to arrive, and when it finally did, my surname was misspelled. If you have an appointment coming up, confirm before you leave the building that your number was actually issued.
You can finally see your own process
AIMA quietly launched a tracking tool inside its contact portal. You can now follow what stage your residence process is at. It is still in testing, so expect rough edges.
But think about what it replaces. Until now, the only way to find out anything was to call, email, or stand in a queue. That is a large part of why the queues existed at all.
Log in this week, check your status, and screenshot what you see. If the information turns out to be wrong later, that screenshot is your record.
The number that explains everything
When people stopped getting answers, they went to court. By April, there were around 124,000 lawsuits sitting against AIMA in the administrative courts.
Portugal put together a task force of 28 judges. In three months they issued 22,436 rulings, roughly 18 percent of the backlog, at about 247 rulings a day.
The courts are moving. But AIMA is now telling people that filing a lawsuit is not worth it, because appointments are being scheduled anyway, and people often credit their court case for a date that was coming regardless. I am not a lawyer, and I am not telling you whether to sue. Before you spend money on it, ask one whether your specific case actually needs it.
Two deadlines before September
The renewal portal is open for residence permits expiring in September and October 2026. If your card expires in either month, submit now, in August, and keep the proof with the QR code.
And if you are travelling: a card that expired after 30 June last year gives you six months of residence rights past the expiry date, but only if you requested the renewal, and that protection is really only solid inside Portugal. If you are flying out of Schengen in August on an expired card with just the renewal certificate, check with the border authority of the country you are entering before you book. People are getting stuck on exactly this right now.
One more thing, for anyone counting years
The new nationality law has been in force since 19 May. Ten years for most nationalities, seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking countries. And the clock now runs from the date your card was issued, not from when you applied. Since 2024 it worked the other way round, so AIMA's delays did not cost you time. That protection is gone. If you waited a year for your first card, that year no longer counts.
The implementing regulation is expected around mid-August, and it should finally define what the A2 language test and the culture and history exam actually involve. I will break it down here the moment it lands.
If you want it in one place
I keep all of this- renewals, visas, documents, and the services I actually trust- in the Portugal Resource Guide, updated as things change: guide.remotelifept.com
Know someone planning the move or already here? Forward this. Most people find this out too late, after the missed deadline. Takes two seconds. Might save them months.
If you are already in Portugal or planning this move and hitting a wall that a video cannot solve, tell me about your situation here: start.remotelifept.com
If my team and I think we can help, I will reach out directly.
And if you just have a question, reply to this email, and I will get back to you.
See you next week.
Tchau,
Danilo from Remote Life Portugal