Renew Your Residence Permit (AIMA Portal)

How this works

Renewing the permit stopped being a pilgrimage to a counter: since July 2025 it is an online form with a payment reference, and hundreds of thousands of requests have gone through the portal since. But the portal has quirks: windows that open by expiry month, a password that arrives by e-mail, 24 hours to pay, and a document list that is identical for everyone, where half the slots may have nothing to do with you. This is the complete map, in the order things happen.

1. 1
   1 · Confirm the portal is your channel
   The renewal portal handles renewals of the temporary permit (work, study, family reunification, EU Blue Card, special situations), the permanent permit, the ARI (golden visa, since February 2026) and, since July 2026, residence cards of family members of EU citizens. Outside it: CPLP permits, renewed at services.aima.gov.pt; trafficking victims, served in person and fee-exempt; and anyone whose permit expired more than 6 months ago, who can no longer renew and must file a fresh application at a Loja AIMA. The portal opens by expiry month, in windows announced on AIMA’s news page, and the request is filed between 90 and 30 days before the permit expires.
2. 2
   2 · Register and sign in
   Access does not use the Chave Móvel Digital: you create an account on the portal itself, with your e-mail, residence-permit number, NIF and date of birth, and AIMA sends a temporary password to the e-mail given. Two practical warnings: the portal is only reachable from inside Portugal (abroad you get the access-blocked message), and holders of a paper-format EU-family residence card must type the card number without the leading zero, a detail AIMA itself published in August 2026 that makes registration fail for many people.
3. 3
   3 · Submit the request and handle the documents
   The portal shows your data and a list of document slots like the screen above. The list is generic: since the 2024 reform, AIMA obtains by itself whatever it can verify in State databases (Finanças, Segurança Social, criminal record, SNS) and the slots act as a fallback for when that lookup fails or the document is genuinely yours, like the passport. That is why slots appear that have nothing to do with you, such as the internship or the exceptional situation. Use the decoder above: it tells you, slot by slot, who needs it, what to upload and where to get each document.
4. 4
   4 · Pay within 24 hours
   After the validations, the portal issues a payment document with a reference, which must be paid within 24 hours; until then the case sits in the "awaiting payment" state. Once payment confirms, the renewal-request receipt is issued, with a QR code. Keep that PDF as if it were the card: together with the expired permit, it is what proves your lawful status for the following 6 months (art. 63(14) of DR 84/2007). Blanket automatic extensions ended on 15 October 2025; today the protection depends on having a submitted, paid request.
5. 5
   5 · Analysis, biometrics only if summoned, card by post
   The analysis runs entirely online. If AIMA needs to capture fingerprints or a new photo, it schedules an in-person appointment used only for that and notifies you; if not, you never set foot in a store. The law gives 60 working days to decide a renewal (art. 82 of Lei 23/2007) and our process-status page calculates that date and explains each status. Upon approval, the card is produced and posted to the address on the case at no extra cost; picking it up at a Loja AIMA costs €29.90 and urgent 2-working-day issuance adds €47.80. Confirm your address before submitting: cards mailed to old addresses are among the most common complaints.
6. 6
   6 · If something blocks, use the right channel
   The portal’s known errors in 2026: blocks over Segurança Social or Finanças debts that do not exist, failures in the NIF-to-NISS linkage, and accounts that will not recognise the permit number. Portal errors have a dedicated circuit: the form at contactenos.aima.gov.pt, subject "Portal de Renovações", with a screenshot of the error, a description, the registration e-mail, your identification details and a copy of the permit. AIMA warns that requests outside that subject are not considered. For everything else, the general line is 217 115 000. If the block is a phantom debt, get the non-debt certificates first: they are free, instant, and attach to the complaint.