If you’re moving to Portugal and thinking about having children, you may be wondering whether they’ll be able to obtain Portuguese citizenship. After all, having Portuguese citizenship will offer that child a number of benefits and opportunities, including the right to live and work in Portugal or anywhere else in the EU. They’ll also have access to public healthcare within Portugal and the opportunity to study within the EU.
The good news is that your child won’t need to wait five years to obtain Portuguese citizenship through naturalisation, as most people do when they move to Portugal. Instead, Portuguese citizenship is granted to children born in Portugal. The same applies if one parent is Portuguese.
According to Sandra Gomes Pinto of Sandra Gomes Pinto & Associados, if a child is born in Portugal and the parents are legal residents, the child can automatically acquire Portuguese citizenship. It also works the other way around: if you have a child that has Portuguese citizenship, it makes it easier for the parents to obtain Portuguese citizenship.
This is great news for those thinking about children once they move to Portugal. As well as this, it’s worth noting that Portugal is an extremely family-friendly country where children are much more a part of daily life than they are in other Western countries.
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