Yes, you can get Portuguese citizenship through your spouse. And—the part people don’t realize—you can get it through a long-term partner you’re not married to, through a união de facto. Both are three-year routes, and neither requires you to live in Portugal to apply.
The other thing worth clearing up early: you don’t actually need citizenship to move to Portugal. If your spouse or partner is Portuguese, or a citizen of any EU or EEA country or Switzerland, you can move together under Article 15 and settle first. Here’s how that works →
But I’d generally apply for the citizenship anyway. It’s an EU passport that doesn’t depend on you keeping a residence permit alive, and once you qualify there’s little reason to leave it on the table.
One heads-up before you go further: the rules changed on 19 May 2026. If the research you’ve saved is older than that, some of it is now wrong—including a few things still circulating on every forum.
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What you actually need
Whether you’re married or in a união de facto, the core requirements are the same shape.
- Three years. Three years of marriage, or three years of a recognized união de facto, with a Portuguese citizen. You do not need to live in Portugal, and you don’t need a residence permit, to apply on this route.
- A2 Portuguese. You have to show A2-level Portuguese. The normal way is the CIPLE exam, run by CAPLE and it books up quickly so sign up early. You can also satisfy it with a certificate from a 150-hour course at an accredited institution instead of sitting the exam. The catch: most of those courses are only open to people already resident in Portugal, so if you’re applying from the US, Canada, or the UK, that door is usually closed and CIPLE is your most realistic option.
- If you’re a citizen of a Portuguese-speaking country—Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, and the rest of the CPLP—you’re exempt from the language requirement entirely. A2 itself is basic: ordering, introducing yourself, filling in a form. It is not a conversation about politics, so don’t fret too much.
- Effective ties to the Portuguese community. The vaguer one. It means showing your life is actually connected to Portugal—visits, family, cultural involvement, the language. Worth knowing: there used to be a rule that a long enough marriage exempted you from proving language and ties. As best I can establish, the 2026 reform removed it. Being married a long time no longer buys you out of the A2 exam or the ties requirement, so don’t plan around a threshold that isn’t there anymore.
- A clean-enough record. The criminal bar was tightened in 2026. Broadly, a conviction carrying a prison sentence over three years for a serious offense will block you.
Then the documents split depending on whether there’s a marriage certificate involved.
If you’re married
The simpler of the two on paper now. You apply by declaration during the marriage, and your main document is the marriage certificate, apostilled and translated. If the marriage happened abroad, registering it in the Portuguese civil registry first—the transcrição de casamento—makes the whole thing smoother, and in practice you’ll usually need to do it anyway.
If you’re in a união de facto
Heavier lifting, and this is new weight. Under the current law, a união de facto has to be recognized by a judicial decision before you can apply on it—a court step, with its own timeline and cost, that married couples skip entirely. On top of that you’re proving the union is real and has run three years: same address, joint bank accounts, joint tax filings, a joint lease or deed, and an atestado from your junta de freguesia confirming you live together.
The honest trade-off: marriage is now the cleaner paperwork path, but união de facto lets you start your three years without getting married—which, as the next section explains, is not a small thing.
If you’re not married yet, read this before you set a wedding date
Here’s the counterintuitive part. If you’ve been living together as a couple for three years and you’re thinking about getting married, getting married might restart your clock.
The three-year qualifying period for a união de facto runs from your union. The three-year period for marriage runs from your marriage. So a couple who’ve been together four years, apply through their união de facto, and are eligible—versus the same couple who marry first and are suddenly told the clock starts again from the wedding, because now they’re being assessed as a married couple.
This one surprised me enough that I put it to several immigration lawyers, because it sounds like the kind of thing that gets garbled online. I’ve had mixed answers back on this. Some say it’s true, some say it’s not.
There is a workaround, and it’s worth knowing so you can ask for it by name. A lawyer can try to have both periods counted together—the recognized união de facto plus the subsequent marriage—but it means opening judicial proceedings to get the union formally recognized by a Portuguese court, and it is not guaranteed. The Conservatória has only accepted combined periods in a handful of specific cases. So it’s a “possible, don’t count on it,” not a plan.
The practical version:
If you’ve been a couple for three years or more and aren’t married yet: talk to a lawyer before you marry. Applying through your união de facto first may be years faster than marrying and starting a fresh three-year clock. This is cheap advice to get early and expensive to get late.
And find a lawyer who has actually pushed one of these through, not one who’s read the same statute you have. This is a “show me a case you’ve done” question.
What changed in 2026
If you’ve been researching this for a while, half of what you’ve saved is now out of date.
Portugal’s Nationality Law was rewritten by Organic Law 1/2026, in force since 19 May 2026. Applications already pending on that date are assessed under the old rules; everyone filing after it is on the new ones.
The marriage and união de facto routes weren’t hit as hard as naturalization—where the residency requirement jumped from five years to seven or ten—but they did change: the formal A2 requirement, the “effective ties” test, the judicial-recognition step for unmarried couples, and the removal of the old long-marriage exemption all date from this reform. Prior to this, sometimes people were expected to have language certificates. Sometimes they were expected to have ties to Portugal. Other times, they weren’t.
How long it takes, and the two-year catch
The law sets a 90-day target for a decision once your file is confirmed complete. I would not build my life around that number. Between assembling documents, the união de facto court step if it applies, and the backlog, real timelines still run into many months and often past a year. Treat “complete file” as the hard part; the clock the government cares about only starts once you’re there.
The catch worth knowing: the reform doubled the prosecutor’s opposition window to two years. The Ministério Público can oppose your application—usually on effective-ties grounds—and it now has twice as long to do it. Not a reason to panic, but a reason to make the ties evidence solid rather than thin, and a reason not to treat approval as final the moment you file.
Where this gets harder
A few situations that turn a straightforward case into a difficult one.
- You live apart. A união de facto application from a couple at two different addresses, or in two different countries, typically gets rejected. Cohabitation isn’t a nice-to-have on this route; it’s the thing being proved. If you’re long-distance, this route isn’t open to you yet.
- You can’t show the joint paper trail. Unmarried couples who’ve kept everything separate—separate accounts, separate leases, nothing with both names on it—struggle, because the record is the case. If that’s you, the usual advice is either to start building the trail now and wait, or to marry and apply on the marriage route instead.
- The prosecutor isn’t satisfied on ties. This is where a thin application comes apart, and where the two-year window bites. It’s the strongest argument for treating “effective ties” as something to document deliberately, well before you file.
What I’d do
If you’re years from moving and just want the passport: confirm your spouse or partner is Portuguese, start the Portuguese lessons now because the exam is the slowest movable part, and get the marriage registered in Portugal if you’re already married.
If you want to move soon: don’t wait on citizenship. Move under Article 15 if your partner qualifies, get settled, and run the three-year clock in the background—but do run it, because there’s no good reason to skip the passport once you’re eligible.
And if you’re not yet married but have been together three years: get an hour with a lawyer before you do anything else, because the order you do things in could cost you three years.
FAQ
Yes. A união de facto—a recognized long-term partnership—qualifies on the same three-year timeline as marriage. It carries more paperwork: it now needs a judicial decision recognizing the union, plus proof you’ve lived together for three years.
No. Neither the marriage nor the união de facto route requires residence in Portugal or a residence permit.
No. Neither the marriage nor the união de facto route requires residence in Portugal or a residence permit.
No. If your spouse or partner is Portuguese or an EU/EEA/Swiss citizen, you move together under Article 15 and apply for citizenship separately once you’ve hit three years. How that works →
Yes, A2 level, unless you’re from a Portuguese-speaking country, in which case you’re exempt. A2 is basic, but it’s a real exam—and if you’re abroad, the 150-hour course alternative usually isn’t open to you, so plan on CIPLE.
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