Your family can apply for accompanying visas alongside yours and move with you. Reunification usually means a two-year wait
If you are still only planning to move to Portugal on a residence visa (for work, a D7 for people living on passive income or a D8 for remote work), you do not have to go alone first. Portugal's immigration law (Lei n.º 23/2007, article 58, paragraph 5) allows your spouse and children to apply for an accompanying family visa at the same time as you, so the whole family can move together. A lawyer pointed this out on 5 November in the readers' questions column of DN Brasil.
The accompanying visa is available to the same relatives who qualify for family reunification (article 99): a spouse, minor children, adult children who are students, and parents if they are dependent on you. Each of them submits their own application and gathers their own documents, above all proof of the family relationship and of the money the family will live on. Our guide How to gather certificates, apostilles and translations for a Portuguese visa explains how to prepare marriage and birth certificates with an apostille and a translation.
If you already live in Portugal with a residence permit and your family is still in another country, you will need to apply for family reunification (reagrupamento familiar). The application goes to AIMA, and only once AIMA has approved it can your relatives go to the consulate for a visa.
Since 23 October 2025, you can only apply for reunification once you have held your residence permit for at least two years. For a spouse, 15 months is enough if the two of you lived together for at least a year and a half before you moved.
You do not have to wait if you are bringing minor or legally incapacitated children who are dependent on you, or a spouse who is the other parent of those children. Nor do the families of people holding a residence permit for teachers and highly qualified professionals, a "golden visa" or an "EU Blue Card". In exceptional cases, the government minister responsible for migration can shorten or waive the waiting period (article 98, as amended by Lei n.º 61/2025).
