AIMA Counts 1,585,854 Foreign Residents at the End of 2025, and One in Six Is Not Holding a Valid Residence Card

Portugal had 1,585,854 foreign residents on 31 December 2025, according to the Relatório de Migrações e Asilo (Migration and Asylum Report) that AIMA published on Tuesday. It is the agency's flagship annual statistical publication, and the 71-page 2025 edition is the most complete official portrait of the foreign population currently available.

The headline number deserves reading alongside its own footnotes, because AIMA's definition of "resident" is broader than a residence card. The report breaks the total into seven groups:

• 1,324,411 hold a valid residence title, counting validity dates after 1 July 2025 to allow for the right to renew up to six months after expiry;
• 76,907 hold titles that expired before 30 June 2025 and have paid the administrative fees for an appointment;
• 66,740 are beneficiaries of Temporary Protection, who hold no residence title but count as resident;
• 50,695 are manifestação de interesse (expression of interest) cases already seen and awaiting a decision;
• 42,521 held expired CPLP residence permits and have already been seen for renewal;
• 24,476 are family reunification cases already seen and awaiting a decision;
• 104 entered on long-stay visas and were granted an extension.

Put another way, 261,443 people, about one in six of the total, were not holding a valid residence card at the end of last year. They are in the count because their file is somewhere in the system, not because their documents are in order. AIMA describes the overall figure as confirming "the stabilisation of new entries" and a foreign community structurally integrated into economic and social life.

Who is here

Brazil remains the largest community for a sixth consecutive year, with 493,622 residents, or 31.1 percent of the total. Angola takes second place in 2025. Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe follow, which keeps the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) at the centre of the picture.

Outside the lusophone world, AIMA flags rapid growth from the Indian subcontinent, naming Nepal, Bangladesh and India as the fastest-expanding groups. Within Europe, the largest communities are Italy, the United Kingdom and Ukraine.

The age profile is the part most likely to be quoted in budget debates. The 18-to-64 band accounts for 84.6 percent of all foreign residents, and the 18-to-34 group alone numbers 668,958. Children aged 0 to 17 are 9.1 percent, and those aged 65 and over just 6.3 percent. The gender split is 55.6 percent men to 44.4 percent women, which AIMA attributes to labour-mobility patterns in which one partner migrates first.

Geographically, the concentration is unchanged. Lisboa, Setúbal, Faro and Porto together hold 1,114,402 foreign residents, 70.3 percent of the national total.

The processing year

AIMA issued more than 500,000 residence titles in 2025: 337,880 new grants and 189,331 renewals. The agency cautions, as in previous years, that an issue date may not match the date a person actually arrived, given the volume and complexity of the backlog being worked through.

The service figures are larger still. AIMA logged 671,273 appointments and completed 605,890. The Estrutura de Missão, the temporary unit built to clear the pending-case mountain, accounted for 409,799 appointments and 386,837 completed; the Lojas AIMA network handled 261,474 and 219,053.

On international protection, 1,765 new applications were lodged in 2025, a decrease on the year before.

The report also records a structural handover. Lei n.º 55-C/2025 of 22 July created the Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (National Foreigners and Borders Unit) inside the PSP, which from 21 August 2025 took over the instruction and management of coercive removal, expulsion, readmission and voluntary return. Up to that date AIMA had opened 298 administrative expulsion cases and issued 91 removal decisions, 418 decisions closing removal files, and 9 revocations of earlier removal decisions.

What this means for foreign residents

• An expired card is not an absent file. If your title lapsed and you have paid for an appointment, AIMA counts you as resident. That is a statistical convention, not a legal status, and it does not substitute for the renewal itself.
• Removals are now a police matter. Since 21 August 2025 the PSP's new unit, not AIMA, runs return and expulsion procedures. Correspondence on those files comes from a different body.
• The backlog still shapes the numbers. Over 75,000 pending decisions sit inside the headline total across expression-of-interest and family reunification cases alone.
• Context for the policy argument. With 84.6 percent of foreign residents of working age and 6.3 percent over 65, the demographic case made in Portuguese politics rests on figures published by the agency itself.

The report is signed off by AIMA president Pedro Portugal Gaspar, who is leaving the agency two years into a five-year term and was heard in parliament on Tuesday, the same day the report appeared. It follows a thin half-year scorecard in September, and is a considerably more substantial document.