Banco de Portugal Halves 2025 Foreign Net-Migration Read to 6,200 Monthly Entries — Down From 13,200 in 2024

The Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal, BdP) Boletim Económico — Junho 2026 (June 2026 Economic Bulletin) puts the foreign-national net-migration flow into Portugal at roughly 6,200 entries per month across 2025, down from the 13,200 monthly average recorded across 2024. The 53% halving was published on Monday 15 June and folds together Social Security registration data with AIMA (Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo, Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum) authorisation files.

The BdP series shows monthly gross arrivals falling from a 20,000-plus run rate held between mid-2022 and mid-2024 to roughly 10,000 per month in 2025, while monthly exits have crept up to about 5,000 — a seven-year-running upward trend on the departure side. The net result is the lowest monthly net flow since the 2018-2019 baseline that preceded the post-pandemic catch-up.

Where the Brake Came From

The Banco attributes the reversal directly to the entry-policy tightening introduced from mid-2024 by the Luís Montenegro government, in particular the wind-down of the manifestação de interesse (expression-of-interest) route that had been the dominant regularisation channel for non-visa arrivals. AIMA's own quarterly indicators released alongside its 22 October 2025 cut showed regularisation flow under that route collapsing 59% year-on-year, with the cumulative 386,463 residence authorisations attributed in the first ten months of 2025 leaning increasingly on family reunification and CPLP (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, Community of Portuguese Language Countries) channels rather than walk-in regularisation.

Governor Álvaro Santos Pereira used the 15 June press conference to underline the labour-market read of the data: "For productive sectors like tourism or construction, immigration is absolutely essential." The BdP business-survey companion shows hiring-difficulty indicators in construction and industry staying "above historical averages" right through 2025 even as the wider headcount-shortage gauge eased — confirming that the gap the tightening leaves is concentrated in the manual-trades cluster that funded the 2022-2024 boom.

Macro Spillovers

The Boletim's projections section trims the 2026 employment-growth read by 0.2 percentage points relative to the March issue and pencils in a 0.3-point haircut to potential GDP through the projection horizon if the slower-flow assumption holds. Social Security cash flow — which had absorbed close to a quarter of new contributors from foreign-national arrivals across 2022-2024 — is now expected to widen its dependency ratio at the same pace AIMA closes out the 2024 backlog by the contractual 30 June 2026 deadline.

What This Means for Expats

• Labour market: Construction, hospitality and care-home roles will keep paying above-market premia in 2026 as the post-2024 pipeline tightens; salary expectations for foreign-resident workers in these sectors should harden.
• Bureaucracy: With the manifestação route closed, the realistic on-ramps for new arrivals are now the D3 Highly-Qualified Worker visa, the D7 passive-income visa, CPLP mobility, and family reunification — front-load consulate appointments months in advance.
• Naturalisation timing: The smaller 2025 arrival cohort means the AIMA naturalisation queue covering five-year residency anchors stabilises around the 2030 read, easing the wait for those already inside the system — see our naturalisation guide.
• Property demand: A halved net flow takes a measurable bite out of net-new household formation by foreign nationals, which had been the marginal buyer in Greater Lisbon and the Algarve from 2022; expect the post-2025 housing-supply correction to bite faster on rents than on prices.
• NIF and tax base: Fewer regularisations mean fewer first-time NIF (Número de Identificação Fiscal, Tax Identification Number) registrations — useful context for anyone navigating the Article 19 LGT non-resident NIF route while the AIMA queue normalises.

The 6,200 monthly figure is a steady-state read, not a trough: the Banco's central scenario for 2026-2028 assumes net entries hold around the 6,000-7,000 band as the manifestação backlog is worked through and CPLP / D-series visas absorb the policy gap. If the labour-shortage data in construction and tourism keeps drifting, expect the political pressure for a partial reopening of regularised entry to build through the autumn budget cycle.