Legal Gender Changes Edge Back Toward Their 2024 Record as Parliament Moves to Reimpose a Medical Test

The number of people legally changing their registered sex and name in Portugal is climbing back toward the high-water mark set two years ago, according to figures from the Justice Ministry (Ministério da Justiça) reported by Expresso on 16 August — and the requests remain heavily concentrated in Lisbon. The trend arrives at a politically charged moment, with Parliament already moving to make such changes harder to obtain.

The legal basis is Lei n.º 38/2018, the self-determination law passed in August 2018, which lets adults change the sex recorded in the civil register and their first name as a straightforward administrative act at a Conservatória do Registo Civil (Civil Registry Office), without any requirement of a medical diagnosis, hormone treatment or surgery. Since that law took effect, close to 3,300 people changed their name and registered gender between 2018 and 2025, the Justice Ministry has said in data cited by the broadcaster Renascença.

The yearly pattern shows a steady rise followed by a plateau. Fewer than 250 people a year made the change until 2020; the annual figure climbed past 400 in 2021 and reached a peak of 606 in 2024, before easing slightly to 541 in 2025, according to the ministry's numbers. The clearest data point for this year is the first quarter of 2026, when 192 people changed their registered gender — 12 of them minors — figures SIC Notícias attributed to the same ministry. Expresso's report that 2026 could approach or beat the record should be read as a projection from a partial year rather than a settled total, and the exact half-year figure and Lisbon count behind its headline could not be independently confirmed for this article.

Where the changes happen is less ambiguous. Lisbon and Porto together account for more than half of all requests, with the capital in front — a concentration consistent across the ministry's releases. Younger applicants make up a meaningful share: of the roughly 3,300 changes since 2018, some 323 involved minors aged 16 or 17, who under the current law can apply through their legal representatives.

That threshold is exactly what is now in play in Parliament. In March, deputies gave initial approval to a set of bills from the PSD, Chega and CDS-PP that would roll back the 2018 framework and reimpose a medical requirement — returning, in broad terms, to the pre-2018 regime under which a clinical validation was needed to change one's registered sex, particularly for 16- and 17-year-olds. The CDS-PP proposal goes further on minors, targeting puberty blockers and hormone therapy for under-18s. The bills cleared their first plenary vote and moved into the committee stage; supporters frame the change as safeguarding young people, while LGBTI+ associations and the government's own equality body have called the rollback a significant regression.

For foreign residents, the mechanics matter as much as the politics. The 2018 law is available to Portuguese citizens and, in defined circumstances, to foreign nationals whose civil records are held in Portugal, and any tightening of the rules would change what documentation and medical steps a change of registered sex requires. Nothing has changed yet: the self-determination procedure remains in force while the bills work through the legislature. But the direction of travel in Parliament, set against a registry that keeps recording new requests, means the gap between the law on the books today and the law being drafted is likely to define the debate through the autumn. For anyone working through the Portuguese civil registry, our 2026 guide to changing your name in Portugal: the six-word limit, the 200 euro process decided by the conservador dos Registos Centrais, the seven changes that need no permission, and what marriage and divorce do to surnames sets the latest reference.