Portugal's Permanent Immigration More Than Doubled in 2025 as AIMA Cleared Its Backlog, and Most New Permits Went Through Work, the OECD Reports

Portugal more than doubled its intake of new permanent immigrants in 2025, and that rise propped up the OECD-wide total. The OECD's International Migration Outlook 2026, published on Thursday, counts 313,600 new permanent immigrants in Portugal last year, up from 131,600 in 2024. Across the OECD, permanent migration fell 1.6 percent to 6.1 million; without Portugal, Italy and Spain the fall would have been 8.2 percent. Immigrants now make up 12 percent of the population of OECD countries, against 9.2 percent in 2015.

A cleared backlog, mostly through work

The OECD puts Portugal's jump down to the clearance of a large backlog of residence applications, which it says produced around 300,000 permits between September 2024 and December 2025. Most went through the work route: permanent work-based migration rose from 60,300 to 240,400, while family migration (25,400) and free movement within the EU (27,200) barely changed. Relative to population, Portugal recorded more than 30 new permanent migrants per 1,000 inhabitants; Luxembourg and Iceland led at 38 and 36, and in many member countries the rate was 5 to 12.

The report notes that the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA, the immigration agency) counts differently, partly because Portuguese-speaking (CPLP) residence authorisations are not fully captured in the Eurostat figures the OECD uses. On AIMA's basis, 337,880 new residence titles were issued in 2025, against 218,332 in 2024.

The Portugal country note puts the foreign-born population at 1.7 million in 2024, 16.3 percent of residents and 47 percent more than in 2015. Asylum remains small: about 1,800 first-time applicants in 2025, down 34 percent, with a third of the 1,380 decisions positive.

In work, but often below their skills

Immigrants' job prospects improved. Their employment rate reached 76.8 percent in 2025, 3.4 points above that of people born in Portugal, and their unemployment rate fell by a point to 8.1 percent, still 2.3 points higher. Portugal was one of seven countries that improved on both measures.

The weaker picture is in where they work. On 2019 data, the latest the OECD has for Portugal, 25 percent of immigrants within the same industry work in the least productive fifth of firms and only 11 percent in the most productive fifth; an even spread would put 20 percent in each. Italy is the only other country the OECD singles out for a gap this wide. Graduates feel it too: 87.3 percent of highly educated immigrants are employed, against 92.5 percent of Portuguese-born graduates.

A warning on citizenship

The report's integration chapter finds citizenship rules tightening across the OECD, through longer residence periods, higher fees and language and civic tests. "The cumulative effect of higher fees, longer residence requirements and more demanding conditions risks excluding migrants who are functionally integrated but lack the resources or formal credentials these measures require," it concludes. That passage does not name Portugal, but Portugal has moved the same way: as Observador reported, the amended nationality law requires seven years' legal residence for citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries and ten for most other foreign nationals, up from five. The cabinet has signed off the rules that implement it.

What this means for you

• Nothing changes in your paperwork. The report is analysis; it does not alter permit, renewal or nationality rules.
• Read the 2025 number with care. The OECD ties it to backlog clearance rather than a surge in new arrivals, so it says more about AIMA's processing than about who came in that year.
• Skills recognition is the OECD's main ask. It calls for better recognition of foreign qualifications and closer matching of migrants' skills to jobs. The report makes recommendations to governments; it does not change how recognition works in Portugal today.