I Have No Plans to Move to Portugal. Why Do This Now?

Because this is not a decision about moving. It is a decision about whether the route stays available to the people below you in the family line, and across Europe those routes have been narrowing on dated, published measures throughout 2025 and 2026.

The objection is a fair one and deserves a direct answer rather than a sales pitch. If you never set foot in Portugal, a Portuguese citizenship costs you nothing to hold, obliges you to nothing, and cannot be lost through disuse. What it does is keep a door open, and the evidence of the last two years is that doors of this kind are being narrowed by legislatures, not widened.

In this article:

• 1. What are you actually holding if you never move?
• 1. What narrowed in Europe in 2025 and 2026
• 1. What Portugal itself changed
• 1. What did not happen, and why honesty about it matters
• 1. Why the cost of waiting is measured in generations
• 1. Frequently asked questions
• 1. Conclusion

What are you actually holding if you never move?

A permanent option, held by you and transmissible to your children.

Portuguese nationality is not lost by living abroad, by never using the passport, or by the passing of time. Under the Nationality Law, it is lost only by someone who holds another nationality and declares that they do not wish to be Portuguese. It is also not exclusive: where a person holds Portuguese nationality alongside another, only the Portuguese one counts for the purposes of Portuguese law, so nobody is asked to give up an American passport.

There is no annual filing, no residence obligation, no minimum stay and no renewal condition attached to holding it. A person can be registered in 2026 and do nothing at all with it for forty years.

The unspoken question underneath that sentence is usually a fiscal one, and it has a short answer. A Portuguese passport does not by itself make its holder a Portuguese taxpayer, because Portugal, like almost every country, taxes people on where they live rather than on the passport they carry; the American system, which follows citizenship, is the exception rather than the rule. Whether someone is tax resident in Portugal is determined by Portuguese law and assessed on the facts of the case, and that, like the American side of it, belongs with an accountant rather than with this firm.

It is also worth being explicit about what this route is not, because the field around European citizenship is crowded with things that are unrelated to it. This is an inherited right, established by proving a family line in civil records. It is not a program anybody buys into, and no amount of money substitutes for the birth records.

What narrowed in Europe in 2025 and 2026

This is where the argument stops being abstract. Over roughly two years, several European countries closed or narrowed routes that had been open for decades, each on a specific date.

Two other countries are moving in the same direction without having arrived. The Netherlands approved a proposal in September 2025 to double the minimum residence for naturalization from five to ten years. The United Kingdom published a white paper on 12 May 2025 proposing to double the qualifying period for settlement from five to ten years, and on 2 February 2026 the responsible minister confirmed the intention to proceed, with the questions of retroactivity and transition still undecided.

The counterexample matters for the credibility of the argument, so here it is: Ireland has not changed its grandparent rule. Through 2026, someone with a grandparent born in Ireland can still register a foreign birth and obtain citizenship. Not every door is closing at once. What is unusual is how many closed in the same twenty-four months.

The Italian case is the one worth studying, because it shows how these transitions actually work. The restriction arrived by emergency decree, in force the day after it was signed, with a cutoff timed to the minute. People whose files had been submitted the previous week were inside the old regime, and people who had been meaning to file for years were outside it.

What Portugal itself changed

Portugal is not an exception to the trend. It has moved twice in ways that matter to this audience.

In October 2025 it abolished the route that allowed people to enter as tourists and regularize their residence afterwards, with a transitional window that ended on 31 December 2025. And the general residence requirement for ordinary naturalization was raised to seven years for nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries and European Union member states, and ten years for everyone else, Americans included.

For descent specifically, the concrete step came in May 2026. The route for children of Portuguese citizens was left alone. The route for grandchildren now carries requirements that used to belong only to naturalization: knowledge of the Portuguese language, culture, history and national symbols, shown by test or certificate; knowledge of the fundamental rights and duties of Portuguese nationality and of the political organization of the State; and a solemn declaration of adherence to the fundamental principles of the democratic rule of law.

There is a detail in that amendment which answers the question in this article's title better than any argument. Files that were already pending when the new law came into force continue to be decided under the previous wording. Whether a family gets the old rules or the new ones is decided by the date their file entered the system, not by how strong their claim is.

The queue is a fact of the same order. On 30 June 2025 the Institute of Registries and Notaries had 515,334 nationality cases under analysis, from more than 1.543 million applications received in five and a half years.

What did not happen, and why honesty about it matters

Plenty of people selling second citizenships describe an America that is about to strip its citizens of something. That is not what the record shows, and the argument does not need it.

Birthright citizenship in the United States was not abolished. An executive order signed on 20 January 2025 sought to deny it to children born in the United States to parents in irregular status or on temporary stays. On 30 June 2026 the Supreme Court, by six votes to three and with the opinion delivered by the Chief Justice, held that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States regardless of the immigration status of their parents, striking the order down.

Nor has any American measure of 2025 or 2026 restricted the ability of American citizens to hold a second nationality. A bill to that effect was introduced in 2025 and was not enacted.

What the American record does show is a general tightening of entry and of naturalization. The civics test for naturalization was reinstated in a harder form for applications from 20 October 2025, with a bank of 128 questions instead of 100, twenty asked at interview and twelve correct answers required to pass. A mandatory, non-refundable and non-waivable visa integrity fee of 250 dollars was created by legislation of 4 July 2025 and applies to nearly all non-immigrant visas. A supplemental payment of 100,000 dollars was imposed as a condition of new H-1B petitions filed from 21 September 2025. The refugee admissions ceiling for the 2026 fiscal year was set at 7,500 people, the lowest in the history of the program.

The point is not that America is doing something to its own citizens. The point is that on both sides of the Atlantic the legislative direction over two years has been the same, and it is towards fewer routes and longer waits.

Why the cost of waiting is measured in generations

The routes are not equally durable, and this is the part that a person with no intention of moving usually has not been told.

If you are the child of a Portuguese citizen, your route is the simplest one in the law: register, with no test and no residence requirement. If you register, your own children become the children of a Portuguese parent, because attribution of nationality produces effects from birth. They inherit the same simple route you used.

If you do not register, your children are grandchildren, and grandchildren now face the language, culture and knowledge requirements introduced in May 2026. If they in turn do not act, their children are great-grandchildren, and for great-grandchildren there is no attribution route at all. The only provision reaching that far is a discretionary grant by the Government that requires five years of legal residence in Portugal. Beyond the third degree the law sets an express limit, and nothing remains.

That is the honest answer to "why now". Not because a deadline is about to expire, and not because Portugal is about to become unreachable. Because the version of the route your family currently holds is the easiest one it will ever hold, and the person who benefits from you using it may not have been born yet.

Frequently asked questions

Does holding Portuguese citizenship cost me anything if I never use it? There is no annual obligation, no residence requirement and no renewal condition, and it is not lost through disuse. Your American tax position is unaffected by it, and any question about that belongs to an accountant.

Is there a deadline I am missing? No published deadline applies to a valid claim. What changes is the law itself, and Italy showed in March 2025 how abruptly a cutoff can be set once a legislature decides to move.

Should I wait to see whether the rules loosen again? The measured direction across Europe over the last two years has been towards longer residence periods and narrower descent rules. Portugal's own amendment applied the older, easier wording to files already pending, which rewards being in the system rather than waiting outside it.

My children are minors. Should I claim for them or for myself first? For yourself first, in almost every case. Once you are registered, your minor children can be registered through you as children of a Portuguese parent, which is the simplest route available.

Conclusion

Nobody should claim Portuguese citizenship because they are about to move to Lisbon. Most of the American families we work with have no such plan, and that is not a problem with their case.

The reason to act is that the route you hold today is the easiest one your family will ever hold, and it stops existing in that form the moment a generation lets it pass. At Fluxia Law we start by mapping the line and identifying what in the civil records would stop a file, so the decision is made with the actual documents in front of you.

Read also

• Portugal's New Nationality Law: What Actually Changed in 2026
• You Already Have Portuguese Citizenship. Your Family Doesn't Yet.
• Portuguese Citizenship Requirements in 2026: The Full Checklist, Route by Route