Portugal Jobseeker Visa
Portugal's Jobseeker Visa Is Closed. Here's What Replaced It.
Portugal scrapped its open job hunting visa in October 2025. The skilled version written to replace it still isn't taking applications.
If the plan was to fly to Lisbon with a resume and a few months to work it, that plan is off the table. This page covers what the law says now, who the replacement visa is built for, and which Portuguese visas you can still file this month.
What changed
One law, and the route was gone
Portugal published Lei n.º 61/2025 on October 22, 2025, which took effect the next morning. From October 23, Portuguese consulates and the visa centers that front for them, VFS Global, BLS International and TLScontact, stopped accepting jobseeker applications. Appointments already on the books were canceled.
The law rewrote Article 57-A of the Foreigners' Law. The old visa, the one that let almost any non-EU worker land in Portugal and look for almost any job, no longer exists. In its place, the statute creates the visto para procura de trabalho qualificado, the skilled jobseeker visa, for people with specialized technical skills going after highly qualified work.
The part nobody planned for
The replacement still can't be applied for. It needs a joint order from four ministries to define which technical skills count, and that order hasn't been published. Portugal's own visa portal says so in one blunt sentence: waiting for the necessary regulation of Article 57-A.
Jobseeker Visa
Allows non-EU nationals to enter Portugal to search for employment. Valid for up to 120 days, extendable for an additional 60 days. Does not permit work until a job offer is secured and a work visa is obtained.
- Government cost
- $90
- Processing time
- ~30 days
- Timeline
- 120 days, extendable 60 days
- Difficulty
- Moderate
About that data card
The card above reads off our database, and the database still describes the visa Portugal retired. Three lines need a footnote. The fee shown is the old one, and it's euros wearing a dollar sign: a Portuguese national visa costs 110 euros, set by Portaria 91/2025/1 in March 2025, or about $127 at roughly 1.15 dollars to the euro in mid-September 2026, plus a VFS service charge of about $44 in the U.S. The processing figure describes a route nobody is processing today. Plus, the old money test died with the old visa, so we've hidden the requirement list rather than print a number that isn't in force.
Who it's for now
The new gate is narrow on purpose
Article 57-A now hands the visa only to people with specialized technical skills, aiming at highly qualified work. Read that as a recognized degree or a serious technical credential in the fields Portugal says it's short of: technology, engineering, health, life sciences. Arriving on spec to wait tables or frame houses was the old visa's whole appeal, and that version is gone.
The shape of the stay
The visa runs 120 days and can be extended once by 60, so 180 days at the outside. It's single entry and good for Portugal only, not the rest of Schengen. It arrives with an AIMA appointment already booked inside its validity. Reach the end of the window without starting work and you leave the country, then wait a year before asking again.
One line in that database description is now backwards. The statute lets you work a highly qualified job on this visa, from the day a company hires you until your residence permit comes through, so the hiring no longer has to wait on the paperwork.
What the statute already asks for
A real credential
Higher education or specialized technical skills, in a field the government has yet to list.
Highly qualified work
The job you're hunting has to be a skilled role. General labor no longer opens this door.
Money you can prove
Means of subsistence for the whole stay, at a level the pending order will fix.
Health coverage
Insurance that covers you for the length of the visa, bought before you file.
A ticket home
Law 61/2025 added proof of return travel to the conditions for this visa.
A clean history in Portugal
Anyone who entered or stayed illegally is now refused outright, on top of the criminal record check.
Open doors
What you can file this month
None of this means Portugal is shut. It means the order of operations changed: get hired first, then file.
If an employer wants you
Portugal's work visa, the D1, is built for exactly that. You need a signed contract or a binding promise of one, and your employer carries part of the file. For a senior or deeply technical hire there's the highly qualified activity route and the EU Blue Card, which trade a salary floor for faster handling. If the company that wants you is IAPMEI certified, ask them about the Tech Visa.
If your income comes from somewhere else
Keep your American job and work from Lisbon on the D8 digital nomad visa, which wants about 3,680 euros a month in remote income. Live on a pension or investments and the D7 sets its bar at the minimum wage, 920 euros a month in 2026. Building something of your own points at the D2 entrepreneur visa, and writing a check points at the golden visa. Weighing countries instead of visas? Our work visa hub lines the skilled routes up side by side.
Portugal's visa options, at a glance
Entrepreneur Visa
- Valid passport
- Viable business plan or proof of entrepreneurial activity
- Sufficient funds (approx. €10,000)
Passive Income Visa
- Proof of sufficient passive income (e.g., pensions, rental income, dividends)
- Clean criminal record
- Valid health insurance
Digital Nomad Visa
- Proof of remote work or self-employment for a foreign company
- Minimum monthly income of €3,680 (as of 2026)
- Clean criminal record
Golden Visa (Residency by Investment)
- Investment in scientific/technological research, cultural heritage preservation, or creation of at least 10 jobs in Portugal (real estate no longer eligible)
- Minimum stay: 7 days per year or 14 days per 2-year period
- Clean criminal record
Student Visa
- Acceptance letter from a recognized Portuguese educational institution
- Proof of financial means
- Clean criminal record
Work Visa
- Job offer from a Portuguese employer
- Clean criminal record
- Valid health insurance
Getting hired
How to land the offer before you fly
With the jobseeker route shut, the offer has to come first, and that's harder from Ohio than it is from a cafe in Porto. A few things move the needle.
Get your degree apostilled and translated now. Every skilled route asks for it, and the wait is measured in weeks. If your profession is regulated in Portugal, and nursing, medicine, law, teaching and engineering all are, open the recognition file early. That's the step that quietly eats months.
Portuguese matters more than the forums admit. English will carry you inside a multinational in Lisbon or Porto, but it won't carry you past a hiring manager at a Portuguese company.
Then aim where the hiring actually happens: the Lisbon and Porto tech scene, the engineering and electronics employers around Braga and Aveiro, hospitals that recruit abroad, and the shared service centers that staff in English.
The back door closed too
Worth knowing if you're reading an older guide. Portugal used to let you fly in as a tourist, find work, and regularize from inside the country through a manifestação de interesse. That route was abolished, and the last pending files had to be in by December 31, 2025. Americans still get 90 visa-free days, and they're good for interviews and for walking around neighborhoods. You just can't turn them into a residence permit anymore.
People worth having in your corner
We keep a short list of partners for the parts of this that go wrong quietly: the residence file, the American tax return that follows you across the Atlantic, and the Portuguese you'll want before the interview.
Viv Europe
Portugal Relocation Specialist
Viv Europe is a Lisbon-based relocation team that runs Portuguese residence files end to end, which is worth a lot in a year when the rules keep moving under the applicants.
MyExpatTaxes
U.S. Expat Tax Service
A Portuguese paycheck doesn't end your U.S. filing. MyExpatTaxes handles the messy overlap year when you've earned in two countries and owe forms to both.
Lingoda
Language Learning
Lingoda runs small online classes on a schedule that survives a full time job, which is the difference between being conversational before the interview and after it.
Questions Americans keep asking
Could I just go as a tourist and job hunt for 90 days?
You can look, interview and get a feel for a city on your 90 visa free days. What you can't do is turn that into residence. Those days are also Schengen wide, 90 in any 180 across the whole area, so a side trip to Spain spends the same clock. The manifestação de interesse route that used to allow it is gone, so the visa has to be issued at a consulate before you move.
Can I still apply for Portugal's jobseeker visa in 2026?
No. Consulates and the outside visa centers stopped taking applications on October 23, 2025, the day Law 61/2025 took effect, and pending appointments were canceled. The skilled version that replaced it exists in the statute but can't be filed yet, because the order defining which technical skills qualify hasn't been published.
What happens to jobseeker visas issued before the change?
Visas granted under the old rules keep their validity and their original conditions, including the extension they came with. The change hit new applications. If you're holding one, work to its dates and get the AIMA side handled inside the window you were given.
When will the skilled jobseeker visa actually open?
Nobody has announced a date. It waits on a joint order from the ministries covering foreign affairs, migration, education and labor. Portugal's visa portal still shows the documentation page as waiting for the regulation of Article 57-A, and that portal is what to watch, rather than any agency promising you an appointment.
Will the new visa let me work while I'm still looking?
The statute says it authorizes highly qualified work until the visa expires or your residence permit is granted, so once a company hires you, you can start. Older write-ups of this visa, including the data card further up this page, still describe the retired version. The fine print arrives with the regulation.
I already have a job offer in Portugal. Do I need this visa?
No, and you're in better shape without it. With a signed contract or a binding promise of one, you file a work residence visa at the consulate, which is the D1. Senior and technical hires can look instead at the highly qualified activity route or the EU Blue Card.
How much does a Portuguese national visa cost now?
The consular fee is 110 euros, a figure that went up in March 2025. In the US, VFS adds a service charge of about $44 per application. Budget separately for the AIMA residence permit after you arrive, which adds a couple hundred euros more per person.
Portugal might not be the only answer
Put your field, salary and family into the Expatsi Test and see where your working life pencils out.
Why not you?