As a Golden Visa holder, my document renewal has been on hold for two months because I’m unable to travel to Portugal at the moment, but I heard it may be moving online? Can I still apply online seeing that mine expired a while ago?
In order to apply for your Golden Visa renewal using the newly announced online procedure, you have to enroll on SEF’s portal for online renewals (you can find the link on SEF’s website) and provide your residence permit information. Once done, the system will issue the invoice containing both the analysis and renewal fees, which must be paid in order to complete the procedure. Once the fees are paid, SEF will send your new residence card via postal services to the address you provided them.
To renew your Portuguese residence permit remotely, you must register in the personal area of the SEF Portal, if you have not already done so, and access the Requests area > Automatic Renewal. You must follow all the necessary steps and submit the application for automatic renewal of your residence permit. If you are already registered at the SEF portal, in this case, you must access the personal area in the SEF portal > Requests > Automatic Renewal. You must follow all the necessary steps and submit the application for automatic renewal of your residence permit. Please kindly note that the recent alteration made to automatic renewals only applies to residence permits between 15 December and 31 March. If you have already made the renewal request and collected your biometric data in Portugal, you cannot request automatic renewal since you already have a pending request. If you have not renewed it yet and your residence permit has already expired, then you can do it automatically through the steps indicated above. Given the decree-law nº10º-A/2020 of 13 March that extended the visas, the card is still valid in Portugal. Even so, please note that this extension of validity is only accepted in Portugal, so travel within the Schengen area and/or the European Union is not safeguarded, since the respective authorities have no obligation to recognize the extension. If you have already renewed your visa in Portugal, which is still in progress, you must wait for the issuing of the title corresponding to that request.
Please note that online renewal is only permitted for residence permits expiring between 1 January and 31 March 2023. In this sense, if your residence permit expired before 1 January 2023, it will not be possible to renew it automatically online.
Since January 2023, and exceptionally, it's now allowed to do the online renewals of expired Golden Visa cards. This was a change in the law in order to speed up the process and avoid the backlogs and delays. You can still apply although yours has expired some time ago - the Portuguese Government is aware of such situation.
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