In recent years, Portugal has emerged as a prominent destination for citizenship applications due to its increasing popularity as a place to live. To accommodate the enormous volume of citizenship requests, authorities began distributing application processing across various conservatory offices throughout the country several years ago. Additionally, an online platform was launched to allow applicants to check their citizenship application status digitally.

Despite these improvements, the number of citizenship applications continued to grow. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the chaotic situation led to a substantial backlog of cases, extending processing times to today’s four-year average. Nevertheless, Portugal has continued its digital optimization efforts, and currently, attorneys can upload documents digitally while being required to physically preserve original documents for 10 years.

This digitalization will certainly streamline and improve processing efficiency, though it remains unclear when these improvements will yield tangible results. For the time being, processing times remain longer than previously established norms and may potentially extend further until the system balances out with the accumulated backlog.