What the permit gives the whole family
A Portuguese residence permit is not just a right to be in the country. Legal residents — and family members who hold permits through reunification — get access to the public health service, to public schools on the same basis as Portuguese children, and the right to work.
That last point is the one people most often get wrong. A spouse who joins you through family reunification is not restricted to being a dependant: they can take employment or work independently. If your household plan depends on two incomes, this is the difference between a move that works and one that does not.
Permits issued through family reunification typically run two years and are then renewed for a longer period, in step with the main applicant's status.
The money: add-ons per family member
Income thresholds scale with the household. On the D7 the reference figure is Portugal's minimum wage — €920 a month in 2026 — with roughly 50% added for a spouse and 30% for each dependent child. A couple with one child is therefore looking at materially more than the headline single-applicant number.
Consulates also commonly expect savings in a Portuguese bank account equivalent to about a year of the household's qualifying income, opened before you file. Getting a NIF and a bank account early is not an administrative detail; it is on the critical path.
The D8 nomad route works the same way but from a higher base: four times the minimum wage, €3,680 a month in 2026, with the same family add-ons.
Healthcare: how SNS registration actually works
The Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS) is open to foreigners who are legally resident. Registration happens at your local health centre (centro de saúde) with your residence document, NIF and social security number, after which you are assigned a family doctor — though in some areas that assignment has a waiting list.
For the visa application itself you will normally still need private health insurance covering your first period in Portugal, and many families keep a private policy afterwards for speed on non-urgent appointments. Treat the two as complementary rather than as an either/or.
Prescriptions and public-hospital care are heavily subsidised once you are in the system, which is a large part of why the real cost of living in Portugal compares well with the US for families.
Schools: public, private or international
Children of legal residents can enrol in public schools, which are free and teach in Portuguese with support for newly arrived pupils. Younger children typically absorb the language quickly; a teenager arriving mid-cycle is a harder call, and that is the age at which many families choose an international school instead.
International schools charge accordingly and the good ones in Lisbon, Cascais and Porto have waiting lists, so a place is something to arrange before you commit to a neighbourhood — not after.
Enrolment is tied to where you live, so the sequence matters: address first, then school. Families who sign a lease purely on price sometimes find the school they wanted is in a different catchment.
Sequence and the 2025 tightening
Portugal tightened family reunification in 2025, and the general expectation now is that the resident holds a permit for a period — commonly described as around two years — before sponsoring family members who are still abroad, with exceptions and litigation around the details. If bringing your family is the point of the move, confirm the current rule before you choose a route, because it changes the order of operations.
Where possible, families apply together from the start rather than reuniting later: everyone is assessed at once, everyone's clock starts at the same time, and nobody is left waiting on a second process.
That clock now matters more than it used to. Since the 2026 nationality change, naturalisation is counted from the residence permit's issue date and needs ten years for most nationalities, so a spouse who arrives two years late reaches citizenship two years later.
Related routes