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Portugal — Naturalization
Possible
This is worth settling precisely, because Portugal is unusually generous about which permits count and unusually strict about when they start.
What counts is any status that leaves you regularised under the immigration or asylum rules — a work permit, an investment permit, family reunification, remote-work, and, unlike in several other European countries, a student permit. Time under different permits can be added together, provided the periods fall inside a defined window: six years for stateless applicants, nine for nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries and of EU states, twelve for everyone else.
What does not count is time before a title existed. The provision that let the wait between applying and being issued a permit be counted was repealed on 19 May 2026.
How to settle it: ask AIMA for a certificate of your legal residence. It is issued from their own records, it is what the registry will work from, and it will usually resolve in one document a question you cannot answer reliably from your own memory of dates.