> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://abroad.mrhudsonexplores.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Can my husband and I both get a digital nomad visa for Portugal? - URL: https://abroad.mrhudsonexplores.com/notes/portugal-digital-nomad-visa-married-couple/ - Published: 2026-10-28T18:21:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-28T18:21:29.000Z - Description: As of October 2026: yes — but Portugal treats you as two applicants, not one household. Each spouse filing as a principal must show €3,680 a month in active remote income on their own. Whether one can instead ride the other's application depends on something most couples never check: children. - Author: Bastiaan Ellen - Tags: Notes **The short answer:** yes, a married couple can both get Portugal's digital-nomad visa — but the structure surprises people. Where both spouses want principal status, Portugal treats the couple as two separate applicants: each must independently show €3,680 a month in qualifying remote income. Whether one spouse can instead join the other's application turns, counterintuitively, on whether you have minor children. Answer current as of October 28, 2026. ## The visa itself, briefly Portugal's D8 digital-nomad route runs in two stages: a national visa issued by the Portuguese consulate (the US applications run through VFS), which then converts in Portugal — at an AIMA biometrics appointment — into a two-year residence permit, renewable for three more. Two queues, and the AIMA queue is the unpredictable one. The 2026 income bar for a principal applicant is **€3,680 gross per month** — four times the Portuguese minimum wage, a formula that rebases every January — and the income must be **active** remote earnings: salary from a non-Portuguese employer or freelance income from non-Portuguese clients. Passive income belongs on the D7, a different route. Expect to also evidence roughly €11,000 in savings per applicant as means of subsistence. There is also a temporary-stay D8 variant capped at a year with no residence path. For a couple planning a life rather than a season, it is the wrong instrument, and we leave it aside. ## Two principals, or one principal plus family? Here is where the published guidance goes quiet, and where we put the question to Portuguese counsel directly. **If you both earn qualifying remote income, the clean route is two autonomous applications** — each spouse files as a principal, each proves €3,680\. Two full applications cost more in fees and paperwork, but each of you holds your own permit, with your own renewal rights, dependent on nobody's employment but your own. **If only one of you earns qualifying income, the family-reunification question gets interesting — and the professionals we work with do not fully agree on it.** L.V.P. Advogados in Lisbon, in the more granular position and the one we treat as controlling: a married couple *with* minor children can bring the whole family into the initial application — spouse and children ride the principal's residence-visa process from day one. But a married couple *without* minor children cannot join at the initial stage; for them, the sponsor generally needs two years of legal residence in Portugal before family reunification opens. Lamares, Capela & Associados, another Lisbon firm we correspond with, reads the two-year requirement as applying only to post-arrival reunification — which would let a childless spouse in at the initial stage. The disagreement is the finding: where the firms diverge is exactly where a consulate's discretion lives, and reports of consular practice on two-income couples filing together vary. We track that variance as an open item. For a childless couple where one spouse cannot meet the bar alone, this is the difference between moving together this year and one of you waiting two years — which is why it is the first question we screen, not the last. ## What this means for your plan Run the arithmetic before the dream. Two remote incomes above €3,680 each: file as two principals and the question dissolves. One qualifying income and minor children: one application carries the household. One qualifying income and no children: this is the hard case, the one where published guides wave vaguely and the firms disagree — plan on two principal-grade incomes, structure toward them, or build the timeline around the two-year reunification clock and have counsel pressure-test the optimistic reading before you rely on it. And the long game is real: D8 years count toward permanent residence at five years and Portuguese citizenship — currently ten years for American applicants under the new nationality law, counted from card issuance, with the implementing regulation still pending. We cover that moving target in our monthly briefings. --- The personalized version of this answer — your incomes, your household, your full nine-country picture — is [the Abroad Dossier](https://abroad.mrhudsonexplores.com/#dossier). The complete sample report is [public](https://dossier.mrhudsonexplores.com/d/2e49890d6ed4b59391b0ec5fd6cc3b44/?ref=abroad.mrhudsonexplores.com). *Last verified: October 28, 2026\. We track Portugal weekly; when the rules or the practice move, this note moves. This is research and information, not legal, tax, or immigration advice — live cases belong with qualified counsel, and we can point you to ours.*