2026-01 San Francisco Visa Submittal Part I

 

Whelp, we did it. We got to San Francisco and submitted our paperwork for the Visa we need to move to Portugal. The picture of us above is post submittal celebration. It warranted Glenfiddich 12 and Kona Big Wave.  We are so happy to have this part complete. Now the waiting begins. As most of you know, patience is a virtue, it's just not my virtue ;) They told us 6-8 weeks, but empirical evidence shows it's about 16 weeks.

Let's back up and talk about process.

Each country's process varies - see Jeri Sisco's posts regarding France. Portugal uses VFS Global as  a processing center, so you have to go the processing center for your state; Colorado is San Francisco. Portugal requirements for a 'retirement visa' - they call is a D7 Passive Income Visa - for 2026 for US Citizens is as follows:

• Passive Income of 920 Euro/month - this can be rental income, SSI or other ways of earning that are not job related.  That is a different Visa. If you are applying as a couple or with children, you also need 1/2 again as much monthly passive income for spouse and a little less for each child.
• You need a Portuguese Tax ID number called a NIF
• A Portuguese bank account
• A US Passport with 2 clean blank pages and more than 6 months before expiration
• Proof of Passive Income
• US Bank Balances for the last 3 months
• Portuguese Bank account showing the annual amount of each person applying in the account.  For us, that was 11,040 Euro per person; I applied on my own assets rather than as a dependent
• A 1 Year lease that has been registered with the Portugues Financial Office
• 1 Year of Travel Insurance that includes certain medical and repatriation requirements
• Sometimes they ask for 1 year health insurance in addition to the travel
• A copy of your travel plans to arrive in Portugal
• Apostilled copy of your Passport
• Copy of your Driver's License to prove residency
• FBI background check including a Hauge Apostille
• Personal Statement of why you want to go to Portugal
• SSI Benefit Letter
• First two pages of your most recent Tax Return
• If you want to see the checklist, look here - https://www.vfsglobal.com/one-pager/portugal/usa/english/

It's not dissimilar to a mortgage loan package.

Getting an appointment at VFS Global San Francisco - or any office - is an effort in patience (arrrgh). They only release them in chunks of dates. We think we know the schedule but just when you do, you don't. We started looking in September of 2025 and were fortunate enough to get on January 15, 2026 (first available).

Some paperwork need to be within 90 days of the appointment - most notably the FBI report/apostille - so you can't start too soon or too late. Case in point, they generally don't ask for an apostilled marriage certificate when you are applying together but showing your own income.  As most of you know we both are firm believers in belt and suspenders so we ordered the paperwork we needed including the marriage cert even tho we shouldn't need it. I had to get new ones from the State of Texas because the ones we had in the file were from 2021 and Portugal requires not only the apostille be within 90 days, but the document as well; Texas doesn't care if they are old as long as they have the raised seal and are still stapled. So, we received the marriage cert in about 2 weeks from Houston. We then turned around and requested they be apostilled by the State of Texas. They were received on October 21. This is important because to date - Jan 16, 2026 - we have yet to receive them.  This is why Stacey flew to Austin last week on a overnight trip to get $30 worth of apostilled marriage certs (2) which took 5 minutes but required an overnight stay.  Props to Angela Mercurio Standridge for picking me up and taking me back to the airport.

We are working with a relocation specialist that has a hybrid type package.  We did all the paperwork for our Visa and they helped us with the NIF, bank account, insurance, lease, etc.  Completely worth it.  It's called Portugal the Place and they have been great.

So basically, every day since September, we have been acquiring paperwork, monitoring progress and answering questions. Since there is a 7 hour time difference, they send emails/texts to us around 4am our time and when we get up, we answer them.  It's been wonderful and stressful all at the same time.

We are very happy to have submitted our paperwork. Now we can turn our attention to Portuguese language learning, packing things to go to storage and those items that will go in our checked luggage.  That's a process/story for another day.