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Lisbon seen from across the Tagus

Country reference

Portugal work permits and salary thresholds

Photo: Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL · CC BY-SA 2.0

EU Blue Card

Portugal states its Blue Card salary condition as a multiplier and never as an amount: at least 1.5 times the national average gross annual salary, or 1.2 times for shortage cases. That much is in the law and easy to verify. What no Portuguese source publishes is which statistic the multiplier applies to — so this page deliberately carries no euro figure, and explains why the ones you will find elsewhere disagree with each other.

Conditions

  • A job offer or promise of employment for highly qualified work, lasting at least six months.
  • Pay of at least 1.5 times the national average gross annual salary — the immigration agency states the condition in exactly those terms. A reduced multiplier of 1.2 times applies in the cases set out in article 61.º-A(2), which cover shortage occupations.
  • Proof of professional qualifications for the activity, where the profession is not a regulated one; where it is regulated, proof that you meet that profession's own conditions.
  • Health insurance or proof of coverage by the national health service, tax and social security registration, and a criminal record certificate from your country of nationality.
  • We publish no euro amount for this route, and that is the finding rather than a gap. The legal framework the agency itself lists — articles 121.º-A and following of the immigration act, article 60.º(2) of Decree-Regulation 84/2007, and Portaria 1563/2007 — contains the multiplier and no amount. Nor does it identify the wage statistic the multiplier applies to: no publisher, no named series, no reference year.
  • We checked the last of those three documents directly, because it looked like the most likely home for a published figure. It is not: Portaria 1563/2007 sets the general means-of-subsistence requirement against the national minimum wage, with per-person shares of 100%, 50% and 30% for a household. The words "cartão azul" do not appear in it, and could not — it dates from 2007, before the Blue Card entered Portuguese law.
  • Figures do circulate. We found €15,960, €21,030 and calculations from current wage statistics landing above €30,000, all presented as this threshold. None of the pages carrying them cites a document that states the amount, and the European Commission's own migration portal shows a figure that has plainly not been updated in years. Since the underlying statistic is not identified in law, each of those numbers is a different reasonable guess rather than a competing reading of one source.
  • What to do about it in practice: ask the employer, or the agency directly, which figure they will apply to your case, and get it in writing before relying on any number — including one from a lawyer's website. This is the one page on this site where we recommend that, because it is the one case where the answer is genuinely not published.
  • Contrast with Spain, where the same kind of formula exists and the ministry does publish the resulting amount and updates it when the statistics move. Formula-based thresholds are not inherently unpublishable; Portugal's simply is not published.

More about Portugal

Quoting a figure from this page

Every number here is checked against the authority that publishes it, on the date shown. Those numbers change without announcement — one on this site was correct for three months and then quietly was not. So if you quote a figure, quote the date with it, and check the source before you rely on it.

Career Space, “Portugal work permits and salary thresholds”. Checked 2026-08-29. https://career-space.com/en/visa/portugal

Sources

  1. 01Concessão de «Cartão Azul UE» — Art. 121.º-A e seguintes (121.º-B e 121.º-K)Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo (AIMA) ·

Every figure here comes from an official source and carries the date we checked it. How we work with data.

This page is information, not advice. We are not an employer, a recruitment agency, a visa centre or an immigration adviser, and we are not affiliated with any government body. Rules change — confirm against the official source before you act.