Number of resident foreigners has more than doubled since 2021. Immigration “is under control”, reacts the Minister of the Presidency.
The National Statistics Institute (INE) updated the number of residents in Portugal to 11,424,031 peoplethanks to the accounting of 1,597,539 foreign people.
According to the resident population estimates for 2025, presented this Monday and which include revisions to the numbers for the period between 2021 and 2024, on December 31, 2025, the population in Portugal has 11,424,031 people, more than the values presented last year, referring to 2024 (10,749,635), which were also updated to 11,387,222.
In 2024, instead of the 1.6 million resident foreigners, INE had counted only 177,557 people.
According to the note released by INE, the resident population in Portugal in 2025 “was estimated at 11,424,031 people, which corresponds to a increase of 36,809 people compared to 2024 (0.32%)”.
According to INE, the data previously released was updated, concluding that, “between 2021 and 2025, the resident population increased by 824,914 people, highlighting the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, in which there were exceptionally high migratory flows, translating into population increases”, respectively, of 330 thousand, 275 thousand and 183 thousand people.
On the other hand, “demographic aging in Portugal continued to increasealthough mitigated by the relative increase in the population of working age” and in 2025, the aging index reached the value of almost twice as many elderly people as young people “19 elderly people for every 10 young people”, when in 2021 the values were 18 for 10.
I and median age of the population residing in Portugal became 45.8 yearswhen in 2021, the date of the last census, it was 46.1, indicating slight rejuvenation.
“A resident population of foreign nationalityon December 31, 2025, was estimated at 1,597,539 people, representing 14.0% of the total resident population” and since 2021, “they have more than doubled, corresponding to an increase of 849,384 people (an increase of 6.9 percentage points)”, says INE.
The latest data from the Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA), in October last year, indicated that, at the end of December 2024, 1,543,697 foreign citizens were registered residing in national territory, below estimates made in April.
New accounts on employment, GDP
INE will review all ‘per capita’ indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product, employment or issues related to justice, education or health.
“The review of the annual estimates of the resident population for the years 2021 to 2024 has an impact on several INE statistical operations, namely the calibration (extrapolation) of the results of sample surveys, with emphasis on the Employment survey”, with an impact on the “results of the National Accounts”, which “will have to be re-evaluated”, says INE, which presented a calendar for the presentation of new data in a methodological note complementary to the publication of the results of residents in the country.
In national accounts, the assessment of economic activity includes a portion that is estimated “taking into account the employed population from the Employment Survey”, indicates the INE, a value that should change, since the number of unemployed people is percentageally lower, given that the total population has been revised upwards over the last few years.
Furthermore, “the population review implies updating the various ‘per inhabitant’ or ‘per capita’ indicators, which use the resident population in the denominator, made available by INE on the official Statistics Portal”, meaning that most of these revisions will be published in the coming months.
The review of GDP and GDP per capita, which will have an impact on the values presented by Portugal to European institutions, and which served as a basis for the allocation of funds or applications for projects, can only be done after the review of the national accounts from 2021 to 2026, in March 2027.
The “Employment Survey estimates (monthly, quarterly, annual, regular and ad hoc modules), from 2021 to 2026” will be released in “February 2027” and only after that will it be possible to calculate the national accounts.
Later this month, updated data regarding culture, sport and justice will be published.
Indicators with geographic details of the population will be published in July, as will data relating to social protection, the labor market, hospitals and work accidents, non-higher education, while data on higher education will be published in September, as well as economic statistics.
Revised cause of death data is expected to be published in December.
Immigration “is controlled”, says Leitão Amaro
The Minister of the Presidency said that the review of the number of foreigners residing in Portugal means that “immigration is now under control”.
“If the Government had not, at the beginning of the summer of 2024, ended the expression of interest and then regulated the other flows, today we would be talking about a reality in which the immigrant population would represent 20% of the total population”, said António Leitão Amaro, on the sidelines of the opening session of the conference ‘Libraries and Local Power: citizenship, networks and future’, at Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon.
António Leitão Amaro once again said that the Government did not govern based on perceptions, highlighting that “it was right in its description of reality”, even refusing that there would be an exodus of the population.
Greater pressure on the SNS
The president of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH) acknowledged that the increase in the number of users, due to immigration, puts increased pressure on the SNS, but does not justify, in itself, the lack of family doctors.
“It is very difficult to attribute responsibility for the situation we are in to a single factor”, he began by saying Xavier Barretoin statements to Lusa, recognizing the “huge increase in population, via immigration”, which the Minister of Health pointed out, on Saturday, as a counterweight to the reinforcement of family doctors.
“The circumstances we are experiencing, with the sudden population increase – caused by the reception of immigrants who entered the country without rules and without humanism, in addition to the existence of organized networks that take advantage of the goodness of democracy and illegal businesses based on the inefficiencies of the health systems of other countries – make the effort and success we have had in increasing the number of family doctors seem to not exist”, he stated. Ana Paula Martinsduring an intervention at the PSD congress.
On the part of hospital administrators, Xavier Barreto highlighted, on the one hand, that illegal immigration represents “a very residual part” of this increased pressure on the National Health Service (SNS) and added, on the other hand, that the explanation for the lack of doctors is much more complex.
“If the population increases and if this population needs access to the SNS, what we have to do – assuming that this population is needed and that they are here working – is to train the SNS”, he defended.
For the manager, empowering the SUS involves, above all, improving the infrastructure capacity of health units and retaining more doctors in the public sector, but also rethinking the organization of professionals and care.
“If we had, for example, new professions or professions that already exist, but acquire new skills, having another role in providing care, the number of doctors we have would probably already be sufficient because they could focus, for example, on making new consultations and new diagnoses”, he explained.
In practice, this reorganization could involve assigning the management of chronically ill patients to nurses, or reinforcing screening and vaccination in pharmacies, scenarios that Xavier Barreto said already exist in other countries.
“We cannot look at this in a simplistic way. We cannot say that it is just immigrants or that it is just the retention of professionals or that it is just the organization. There are several things and they all have to be aligned”, he concluded.
