Tugadaily chart: notices for foreigners to leave voluntarily, 446 in 2024 versus 23,133 in 2025

Immigration 25 September 2026

Portugal told 23,133 foreigners to leave last year. In 2024, that number was 446

AIMA's 2025 Migration and Asylum Report shows voluntary-departure notices jumping 52-fold in a single year, in the same report that shows foreign-population growth slowing to 2.7%.

In 2024, Portugal’s immigration agency AIMA and the police issued 446 notices telling foreigners to leave the country voluntarily. In 2025, that number jumped to 23,133 — more than 50 times as many, according to AIMA’s 2025 Migration and Asylum Report, which pulls together the year’s full numbers for the first time.

The jump sits in the same report we already used to show that Portugal’s foreign resident population grew just 2.7% in 2025, down from 39% growth in 2022. Two numbers from the same year, pointing the same way: fewer people arriving, and far more being formally told to leave.

What a departure notice actually is

A notice to leave voluntarily is not a deportation. It is the first administrative step taken against someone in an irregular situation, giving them a deadline to leave on their own before anything heavier follows. AIMA itself describes the jump as a “break with the downward trend seen in previous years,” attributing it to clearing a backlog of pending cases and to reinforced administrative and police capacity through the year.

Coercive removals, actual deportations, also rose, from 195 to 298. But that figure cannot be set against the notices: AIMA’s data only runs to 21 August 2025, when that power passed to the PSP police’s new foreigners and borders unit. What happened over the rest of the year is not in this report.

More cases closed, in both directions

The same report records 337,880 residence permits granted in 2025, up 54.8% and a record for the series, which AIMA itself puts down to clearing pending cases. Permits and departure notices rose together, for the reason the agency gives: files that had been stuck were finally decided, one way or the other.

What is still missing is how many of those 23,133 people actually left the country, and how many are still in Portugal past an expired deadline. AIMA has not published that number yet.

By Juliana Castilho

Chart: Tugadaily · AIMA data

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