2026 guide for Dutch expats and retirees
No visa, but seven steps: from leaving your Dutch municipality to your health cover and taxes in Portugal.
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Moving to Portugal from the Netherlands takes no visa: as an EU citizen, you can live in Portugal on your Dutch ID card for three months, and stay longer if you work, study or have enough money of your own, such as a pension. At the end of 2024, 15,039 Dutch nationals were living in Portugal.
What you do need is paperwork, in both countries: deregistering from your municipality before you leave, a tax number (NIF), the EU registration certificate (CRUE) from your Câmara Municipal, health cover (through the CAK if you draw the AOW) and a clear answer on where your AOW and pension are taxed. This guide takes you through the 7 steps, from your municipality to Portuguese citizenship.
Moving from the Netherlands in 6 numbers (2026)
Yes to all five? You can move without any visa.
Your spouse or children are not EU citizens? They have a route of their own, with a residence card from AIMA (see below). A doubt about your case? Ask us in a free call.
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No. As an EU citizen, you enter Portugal with your Dutch ID card or passport, with no visa, and can live there for up to three months with no other formality. To stay longer, you need to work (employed or self-employed), study, or have enough money of your own and health cover. Then you register at your Câmara Municipal: no visa, no residence permit, no AIMA appointment.
The same rights cover citizens of the other EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Our guide to Portugal residency for EU citizens goes into detail.
Your spouse or partner, your children under 21 or dependent on you, and your dependent parents can live in Portugal with you, whatever their nationality. They enter with their passport and need a visa only if EU rules require one for their nationality; that visa is free and fast-tracked.
After three months, within 30 days, they ask AIMA for a residence card as family of an EU citizen, with their passport, proof of the family link and your registration certificate. AIMA has up to three months to issue it, and it is valid for five years.
If you will spend more than 8 months abroad in any 12, in one stretch or not, and even if you keep your home in the Netherlands, you must deregister from your municipality (gemeente); not doing so can cost a fine. You do it from 5 days before you leave until the day you leave at the latest, and ask for an international proof of deregistration (bewijs van uitschrijving). You then go on the register of non-residents (RNI) and keep your BSN, and the municipality passes the news on to the Belastingdienst, your health insurer and your pension funds.
Get your DigiD and its app before you deregister: it is easier from the Netherlands, and you will use it from Portugal for Mijn SVB and Mijn Belastingdienst. Passport or ID card about to expire? Renew it at your municipality before you go.
For the year you leave, one return covers the months in the Netherlands and the months abroad: online in Mijn Belastingdienst, or on the paper M form (migratie). Before you go, check your allowances (toeslagen) and adjust any provisional assessment (voorlopige aanslag). After that, as a non-resident taxpayer (buitenlands belastingplichtige), you pay Dutch income tax only on your Dutch income, such as a home you keep there, as far as the tax convention allows.
Built up a pension or an annuity (lijfrente) with tax relief? After your return for the year you leave, you can get a protective assessment (conserverende aanslag) on it. Moving to an EU country, its payment is postponed automatically, with no interest: you pay it only if you break the Dutch rules within 10 years, for instance by cashing in (afkopen) your pension, and after 10 years you ask for it to be cancelled.
The AOW is paid to you in Portugal, in euros, to a Portuguese account if you wish, around the 24th of the month. Give the SVB your new address yourself: it no longer hears from your municipality once you live abroad.
Not at AOW age yet? Living and working outside the Netherlands, you are usually no longer insured for the AOW and the Anw (survivors' benefits): each year without insurance means 2% less AOW. If you were insured for at least a year in a row just before you left, you can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB: apply within 1 year, online in Mijn SVB, for up to 10 years.
Your pension fund keeps withholding Dutch wage tax until it has the Belastingdienst's exemption statement (vrijstellingsverklaring) (see Taxes). Drawing the AOW? Register with the CAK for your health cover (see Healthcare).
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From your Dutch municipality to your Portuguese tax return. Each step says what to do and what it costs. In a free AnchorLess account, you tick them off one by one and get expert help where you need it.
No visa to apply for. Check that you will work, study or live on your own means, get your DigiD and its app, register with the CAK if you draw the AOW, and deregister from your municipality in the last 5 days before you leave.
Talk to us for freeYour Portuguese tax number: landlords, banks and the tax office ask for it. Get it at a tax office or a Loja do Cidadão (by appointment), or from the Netherlands through a representative. As a resident of an EU country, you need no tax representative.
Get my NIFYour own Portuguese IBAN for rent, bills and a salary in Portugal, opened remotely before you move, once you have your NIF. Your AOW can be paid into it.
Open my accountYour address goes on your registration certificate. Rents on new leases had a median of €10.17 per m² in Portugal in the second quarter of 2026, €15.24 in Greater Lisbon. Have the lease checked before you sign.
Review my leaseOr find your home with usAfter three months in Portugal, you have 30 days to register at the Câmara Municipal where you live, with your ID card or passport and a sworn statement that you work, study or have enough means. You get the EU registration certificate (CRUE), valid five years. Then update your NIF address.
Update my NIF address (€99)Working in Portugal? You need a social security number (NISS): the online request is free. Still in the Netherlands, or would rather not deal with it in Portuguese? We register you with Social Security for you, 100% online, with your account password. For public healthcare, get your SNS user number at your health center. Drawing the AOW? Hand in the CAK's S1 at the Segurança Social.
Have it done for meYou are a Portuguese tax resident after more than 183 days in Portugal in 12 months, or sooner with a home you intend to keep as your habitual residence. File your IRS return every year, from 1 April to 30 June. The Netherlands–Portugal convention gives Portugal your AOW and private pensions; a civil-service pension stays taxed in the Netherlands.
Book a tax consultation (€249)File my IRS| Official step | Cost |
|---|---|
| Registration certificate (CRUE) at the Câmara, over 25 | €18 |
| The same, requested online | €15 |
| Social security number (NISS), requested online | Free |
| Driving license registration at IMT | Free |
| Exporting your car at the RDW | €12 |
Under 25, the certificate costs €15 at the counter and €12.50 online (details).
There is no visa to wait for: you can move as soon as your home is ready. The deadlines to keep are in both countries: deregistering in the last 5 days before you leave, your license registered with IMT within 60 days of settling, your CRUE within 30 days after your first three months, and voluntary AOW insurance within 1 year if you want it. The year after you leave, you file your Dutch return for the year of emigration.
The Certificado de Registo de Cidadão da União Europeia, or CRUE, formalizes your right to live in Portugal. You need it if you stay more than three months, and you ask for it at the Câmara Municipal of the area where you live, within 30 days after your first three months. It carries your name, your address and the date of registration.
That is the whole list in the law and on AIMA's page: no lease, no bank statements, no NIF required. A family member who is an EU citizen too gets a certificate of their own, with proof of the family link.
Over 25, €18 at the counter or €15 online; under 25, €15 at the counter or €12.50 online; €7.50 under 6; free for a baby under one year (AIMA's 2026 fee table). The certificate is valid five years, or for your planned stay if it is shorter. Not registering in time can cost a fine of €400 to €1,500, halved when it is negligence.
Keep it at hand: the Dutch Embassy asks for your CRUE as proof that you live in Portugal when you apply there for a new passport or ID card. Once you have it, change the address of your NIF to your Portuguese home: for the tax office, a new address counts only once you have reported it, and a change of tax residence status must be reported within 60 days. Our CRUE guide walks you through the appointment.
Your European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) is for temporary stays: it covers the care that becomes medically necessary during a stay, not a new life in Portugal. Once you live there, you are usually no longer insured for the Wlz, so your Dutch basic health insurance (Zvw) ends. Your cover then depends on your situation:
CAK cover is not free: a monthly treaty contribution (verdragsbijdrage) is taken from your pensions. It has a fixed part, €50.32 a month for each insured adult living in Portugal in 2026, and a part that depends on your income, both scaled to the lower cost of care in Portugal. Insured children under 18 cost nothing, and you pay no premium in Portugal for basic care.
Any foreign national living legally in Portugal can get an SNS user number (número de utente), given at your first visit to a public health center or hospital. For the SNS to cover your care, your record needs your ID, your Portuguese NIF, your full address in Portugal and a valid residence document. You can then register with the health center of your area. Our healthcare guide goes further.
Have a supplementary policy (aanvullende verzekering) with your Dutch insurer? Ask it before you leave what becomes of it once you live in Portugal.
In Portugal, private health insurance (seguro de saúde) covers what its contract lists, within its limits. Conditions you already have are covered unless the contract excludes them, and it usually does; some covers start only after a waiting period. A "plano de saúde" is not insurance but a discount card on a network of providers. In 2025, an individual policy cost on average €452 per insured person (ASF, the insurance supervisor). Our guide to insurance in Portugal lists the main insurers.
You become a Portuguese tax resident if you spend more than 183 days in Portugal, in a row or not, in any 12-month period, or fewer days if you have a home there that you intend to keep and live in as your habitual residence. You are then resident from your first day of presence, and you file your IRS return online every year from 1 April to 30 June, for the year before. Report a change of residence status to the tax office within 60 days.
In the Netherlands, once you no longer live there, you are taxed only on your Dutch income, as far as the tax convention allows (the year you leave).
The Netherlands and Portugal signed a tax convention in Oporto on 20 September 1999, in force since 2000 and still unchanged in 2026. Unusually for the Netherlands, it gives pensions to the country where you live:
Your pension fund keeps withholding Dutch wage tax until the Belastingdienst gives you an exemption statement (vrijstellingsverklaring): ask for it with its form and proof that you are a Portuguese tax resident (the Verklaring belastingplicht woonland). You need your BSN.
The Netherlands would like to change this. In its April 2026 letter on treaty negotiations, the Ministry of Finance says it wants to tax pensions at source, preferably in full, but talks begun in 2019 have not resumed. Until a new treaty is signed and in force, the 1999 rules apply.
The NHR regime is closed: nobody who becomes a tax resident from 2025 can get it. Its successor, the IFICI, taxes income from qualifying jobs (research, higher education, highly qualified professions in some companies, startups) at 20% for 10 years, and its exemption of foreign income leaves pensions out.
Our tax lawyers answer your questions in a 40-minute call (€249), and our certified accountants file your Portuguese IRS. IFICI or NHR? We review your options too.
To buy a home in Portugal, you need a NIF: the taxes on the purchase are paid under it. Three taxes apply:
| Tax | When | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| IMT, the property transfer tax | Once, when you buy | 0% to 7.5% |
| Stamp duty (Imposto do Selo) | Once, when you buy | 0.8% |
| IMI, the municipal property tax | Every year | 0.3% to 0.45% |
IMT and stamp duty are worked out on the price or the taxable value of the property (valor patrimonial tributário), whichever is higher, and stamp duty is paid before the deed. On the mainland, a home you buy to live in permanently pays no IMT up to €106,346 in 2026; above, the rate rises by brackets from 2% to 8%, then becomes a single 6% above €660,982 and 7.5% above €1,150,853. A second home pays from 1%, and IMT is not the same in Madeira and the Azores.
IMI is due every year from whoever owns the home on 31 December, on its taxable value: each municipality sets its rate between 0.3% and 0.45%. It is paid in May, or in two or three instalments when it is over €100 or €500. Our guides to buying a house in Portugal as a foreigner, to mortgages and to home insurance go further.
In Portugal, an inheritance pays 10% stamp duty on what is located in Portugal: a home, money in a Portuguese bank, a car registered there. Your spouse or de facto partner, descendants and ascendants (children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents) are exempt. The death is reported to the tax office (Finanças) by the end of the third month after it.
The Netherlands taxes the estate of someone who lived there, and a Dutch national is treated as still living there for 10 years after leaving (Successiewet, article 3):
In 2026, a partner pays nothing on the first €828,035 and each child on the first €26,230; above, the rate is 10% up to €158,669 and 20% beyond. Grandchildren pay 80% more, other heirs 30% and 40% after an allowance of €2,769. Pension rights are exempt. A gift you make in those 10 years falls under Dutch gift tax the same way.
The Netherlands and Portugal have no inheritance tax treaty: theirs covers income tax only. If both countries tax the same inheritance, your heirs say so in the Dutch return, and Dutch rules may relieve it. A notary can tell you what your heirs would pay in each country.
Your Dutch driving license is valid in Portugal until the expiry date printed on it, and exchanging it for a Portuguese one is optional. But once you live in Portugal, you must register it with IMT within 60 days: it is free, at the IMT counter of your area, with your ID, your registration at the Câmara Municipal and your license. License about to expire? Renew it at your Dutch municipality before you leave.
An old license with no expiry date must be exchanged for a Portuguese one within two years of settling in Portugal.
First ask in Portugal which documents you will need, then report the car for export at an RDW inspection station or a recognised export company (€12 at the RDW). Its Dutch registration stops at once: you get the export registration document (kentekenbewijs deel II), which you need with your registration card to register the car in Portugal, and you may drive it for 14 days in the Netherlands on white export plates. Your car insurance ends with the export: take a temporary one for the journey. A used car first registered in the Netherlands on or after 16 October 2006 can get part of its BPM back from the Belastingdienst, if it is registered in Portugal within 13 weeks of the export.
Dutch plates are for visitors: once you live in Portugal, your car must go on Portuguese plates. Within 20 working days of its arrival, you file a customs vehicle declaration (DAV) online on the Portal das Finanças, with its inspection and its technical approval from IMT.
Because you are moving your residence, you pay no vehicle tax (ISV) on it if you are over 18, lived in the Netherlands for at least six months, and owned the car there for at least six months before you moved, bought in the Netherlands with its taxes paid. Ask for this exemption within 12 months of your move: it covers one car per person, once every ten years, and you cannot sell, rent or lend the car for 12 months after it gets its Portuguese number. Otherwise, the ISV is paid within 10 working days of its assessment.
IMT then issues the registration certificate, and the car is registered at a Conservatória do Registo Automóvel. From then on, it pays a yearly road tax, the IUC: from 2027, in April, or in two or three instalments when it is over €100 or €500. Buying in Portugal instead? See our guides to buying a car and to car insurance.
After five years in a row of legal residence, you have the right of permanent residence, with no more conditions of work or means. Absences of up to six months a year don't break the five years, nor does one absence of up to 12 months for a serious reason (pregnancy, illness, studies or a posting abroad). On request, AIMA issues a certificate of permanent residence within 15 days. You lose the right only after more than two years away in a row.
After seven years of legal residence (since Lei Orgânica 1/2026; it was five), you can apply for Portuguese citizenship. Your years can be added up if they fall within nine years. You also prove, by a test or a certificate, that you know the Portuguese language and culture, history and national symbols, and the rights and duties of citizens; you declare your adherence to the rule of law, show you can support yourself, and must have no conviction that bars it. The new test is still to be set by regulation.
Becoming Portuguese usually costs you your Dutch nationality. Portugal does not ask you to give it up, but under Dutch law (Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap, article 15) an adult who chooses to take another nationality loses the Dutch one. You keep it only if, on that day, you are married to or in a registered partnership with a Portuguese national, or you were born in Portugal and live there, or you lived in Portugal for five years in a row before you turned 18. Permanent residence already lets you live in Portugal without becoming Portuguese.
You won't be alone: 15,039 Dutch nationals lived in Portugal at the end of 2024, according to AIMA's yearly report, the sixth-largest community of EU citizens in the country, and 2,352 residence documents went to Dutch nationals that year.
The Embassy of the Netherlands is at Avenida Infante Santo 43 in Lisbon, by appointment only. You can apply for a Dutch passport or ID card there, with your CRUE as proof that you live in Portugal, or at a Dutch border municipality (grensgemeente), where it costs less. A new passport can be sent to you by courier; an ID card must be collected in person.
To vote from Portugal, register once as a voter abroad with the municipality of The Hague: your voting papers for the Tweede Kamer and European Parliament elections then come automatically, and you vote by post, by proxy or at a polling station in the Netherlands.
Portugal is one of nine places where the Dutch government lists schools that teach the same as, or much like, schools in the Netherlands. Your children can also take Dutch language and culture lessons at an international school, after school or fully online: the school finder of the NOB, the foundation for Dutch education abroad whose schools the Dutch Inspectorate checks, shows what is near you.
Prices are about a quarter lower than in the Netherlands: in 2025, the price level of household consumption was 86.6 in Portugal and 115.6 in the Netherlands, for an EU average of 100 (Eurostat). Pay is lower too: the minimum wage, €920 a month paid 14 times a year, comes to €1,073 a month over 12 months in 2026, against €2,338 in the Netherlands (gross, Eurostat). Rents on new leases had a median of €10.17 per m² in Portugal in the second quarter of 2026, up 10.2% in a year: €15.24 in Greater Lisbon, €11.56 in the Algarve (INE).
Our guides go into detail for Lisbon, Porto, the Algarve and Madeira, with salaries in Portugal and the costs of retiring in Portugal.
The rules, amounts and fees in this guide were checked on 24 October 2026 against the law and the official portals:
Written by Brenda L., relocation expert at AnchorLess. Tax rules depend on your situation: this guide is not tax advice.
No visa: a valid Dutch ID card or passport is enough to enter and to stay three months. To stay longer, you work, study or have enough money of your own with health cover, and you register at your Câmara Municipal within 30 days after your first three months, for the EU registration certificate (CRUE).
Along the way you deregister from your Dutch municipality in the last 5 days before you leave, and you need a NIF (tax number), health cover (through the CAK if you draw the AOW) and, if you work, a social security number (NISS).
Yes, if you will spend more than 8 months abroad in any 12, in one stretch or not, even if you keep your home in the Netherlands; not doing so can cost a fine. You deregister from 5 days before you leave until the day you leave, and ask for an international proof of deregistration. You then go on the register of non-residents (RNI) and keep your BSN. Get your DigiD and its app first: it is easier from the Netherlands.
Yes. Your spouse or partner, your children under 21 or dependent, and your dependent parents can live with you whatever their nationality. They need a visa only if EU rules require one for their nationality, and it is free and fast-tracked. After three months, within 30 days, they ask AIMA for a residence card as family of an EU citizen, valid for five years.
Within 30 days after your first three months in Portugal. You bring your ID card or passport and sign a statement that you work, study or have enough means. It costs €18 at the counter or €15 online if you are over 25, and the certificate is valid five years. Not registering can cost a fine of €400 to €1,500.
You receive it in Portugal, in euros, to a Portuguese account if you wish, around the 24th of the month; give the SVB your new address yourself. Building it up is another matter: living and working outside the Netherlands, you are usually no longer insured, and each year without insurance means 2% less AOW. If you were insured for at least a year in a row before you left, you can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB: apply within 1 year, for up to 10 years.
Under the 1999 Netherlands–Portugal convention, the AOW and private pensions are taxable only in Portugal once you live there, at the ordinary IRS rates. The Netherlands may also tax a private pension only if three conditions are all met, among them that Portugal does not tax it at its ordinary rates, and never the AOW (Hoge Raad, 2020). A pension for work for the Dutch State, a province or a municipality stays taxed in the Netherlands, unless you are also Portuguese.
Ask the Belastingdienst for an exemption statement so your pension fund stops withholding Dutch tax. The NHR regime is closed to anyone who becomes resident from 2025, and the IFICI does not cover pensions.
A tax assessment you may have to pay later, for the tax relief you had on your Dutch pension or annuity (lijfrente). You can get it after your return for the year you leave. Moving to an EU country, its payment is postponed automatically, with no interest; you pay it only if you break the Dutch rules within 10 years, by cashing in your pension for instance, and after 10 years you ask for it to be cancelled.
Once you live in Portugal, you are usually no longer insured for the Wlz, so your Dutch basic insurance ends. If you draw the AOW and don't work, register with the CAK: it sends you an S1 for the Segurança Social and takes a monthly treaty contribution from your pensions, and you are covered in Portugal and in the Netherlands. Retiring early, before the AOW? The CAK expects to stop accepting new applicants living in the EU from 1 November 2026 (to be confirmed): check with it, and plan your own cover until AOW age. Working in Portugal, Portuguese social security covers you.
If you are Dutch and die within 10 years of leaving, the Netherlands taxes everything you leave as if you still lived there: in 2026, after €828,035 for a partner and €26,230 for each child, at 10% up to €158,669 and 20% above. After 10 years, no Dutch inheritance tax. Portugal charges 10% stamp duty on what is located there, but your spouse or de facto partner, descendants and ascendants are exempt.
The two countries have no inheritance tax treaty. A notary can tell you what your heirs would pay.
Yes. Report it for export at an RDW station or a recognised export company (€12 at the RDW): you get the export document Portugal asks for, and 14 days to drive in the Netherlands on white export plates, with a temporary insurance. In Portugal, file a customs vehicle declaration within 20 working days of its arrival; moving your residence, you pay no vehicle tax (ISV) if you lived in the Netherlands and owned the car there for at least six months. Registered in Portugal within 13 weeks of the export, it may get part of its BPM back.
On average, yes, by about a quarter: in 2025, the price level of household consumption was 86.6 in Portugal and 115.6 in the Netherlands, for an EU average of 100 (Eurostat). Pay is lower too: the minimum wage comes to €1,073 a month over 12 months in 2026, against €2,338 in the Netherlands. Rents are rising: the median on new leases was €10.17 per m² in the second quarter of 2026, up 10.2% in a year, and €15.24 in Greater Lisbon.
Usually not. EU citizens can apply for Portuguese citizenship after seven years of legal residence (since Lei Orgânica 1/2026), and Portugal does not ask you to give up yours, but under Dutch law an adult who chooses to take another nationality loses the Dutch one. You keep it if, on that day, you are married to or in a registered partnership with a Portuguese national, were born in Portugal and live there, or lived in Portugal for five years in a row before 18.
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