HQA Visa
Investment: only EUR 175,000, far lower than all Golden visa options in Portugal.
The HQA Program invites highly qualified professionals to become the founder of their own new Portuguese business. The founder’s new business commercializes R&D conducted at an HQA partner university or research institution, with the guidance of an HQA business incubator. Under this visa, you can choose to be hands-on or hands-off in the incubation process. While you can leave the operational management of the project & business to your incubation partner, you will need to be involved in the strategic decision-making of your project & venture.
Who is this visa best suited for?
Accomplished businesspeople, investor-entrepreneurs, and senior professionals.
The Highly Qualified Activity (HQA) Visa is a specialized pathway that is prioritized over the Golden Visa & other immigration schemes by SEF. Further, Portuguese HQA legislation requires that Embassy decisions must be issued within 30 days. HQA residency permits must also be issued within 60 days. This makes HQA the fastest route to Portuguese Residency.
To date, all HQA Residency Permits have been issued well before the posted deadlines.
In addition, the HQA provides all the Golden Visa flexibilities with similar minimum stay requirements. Unlike the golden visas which require you to renew your visa twice before being eligible for PR or Citizenship, the HQA visa requires only one renewal at the end of year 2.
It is also the fastest route to Portugal Residency, allowing visa applicants to get approvals in as little as 30 days or even less in some cases.
The downside to this visa is that unless your research project & venture becomes commercially successful, your only material underlying asset will be the Intellectual Property (IP) created during the research project. Hence, there is a high potential risk of your EUR 175,000 becoming a sunk cost. Though it should be noted that irrespective of the success or failure of your venture, you will still be eligible to apply for Permanent Residency (PR) or Citizenship.
We have an established partnership with a certified multi-national business incubator that delivers the smoothest & most cost-effective path to EU Permanent Residency or Citizenship for accomplished professionals.
