Dual nationality between Brazil and Portugal: what each country actually requires

No, you do not have to give anything up. Portugal has never required applicants to renounce another nationality, and since October 2023 Brazil only strips its own nationality from someone who formally asks it to. If you acquire Portuguese nationality, you hold both. There is no form to file to keep the Brazilian one, and no deadline you can miss.

This question deserves a straight answer because the wrong one is everywhere: the Brazilian rule genuinely was different until 2023, and summaries written before then are still circulating. Below is what each of the two texts says, plus one arrangement — the equality statute — that is regularly mistaken for dual nationality and carries a cost the confusion hides. None of it changes the separate question of what the process demands of you, which we cover in the guide to the two exams a nationality application can involve.

First, one institutional point that saves a wasted trip

Nationality in Portugal is handled by the Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado (IRN), under the Ministry of Justice. It is not handled by AIMA, the agency people meet when they deal with residence permits. English-language forums mix these two constantly. If a website tells you to file a citizenship application with AIMA, that website has not checked.

What Brazil changed in 2023

Article 12, §4, II of the Brazilian Constitution used to declare the loss of nationality for anyone who «acquired another nationality», with two exceptions that forced every applicant to argue their way into one of them. Constitutional Amendment 131 of 3 October 2023 removed the rule itself. Its own summary line states the purpose: to «suppress the loss of Brazilian nationality by reason of the mere acquisition of another nationality».

The provision now reads, in full:

«II - fizer pedido expresso de perda da nacionalidade brasileira perante autoridade brasileira competente, ressalvadas situações que acarretem apatridia.»

In English: nationality is lost by someone who makes an express request to lose it, before a competent Brazilian authority, except where that would leave the person stateless. Both old exceptions were expressly repealed by the same amendment — they had nothing left to carve out. You can read the amendment on the Brazilian government's official legislation portal, and see the change annotated in place in the consolidated Constitution. A new §5 adds that even a person who does renounce may later recover their original Brazilian nationality under the terms of ordinary law.

What Portugal requires — and what it does not

Portugal's Nationality Law (Lei n.º 37/81, as amended by Organic Law 1/2026) contains no renunciation requirement at all. It is not among the naturalisation requirements in Article 6, and the words «renúncia» and «renunciar» do not appear anywhere in the consolidated text of the statute.

The only voluntary exit is Article 8, and it works the opposite way round from what people fear:

«Sem prejuízo do disposto na lei, perdem a nacionalidade portuguesa os que, sendo nacionais de outro Estado, declarem que não querem ser portugueses.»

Holding another nationality is not what triggers the loss — it is the precondition that makes the declaration acceptable at all. Portugal lets you leave only if you have somewhere to land, so as not to create a stateless person. That is the same concern Brazil wrote into its own statelessness proviso. In both countries, losing your nationality takes a deliberate act by you. Nothing happens through inaction.

Article 27, and what dual nationality means in practice

One Portuguese provision answers most of the day-to-day questions, and almost nobody quotes it. Article 27 of Lei n.º 37/81: «Se alguém tiver duas ou mais nacionalidades e uma delas for portuguesa, só esta releva face à lei portuguesa» — if a person holds two or more nationalities and one of them is Portuguese, only the Portuguese one counts before Portuguese law.

This does not erase your other nationality. It removes its relevance inside the Portuguese legal order. A Portuguese authority deals with you as a Portuguese citizen, full stop; you cannot invoke the other nationality to claim different treatment in Portugal. Brazil applies the mirror-image logic on its own territory. That is where the habit of entering Portugal on the Portuguese document and Brazil on the Brazilian one comes from: before each State you present the nationality that State treats as yours. The border formalities themselves live in each country's immigration law, not in Article 27.

The equality statute is not dual nationality

This is the expensive misunderstanding, because people who make it believe they are gaining something. The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Consultation signed at Porto Seguro on 22 April 2000 created an equality statute between Brazilians and Portuguese, promulgated in Brazil by Decree 3.927 of 19 September 2001.

The statute grants rights; it does not grant nationality. Article 13(1) says holding it «não implicará em perda das respectivas nacionalidades» — it neither confers nor removes any nationality. It is granted on application, by the Ministry of Justice in Brazil and the Ministry of Internal Administration in Portugal (Article 15), and it lapses if your permission to remain ends (Article 16). That last point matters: it is a status that can expire, which nationality cannot.

The trap is Article 17. Political rights do not come with the statute automatically — they need three years of habitual residence and a separate application. And paragraph 3 states plainly that enjoying political rights in the State of residence «importa na suspensão do exercício dos mesmos direitos no Estado da nacionalidade»: exercising them in one country suspends them in the other.

So a Brazilian who obtains political rights in Portugal through the equality statute has them suspended in Brazil for as long as that lasts. Nationality is not lost, but the vote is traded. Someone who instead acquires Portuguese nationality is not caught by this at all: Article 17 binds beneficiaries of the statute, and a dual national is not one. No rule suspends anything for them — what each country then asks of a voter is a matter for its own electoral law.

What this does not get you out of

Keeping your Brazilian nationality changes nothing about the Portuguese requirements. Article 6 of Lei n.º 37/81 still applies in full, including the knowledge requirement introduced by Organic Law 1/2026. Nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries are presumed to meet the language part of that requirement — under Article 6(10) — but not the civic part. Speaking Portuguese natively is a real head start; it is not an exemption.

What is still undefined, as of 12 August 2026

Nothing above depends on the pending regulation. These are constitutional and statutory rules already in force, and the dual nationality answer will not change on the day the regulation is published. The test itself is what remains undefined: as this is written, there is no official syllabus, no official question list and no published format. Anyone selling you «the official questions» today does not have them.

One honest caveat about Article 8. The opening words «Sem prejuízo do disposto na lei» were added by Organic Law 1/2026 and point outward, beyond the article. Reading Lei n.º 37/81 as a whole, we found no provision in it that removes nationality from someone who acquires another. We are not claiming more than that.

What to do, depending on your case

• Applying for Portuguese nationality: do nothing about the Brazilian one. There is no notification to make and no deadline.
• Told you «have to choose»: ask which article says so. If the answer cites points (a) and (b) of Article 12, §4, II, it is quoting text repealed in 2023.
• Considering the equality statute: read Article 17(3) of the treaty before applying for political rights. It is a trade, not an addition.
• Already Portuguese, travelling to Brazil: use the Brazilian document. Article 27 governs Portugal, not Brazil.

To see where you stand on the requirement that can actually block an application, the free 20-question practice test covers the five themes the statute names.