Sample questions for Portugal's citizenship test, with a source for every answer

There are no official questions for Portugal's citizenship test. As of 31 July 2026, the regulation that will set the syllabus and the format has not been published, and without a syllabus there is no official question bank — only questions somebody wrote. Ours included.

What does exist, and will not change when the regulation lands, is the subject matter. Organic Law 1/2026 states what has to be demonstrated, and honest questions can be built on that — questions whose answer you can go and check in an article of the Constitution or of a statute, rather than take on trust. That is what this page is: a dozen worked examples, each with its source next to it. If the whole reform is new to you, start with what the new nationality law actually changes.

Why nobody has “the official questions”

Article 4 of Organic Law 1/2026 gives the Government 90 days to amend the Portuguese Nationality Regulation (Decree-Law 237-A/2006). That deadline falls in mid-August 2026, and as of today the Regulation still stands in its 2023 text — the most recent amendment is Decree-Law 41/2023 of 2 June. Until it changes there is no syllabus, no question bank, and no body appointed to write one.

You will still find sites advertising hundreds of questions for this exam. You do not have to assume bad faith to see the problem: a question bank can only be official if there is an official syllabus for it to match, and there isn't one. Questions built from the statute are genuinely useful — it is the word “official” that has nothing behind it. For what is settled and what is not, see what the law already fixes about the exam format.

Where these questions come from

From two sub-paragraphs of Article 6(1) of Law 37/81, as amended by Organic Law 1/2026. Sub-paragraph (c) requires applicants to prove, «através de teste ou de certificado», sufficient knowledge of «a língua e a cultura portuguesas, a história e os símbolos nacionais». Sub-paragraph (d) adds sufficient knowledge of the fundamental rights and duties attaching to Portuguese nationality and of the political organisation of the Portuguese State.

Culture, history, national symbols, fundamental rights and duties, the organisation of the State. That is the perimeter, and every question below sits inside it. The official text is in the Diário da República, series I, no. 95, of 18 May 2026. One practical note before you start: the exam will almost certainly be in Portuguese, since the same sub-paragraph (c) requires knowledge of the language itself.

National symbols: three answers the Constitution gives directly

• What is the national anthem? A Portuguesa. Article 11(2) of the Constitution says nothing more than that.
• What is the official language?Portuguese, and only Portuguese: «A língua oficial é o Português» (Article 11(3)). Mirandese is covered by Law 7/99 of 29 January, whose title is «Reconhecimento oficial de direitos linguísticos da comunidade mirandesa» — recognising linguistic rights is not the same as conferring official-language status, which the Constitution reserves to Portuguese. The press blurs the two regularly; a well-built question should not.
• Where does the current flag come from?It is the one «adopted by the Republic established by the Revolution of 5 October 1910» (Article 11(1)). Notice what the Constitution does not do: it never describes the armillary sphere, the shields or the castles. A question asking how many castles are on the flag has left the Constitution behind and needs a different source.

The State: two questions most study lists get wrong

These two are worth running against whatever material you are using. If it fails them, it was written from memory rather than from the text.

• What are the organs of sovereignty? Four, not three: the President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Republic, the Government and the Courts (Article 110(1)). The courts are the ones routinely dropped, by analogy with the three-branches formula, which is a different idea.
• How many members does parliament have?The Constitution deliberately does not say. Article 148 sets a range: a minimum of 180 and a maximum of 230 members, «nos termos da lei eleitoral». The number itself is set by Article 13 of the Assembly's electoral law, Law 14/79 of 16 May, and it is 230. So “230” is right about the electoral law and incomplete about the Constitution — an honest question says which of the two it is asking about.
• How long is the President's term? Five years (Article 128(1)). Candidates must be Portuguese by origin and over 35 (Article 122) — which means, if you are naturalising, that this is the one office in the State that acquired nationality does not open to you.

Rights and duties: the questions with two correct answers

Sub-paragraph (d) speaks of “rights and duties”, and the Portuguese Constitution frequently makes one thing both at once. Expect questions built on exactly that.

• Is voting a right or a duty?Both. Article 49 grants the vote to every citizen over eighteen and then states that exercising it «constitui um dever cívico» — a civic duty. Note the word the Constitution chose: civic. A question that turns this into a legal obligation is adding something the text does not say.
• And defending the country?Also both: «A defesa da Pátria é direito e dever fundamental de todos os portugueses» (Article 276(1)). Conscription itself is gone — Law 174/99 of 21 September moved military service onto a voluntary footing in peacetime, after a transition that ended in 2004 — but the constitutional duty did not go with it. This is a good example of material where the answer changed and older mock tests did not.

History: start from the dates the law itself names

Portuguese history is large and an exam is small. A useful shortcut is to begin with the dates that Portuguese legal texts name explicitly — those are the ones the State treats as foundational.

• What happened on 25 April 1974?The preamble to the Constitution answers it: on that day the Armed Forces Movement overthrew the dictatorship, and the revolution «restituiu aos Portugueses os direitos e liberdades fundamentais» — restored fundamental rights and freedoms to the Portuguese.
• And 5 October 1910?The Republic replaced the monarchy. Article 11(1) refers to it by name as the «Revolução de 5 de Outubro de 1910».
• When did Portugal join Europe? Accession took effect on 1 January 1986 — but what Portugal joined then was the European Economic Community. The European Union itself only came into being with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. Portugal joined Schengen in 1995 and the euro area in 1999, with notes and coins circulating from 2002.

Culture: the calendar is examinable

Public holidays make good exam questions because they are a closed list with a statutory basis — and because they separate people who have lived in Portugal from people who have read about it.

• How many mandatory public holidays are there? Thirteen, listed in Article 234(1) of the Labour Code: 1 January, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, 25 April, 1 May, Corpus Christi, 10 June, 15 August, 5 October, 1 November, and 1, 8 and 25 December.
• Is Carnival a public holiday? Not a mandatory one. Shrove Tuesday sits in Article 235 among the optional holidays, granted by collective agreement or by your employment contract. Long-term residents get this wrong more often than newcomers, because in practice much of the country stops that day.
• What is celebrated on 10 June? The Day of Portugal, of Camões and of the Portuguese Communities — the wording used in Article 2 of Decree-Law 20-A/2016 of 27 April. The full name matters: emigrant communities are part of the date, and that is precisely the fragment a question can single out.

How to spot a badly written question

Until an official bank exists, your protection is being able to judge the material you practise on. Three warning signs, drawn from mock tests circulating today:

• It conflates similar institutions.“What year did Portugal join the EU?” has no clean answer, because in 1986 the EU did not exist. A careful version names the European Economic Community, or asks about Maastricht.
• It assumes one answer where the law gives several. “What is Portugal's legislative body?” implies a single one. Article 112(1) of the Constitution lists three kinds of legislative act — laws, decree-laws and regional legislative decrees — made respectively by parliament (Article 161), the Government (Article 198) and the regional legislative assemblies.
• It gives no source for its answer.The simplest test and the most decisive one. If the explanation does not point to an article, a ministerial order or an official page, you cannot tell whether you are memorising a fact or somebody else's mistake.

What to do with these

Treat them as a diagnostic, not a syllabus. If you answered nearly all of them, civic knowledge is not your obstacle, and your attention probably belongs to the language requirement, which is a separate hurdle. If several caught you out, you have months of warning and a body of material that is factual, finite and checkable — the best conditions for studying anything.

Keep the standard we used here for the day the regulation arrives: even once an official syllabus exists, the questions worth practising will be the ones that tell you where the answer comes from. You can start now with the free practice test, where every explanation carries its source, as these do.