Portuguese history for the citizenship test: the dates written into law

There is no official history syllabus for Portugal's citizenship test. The statute names «history» as subject matter — Article 6(1)(c) of Law 37/81, as amended by Organic Law 1/2026 — and then says nothing else: no period, no list of events, no set text. The regulation that is supposed to fix all of that had not been published when this article was written, on 4 August 2026.

That does not leave you with nothing to study. It leaves you with a method, and this page follows it: instead of memorising a full chronology, start from the facts the Portuguese state has itself written down — in the Constitution, in the public-holidays statute, in the national archive. Those are the most defensible answers, because whoever drafts the exam will be reading the same documents. If this whole subject is new to you, read what the new nationality law changes first and come back; this page is only about history.

Why nobody can hand you the list of dates

Three of the five civic themes have a boundary written down somewhere. National symbols are defined in Article 11 of the Constitution. The organisation of the State has its own part of it. Fundamental rights and duties have another. History has none of that — no article defines it, no decree fixes the period, and Article 25 of the Nationality Regulation is still titled «proof of residence and of knowledge of the Portuguese language». Language only. Where each theme stops is covered in our page on the five themes.

So anyone selling you «the 200 dates that come up» is drawing a boundary the law did not draw. The honest question is a different one: which events does the Portuguese state itself treat as founding, in its own legal texts? That list is short, it is checkable, and it is almost certainly where the people writing the questions will start.

The shortcut: the dates Portugal commemorates by statute

Article 234(1) of the Labour Code (Law 7/2009, as amended by Law 8/2016) sets thirteen mandatory public holidays: 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.

Four of those are datable civil history: 25 April, 10 June, 5 October and 1 December. Start there. The history of the list is itself worth knowing: those holidays were abolished by Law 23/2012 and brought back by Law 8/2016, which names them one by one in its Article 1 — «the restoration of the national holidays of Corpus Christi, of the Establishment of the Republic, on 5 October, of All Saints' Day, on 1 November, and of the Restoration of Independence, on 1 December».

That sentence is worth keeping. It is the Portuguese state stating, in statutory text, what 5 October and 1 December commemorate — which is exactly the kind of fact an exam can ask and you can verify. While the abolition stood, Portugal had nine mandatory holidays instead of thirteen, which is why lists of nine are still circulating. They are not wrong; they are out of date.

When did Portugal become a country? Two defensible answers

This is where study lists trip up, because more than one answer is defensible and none of them is a mistake.

The date taught in Portuguese schools is 1143, the Treaty of Zamora, by which Alfonso VII of León began addressing Afonso Henriques as king. The date with the strongest surviving document is 1179: the papal bull Manifestis Probatum of 23 May 1179, in which Pope Alexander III recognised Afonso Henriques as king and Portugal as a kingdom. The original is held at the Torre do Tombo national archive, and a reproduction is published by the national archives directorate.

Keep both, and keep the distinction: 1143 is recognition by a neighbouring king, 1179 is recognition by the Holy See. A well-written question tells you which one it means. A badly written one offers both and marks only one — which is a signal about the question, not about you.

The two revolutions the Constitution names by date

The Portuguese Constitution is itself a history source, because it names events. Article 11(1) defines the flag as «the one adopted by the Republic established by the Revolution of 5 October 1910». And the preamble opens:

«On 25 April 1974, the Armed Forces Movement, crowning the long resistance of the Portuguese people and interpreting their deep-seated feelings, overthrew the fascist regime.»

Two dates, two regimes. 5 October 1910 ends the monarchy and establishes the Republic — the holidays statute calls it the «Implantação da República». 25 April 1974 ends the Estado Novo dictatorship; it is the date Portugal treats as the birth of its democracy, and it is a national holiday. These are the two likeliest dates in the whole theme, and two of the very few that come with their source attached. To see them as exam questions, we have worked examples with the article that answers each one.

1 December 1640, and the holiday that vanished for three years

In the statute that restored it, the 1 December holiday is called Restauração da Independência — the Restoration of Independence. The name carries the fact: there was independence to restore. Between 1580 and 1640 the Portuguese and Spanish crowns were held by the same monarchs, and 1 December 1640 marks the end of that period and the start of the Braganza dynasty.

Note what this teaches about the theme. The official name of the holiday is safer ground than any narrative about the period. «What is commemorated on 1 December?» has an answer in law. «Why did it happen?» is interpretation, and the state has not fixed one.

10 June: the date whose statute does not say why

This is the most instructive of the four. Decree-Law 20-A/2016 of 27 April, cited by the Portuguese Presidency, provides that «Portugal Day, Camões Day and Portuguese Communities Day is celebrated annually on 10 June», and sets out who organises the ceremonies. What it does not do is state what the day commemorates.

The link to the poet Luís de Camões and to the date of his death is tradition, not statutory text. That has a practical consequence for you: the official name of the day is verifiable and can fairly be asked; the reason behind it is shared cultural heritage, and a well-built exam does not turn it into a multiple-choice question with a single right answer.

1976: the Constitution you actually live under

The enacting formula of the Constitution in force is itself an answer: «The Constituent Assembly, meeting in plenary session on 2 April 1976, approves and decrees the following Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.» You can read it in the text published by the Assembly of the Republic.

Do not merge 1974 and 1976. 1974 is when the regime fell; 1976 is when the Constitution still in force was approved, revised several times since. If you are coming from another country's citizenship test, this is the kind of two-step distinction those exams love, and the one most crash courses flatten into a single date.

What about the age of discoveries?

Plainly: no Portuguese statute fixes a list of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century events for exam purposes. This is the part of the theme where nobody — us included — can tell you what will come up.

What we can tell you is how to handle it. The state did not attach this period to any holiday or constitutional article, unlike 1910, 1974 and 1640, so the odds of the exam treating it in the same detail are lower than preparation sites imply. Widely established, uncontested facts are reasonable study; contested framings — whether the period was expansion or colonisation, what one ought to feel about it — are not exam material anywhere, and a site presenting them as such is telling you something about itself. If a study guide gives you a date from this era with no source, treat it as context, not as an answer.

What is not worth memorising

Kings in order. Battle dates with no context. Round numbers («800 official questions») announced by preparation sites — there is no official question bank, because there is no regulation yet. And any chronology that will not tell you where each date came from. Studying from sources is not pedantry: it is what lets you check in two minutes what you are committing to memory.

What is still undefined, as of 4 August 2026

• Which historical period the exam covers, if it bounds one at all.
• How many history questions there will be, and what they are worth.
• Whether any bibliography or reference material will be published.
• How the subject matter of Article 6(1)(d) is to be proved — the statute attaches neither a test nor a certificate to it.

All of that waits on the regulation. Until it lands, studying from the sources the state has already fixed is the only preparation that cannot be contradicted on publication day. To practise theme by theme, our free practice test is organised exactly that way.