Portugal has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 1999. Whether you are flying from Lisbon to Newark or from Ponta Delgada to Boston to see family, an approved ESTA linked to your Portuguese e-passport comes first.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ESTA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
72 hours
Apply at least this far ahead
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Few European countries have family ties to the United States as old as Portugal's. Generations of Azoreans and mainlanders settled in Fall River and New Bedford, in Newark's Ironbound and in California's Central Valley, and a large share of Portuguese trips across the Atlantic are still to see cousins, attend a wedding or spend a festa with relatives.
Portugal entered the Visa Waiver Program in 1999, which ended the queues for visitor visas at the embassy in Lisbon for most short trips. In their place came the ESTA, an online authorisation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that Portuguese citizens must hold before a carrier will take them, whether the flight leaves from Lisbon, Porto or Ponta Delgada.
Below we cover what is particular to a Portuguese application: long names with several apelidos and particles, the cedilla and the til, the short life of many passports in circulation, the direct flights from the Azores, and when to apply around the school year and the June holidays.
At a glance
Eligibility
For a visit of up to 90 days, yes: an ESTA takes the place of a visa for Portuguese citizens going to the United States as tourists, on business, for medical care or in transit. Arriving by sea, or driving in from Canada after a stay in Toronto makes no difference, since land crossings have needed one since 2022.
The Cartão de Cidadão stays in your wallet. Only the Passaporte Eletrónico Português can carry the authorisation, and every traveller has an individual one, so grandparents, parents and a newborn flying to a christening in Massachusetts are separate applications against separate passports.
Portugal's nationality law has produced many citizens who also hold another passport, among them Brazilians, Angolans, Cape Verdeans and descendants of Goan and Sephardic families. A second nationality only blocks the Visa Waiver route when it is Iranian, Iraqi, North Korean, Sudanese, Syrian or Cuban; holders of those must seek a visa, while others apply on the Portuguese e-passport in the normal way.
Some journeys need a visa regardless. A paid job, a degree course or filming for a Portuguese television channel sit outside what the ESTA allows. A past refusal of an American visa, a previous overstay with relatives, or certain criminal records usually end in a refusal too, with the B-1/B-2 visa at the Lisbon embassy as the alternative.
Stay & validity
An approved ESTA normally lasts two years and can be used for any number of trips, with each stay capped at 90 days. For families who go back and forth to New England for Christmas one year and the Holy Ghost festas the next, that covers a good run of visits.
The limit that bites in Portugal is the passport's own expiry. The great majority of Portuguese passports now in use were issued for five years, and many travellers apply with two or fewer remaining. The authorisation cannot outlive the document, so look at the data de validade first and renew before applying if little time is left.
Ninety days is a hard ceiling. Staying on with family is not something that can be arranged from inside the country, and a cruise to the Bahamas or a hop to Montreal in the middle still counts towards the total. A new passport, or a change of name after marriage or divorce, means applying again.
Pricing
Live fees for Portuguese passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Portugal
Requirements
Everything Portuguese passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
A biometric e-passport from a Visa Waiver Program country, carrying the chip symbol on its cover
A valid email address, which is where the decision is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the government ESTA charge and our service fee together
Your home address, phone number and an emergency contact
Employer details and, if you have them, the address of where you are staying in the United States
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, your contact and employment information, and answer the eligibility questions. Most applicants finish in about fifteen minutes.
Our team checks your passport number, name spelling, dates and declarations against CBP requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the government charge paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is nothing to stick in your passport. The authorisation is held electronically against your passport number, and the airline verifies it when you check in.
Most Portuguese applicants hear back fast, often the same day. CBP nevertheless recommends leaving a minimum of 72 hours, because a share of applications is set to pending and stays there until the checks are finished.
Family events are what catch Portuguese travellers out. A funeral in Rhode Island or a sudden hospital stay for an aunt in New Jersey prompts a flight booked for tomorrow, and an ESTA that has lapsed, or was tied to the previous passport, becomes the obstacle.
For planned trips, apply as soon as flights are booked, and certainly before the pressure points: the weeks before Easter, the run of holidays around 10 June, and late July, when emigrant families and holidaymakers fill every seat out of Lisbon and the Azores in both directions.
On arrival
An approved ESTA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Visa Waiver travellers are seen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the first American airport they land at, even when connecting onward. The officer takes a photograph and, for most adults, fingerprints.
There is no paper form to fill in on the aircraft. Your arrival record, the I-94, is created digitally and shows the date by which you must leave. You can look it up online afterwards.
Expect to be asked where you are staying, for how long and what you do for a living. A return ticket and the address of your first night are usually all it takes.
Queues at the busiest gateways can run past an hour at peak arrival times. If you are connecting to a domestic flight, leave a generous margin, since you also reclaim and recheck your bags.
Getting there
TAP Air Portugal's Lisbon hub does most of the work, with a wide spread of American cities and a second transatlantic base at Porto. United, Delta and American add their own flights, and the Azores have a link of their own: Azores Airlines flies from Ponta Delgada to Boston, a crossing of only about five hours. Faro and Funchal passengers generally change in Lisbon.
Best time to go
Portuguese school holidays are long, running from mid-June well into September, and that gives families more choice than most Europeans have. Early September is the pick: American schools have gone back, national parks thin out, and fares from Lisbon ease while Portuguese children are still free.
New England is where a lot of Portuguese visitors are headed, and its seasons are sharper than anything on the Tagus. Winters in Massachusetts and Rhode Island bring real snow and deep cold from December to March, a shock after Lisbon or Madeira, whereas late September and October offer mild days and the autumn colours.
Summer is festa time in the Portuguese-American towns, with the big Holy Ghost and Blessed Sacrament celebrations drawing visitors from the islands. It is also peak season for transatlantic fares. Florida and the Gulf, popular for theme parks and cruises, sit in hurricane season from June to November.
Lisbon and Madeira run five hours ahead of New York and Boston, the Azores only four, which makes this one of the gentlest time changes from Europe. Morning departures arrive around midday local time.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Portugal — we check for every one of them before submitting.
A passport may list two given names and three or four apelidos, while the airline booking shows one of each. The ESTA has to follow the passport in full. Leaving out Maria, or keeping only the final surname, produces an authorisation that does not correspond to the scanned document.
With five-year passports so common, renewals come round often, and regular visitors to family forget that the authorisation stayed with the cancelled booklet. The new passport number needs its own approved application before you fly.
The Cartão de Cidadão is what Portuguese people quote for almost every form at home, so its number gets typed out of habit. CBP has no use for it in the passport field. Copy the passport number from the photo page and compare it twice.
Hospitality in emigrant families is open-ended, and visitors are sometimes urged to remain for a fourth month or to help out in a relative's business. Neither is possible under the Visa Waiver Program: the stay ends at 90 days and any employment, even informal, is excluded.
Travel to a restricted country
Anyone who has been in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, is generally not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and needs a visa instead.
A previous visa refusal or overstay
An earlier refusal of a US visa, a denied entry or a past overstay must be declared. Each one commonly leads to an ESTA being refused and the traveller being directed to apply for a visa.
Passport details that do not match
A single wrong character in the passport number, or an expiry date typed in the wrong order, produces an authorisation the airline cannot find at check-in.
Conditions
These conditions are set under the Visa Waiver Program and do not vary by nationality. The 90-day limit and the passport-linking rule catch out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held electronically against the passport number you enter. If you renew or replace that passport, change your name or change citizenship, the ESTA no longer applies and you need a new one.
Every person travelling under the Visa Waiver Program needs their own ESTA, including babies and children, each linked to that traveller's own e-passport.
An approved ESTA generally lasts two years from the date of authorisation, or until the passport it is linked to expires, whichever comes first.
Within its validity you can make repeated trips. Each stay can be up to 90 days, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the nearby Caribbean islands during a trip counts towards those 90 days.
A Visa Waiver stay cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another immigration status from inside the United States. Anyone who needs longer must apply for a visa before travelling.
An ESTA lets you board a carrier bound for the United States. Admission is decided by a CBP officer at the port of entry, who can ask about your plans, your funds and your ties to home.
Consular services
The American embassy is in Lisbon's Sete Rios district, and a consulate in Ponta Delgada serves the Azores. Neither takes part in ESTA processing, which happens online from start to finish. They become relevant only when a visa is required, in which case the embassy's consular section is the place to start.
FAQs
The questions Portuguese passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Portuguese citizens can visit the United States without a visa for up to 90 days, as Portugal has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 1999, but an approved ESTA is compulsory before departure. It covers holidays, family visits, business meetings, medical treatment and transit.
No. The citizen card is accepted within Europe but not for the United States. You need a Portuguese electronic passport, and the ESTA is recorded against that passport's number.
Enter all of them in the family-name field, in the same order as on the passport, together with any de, da or dos that appears there. Put all given names in the first-name field. If in doubt, the machine-readable lines at the bottom of the photo page show exactly how the name is split.
Usually yes. The ESTA ends on the day the passport does, so applying on a document with little time left buys you a short authorisation, and the replacement passport will need another one. Renewing first means a single application can run its full two years.
Yes, provided you travel on your Portuguese e-passport and meet the other conditions. Brazilian nationality is not among those that exclude a dual national from the Visa Waiver Program; that list is limited to Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Cuba.
Yes. The flight from Ponta Delgada is short, but it is an international arrival like any other, and Azores Airlines checks for a valid authorisation at check-in. Apply at least 72 hours ahead, as CBP recommends.
Ninety days is the limit for any one visit, and it cannot be extended. The authorisation itself generally stays valid for two years and allows repeated entries, but a border officer assesses every arrival.
Yes. Infants and children each need their own authorisation tied to their own passport. Passports issued to very young Portuguese children have short terms, so look at the expiry date before every trip.
Your nationality is already set to Portugal. Complete the form in about fifteen minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches CBP.
Other nationalities
Routes, passport rules and the practical details differ by country. Here are the guides for other Visa Waiver Program nationalities.
