Starting in late July 2026, a small but genuinely useful change is rolling out at AIMA. Anyone starting their regularisation process there will now receive their Social Security Identification Number, the NISS, automatically, without a separate trip to a Social Security office to request it.
What used to happen
Until now, getting your NISS meant a second errand. You would go through your regularisation process at AIMA, and then separately visit a Social Security service counter to request the number, wait for it to be issued, and come back again to collect it. And that assumed the request went through cleanly the first time. In practice, it often did not: a document that was not quite the right format, a condition that was not met, and the whole request had to be made again. For anyone already juggling appointments, translations, and paperwork, it could easily become several line items on an already long list, not just one.
The scale of that inconvenience turns out to have been significant. In 2025 alone, around 250,000 people visited Social Security counters specifically to request a NISS, most of them needing a second visit later just to pick it up. That is a lot of pressure on in-person services for something that, in hindsight, did not need a dedicated trip at all.
What changes now
The fix is a direct digital link between AIMA and Social Security. During your regularisation appointment, AIMA enters your identification details into the shared system, and Social Security assigns your NISS in real time, on the spot. No separate counter visit, no coming back later to collect a document. According to Luís Farrajota, president of Social Security’s IT Institute, this closes a gap that used to send people bouncing between agencies for something that is now handled in a single stop.
It is part of a wider digital transformation effort at Social Security that has been in the works since 2025, and it is a good example of what that kind of behind-the-scenes integration work is actually for: fewer trips, less waiting, one appointment doing what used to take two.
What this does not change
Worth being precise here, since NISS and NIF get confused constantly, and this update only covers one of the two. The NISS is your Social Security number, and that is what is now assigned automatically during your AIMA appointment. Your NIF is a different number altogether, and a much earlier one: it is typically the very first number anyone gets when starting a life in Portugal, needed long before regularisation, often before you have even arrived. By the time NISS becomes relevant, your NIF is already old news. This change has nothing to do with that process, and does not affect it either way.
How we can help
If you are in the middle of a regularisation process, or about to start one, and want to understand exactly which numbers and documents you will need, and in what order, we are happy to walk through your specific situation. Take a look at our services for the areas we help with most, or get in touch and we will help you map out what your process actually looks like.
