FBI Background Check Apostille for Portugal — What Each Consulate Actually Requires

FBI apostille for Portugal

D7 and D8

Ninety days, and this is the one country where that number is actually correct.

Verified 2026-08-04

What you will read everywhere else. Ninety days is the rule for FBI checks across southern Europe.

What the consulates actually publish. It is the rule for Portugal, and we could not find a single Spanish consulate that applies it. Portugal is almost certainly where the figure originated. It then got copied onto Spain, where all four consulates we read say six months. One number, two countries, and it is only right for one of them.

Consulate by consulate

There is no single national answer to quote, because the instruction sheets are published per post and they do not match. Below is what each one says, in its own words, with a link so you can check us. Your jurisdiction is decided by where you live, and you cannot pick a different consulate because you prefer its rules.

Requires it · 90 days Embassy of Portugal in Washington, D.C. “Se o requerente tiver residido nos EUA por mais de um ano, o certificado de registo criminal deve ser emitido pelo FBI, devidamente apostilado (Convencao de Haia) e emitido ha menos de 90 dias antes da apresentacao do pedido de visto. (If the applicant has resided in the USA for more than one year, the criminal record certificate must be issued by the FBI, duly apostilled under the Hague Convention, and issued less than 90 days before the visa application is submitted.)” Read 2026-08-04 · source →

Apostille

Required, and the checklist names the Hague Convention explicitly. Because the FBI report is federal, the apostille comes from the U.S. Department of State in Washington, never from a state.

Translation

The Washington checklist does not attach a translation requirement to the criminal record certificate itself. AIMA and individual posts may still ask for a certified Portuguese translation, so confirm with the post handling your file before assuming you can skip it.

The order matters

Apostille first, translate second. The apostille is a physical certificate the State Department attaches to your report, so a translation prepared beforehand does not cover it and has to be redone. This is the single most common way people pay a translator twice.

The caveat we would want told to us

Ninety days is genuinely tight. The window runs from the FBI issue date to the day you submit, and the federal apostille alone takes about two weeks in person or five or more by mail. Order the report only once your appointment is booked, not before.

Working backwards from your appointment

The FBI issues the Identity History Summary electronically, and a printed electronic copy is accepted for apostille. Federal apostille takes about two weeks in person, five weeks or more by mail. Add a translation if your post needs one. Three to four weeks end to end is realistic through a courier; three months is realistic if you post everything yourself and nothing goes wrong.

We are a courier, not an adviser. You order your FBI report; we get it apostilled. We cannot tell you whether your application will succeed, and nothing here is legal or immigration advice. Confirm your own consulate’s current list before you rely on it — the pages we quote can change the day after we read them.

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Federal FBI background check apostille The full federal process, its fees, and the 15-a-day cap. Timing How long a federal apostille really takes Five weeks by mail per the State Department, about two in person. Destinations Every destination we have verified What each consulate publishes, quoted, with the date we read it.

We will tell you when your consulate changes the rules

Consulates revise their instructions without announcing it. When one of the posts we track changes a window, a fee, or what it asks for, we send a short note saying what changed and what it means. No more than that, and nothing else.

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