The new apostille regime gives notaries a new route to legalise Portuguese documents for use abroad from 2027

Ministerial Order no. 452/2026/1, of 12 October, regulates the legalisation of documents through the affixing of apostilles by notaries. The order gives effect to a competence already set out in Article 4(4)(i) of the Notarial Statute (Estatuto do Notariado), approved by Decree-Law no. 26/2004, of 4 February, as amended by Law no. 69/2023, which until now lacked the implementing rules needed to become operational. The order entered into force on 13 October 2026 and becomes effective from 1 January 2027.

Background and rationale

An apostille is the formality whereby a competent Portuguese authority certifies the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the signatory of a public act acted and, where applicable, the authenticity of the seal or stamp appearing on the public act. It is the mechanism established by the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 abolishing the requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents, which dispenses with the chain of consular legalisations between contracting States.

Until now, apostilles have been issued and verified, under Decree-Law no. 86/2009, of 3 April, by the Attorney General (Procurador-Geral da República), who may delegate this to designated Public Prosecutor's Office magistrates. In practice, requests had to go through a small number of offices, which could cause delays that were hard to manage on tight timetables. The new ministerial order does not expressly repeal or amend that regime. Instead, it adds a notarial route, leaving the Public Prosecutor's Office responsible for acts originating from it and from the courts.

Although the Notarial Statute already gave notaries this power, it could not be used until the Government set out the procedure in a ministerial order. The new order does so, covering both the apostille procedure and the electronic platform that supports it.

Scope: which acts may be apostilled by notaries?

Under Article 3, notaries and employees duly authorised to perform notarial acts under Article 8 of the Notarial Statute are competent to:

• Issue apostilles in respect of public acts within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention; and
• Verify apostilles already issued, for the purposes of the second paragraph of Article 7 of the Convention.

Public acts originating from the Public Prosecutor's Office and from the courts are expressly excluded from notarial competence, which means documents of judicial or prosecutorial origin will continue to follow the traditional route.

Within the scope of the Convention, notaries will be able to apostille many of the documents routinely used in transactional work, such as commercial registry certificates, powers of attorney, notarial instruments, public deeds and certified copies. In each case, it will be necessary to confirm that the document is a public act and that it does not originate from the Public Prosecutor’s Office or a court.

Article 3(2) imposes a validity condition: legalisation by means of a notarial apostille is valid only if carried out through the electronic platform referred to in Article 2.

The electronic platform of the Portuguese Notaries Association

The platform will be made available and managed by the Portuguese Notaries Association at www.notarios.pt. As platform manager, the Portuguese Notaries Association defines the access profiles and access rules for notaries, authorised notarial employees and agents performing management, maintenance and technical support functions.

• Authentication: notaries and authorised employees authenticate using qualified electronic certificates evidencing their professional status, or another means of identification offering similar security guarantees.
• Open standards: for services made available to the public, the platform must adopt open standards under Law no. 36/2011, of 21 June.
• Electronic register: the Portuguese Notaries Association must maintain a register of apostilles issued, containing the elements referred to in points (a) and (b) of the first paragraph of Article 7 of the Convention, together with information on the apostilled document, the applicant and the presenter.

Article 4 also provides for a file or database of specimen signatures, stamps and seals of entities empowered to draw up public acts, accessible to notaries so they can confirm authenticity. Where no specimen is available, or where discrepancies in the signature or name are identified, the notary must contact the entity that issued the act. Entities empowered to issue public acts covered by the Convention must provide the Portuguese Notaries Association with the data necessary and relevant for issuing apostilles.

Request, form and numbering of the apostille

A request for an apostille –or for verification of an apostille already issued– may be submitted by the interested party or by any other holder of the public act, in person at any notarial office or electronically at www.notarios.pt. In practice, lawyers or other advisers holding the documents should be able to handle the request directly, as the ministerial order does not require a power of attorney from the signatory of the act.

The apostille certificate follows the model annexed to the Convention and is completed through the platform. The method of affixing depends on the medium of the underlying document:

• Public document signed on paper: the form is printed on white paper, signed by the notary or authorised employee, stapled to the document and embossed with the notarial office's seal (selo branco).
• Public document signed in electronic format: the notary creates a single PDF file, containing the dematerialised public act with the apostille form as a cover page, and signs that file with a qualified electronic certificate.

Electronic apostilles are signed using qualified electronic certificates and receive successive qualified time stamps applied by the Portuguese Notaries Association, without dispensing with the preservation, in the document, of the algorithms, parameters, data and time validation relating to earlier signatures and seals. At the request of the interested party or the holder, a paper public document may be converted into electronic format, by scanning, for the purposes of an electronic apostille.

Each apostille generates a two-dimensional barcode (QR code) containing an alphanumeric access code, made immediately available to the applicant. Apostilles are numbered non-sequentially through that code. Authenticity may be verified by reading the QR code or by entering the alphanumeric code, number and date of the apostille at www.notarios.pt.

As to format, each electronic apostille corresponds to a single file containing the apostille and the public act to which it relates, mandatorily in PDF/A and subject to a 10 MB limit. The Portuguese Notaries Association may authorise the archiving of larger files where there is a legitimate interest and it is not technically possible to reduce the file size.

Platform fees and notarial charges

As platform manager, the Portuguese Notaries Association may charge notaries fees for managing the platform, in accordance with the Statute of the Portuguese Notaries Association (Estatuto da Ordem dos Notários), approved by Law no. 155/2015, of 15 September. The amount due for the issuance and verification of an apostille is charged directly by the notarial office where the act is performed, and the notary may charge fees under Article 14 of Ministerial Order no. 385/2004, of 16 April, plus VAT.

The cost of the notarial route will therefore not necessarily match that of the current route, and the budgetary impact should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, particularly in transactions requiring legalisation of significant volumes of documents.

Entry into force, effects and transitional position

The ministerial order entered into force on 13 October 2026, the day after its publication, but takes effect only from 1 January 2027. Until then, apostilles continue to be issued through the route set out in Decree-Law no. 86/2009.

The order contains no standalone transitional rules and does not expressly repeal Decree-Law no. 86/2009. From 1 January 2027, two routes should therefore coexist: the Public Prosecutor's Office route, with general competence, and the new notarial route, limited to public acts not originating from the Public Prosecutor's Office or the courts.

Conclusion

The significance of the new regime is primarily logistical. It is expected to facilitate and decentralise access to apostilles by leveraging the existing notarial network. It is not, however, a guarantee that waiting times will be eliminated: the real impact will depend on the platform’s implementation, the completeness of the specimen signature register and how foreign authorities receive Portuguese electronic apostilles.