BillBullock

Has anyone recently renewed their UK passport whilst resident in Portugal? I haven't done it for many years but need to know how long it currently takes. How long were you without the passport?

Red Eric

In the absence of any definitive responses so far, my wife renewed hers last year - submitted application 11th April, old passport requested 1 day later with a follow-up request for it on 26th April when it was still(!) in transit or possibly by then showing delivered on tracking info, they acknowledged receipt on 28th, approved the application on 30th and advised that the new passport was on its way on 4th May. Can't remember how long it took before it actually arrived here.

This site has info based on crowd-sourced data and says it's currently 30 days on average for an overseas adult renewal.

Toughest ask was getting the digital photo accepted by the online checker - a pro studio effort was rated as "poor" so I spent ages at home trying to get one that rated better. In the end, after dozens of attempts which failed to get better than "fair", we submitted one of those.

bons

I'd be worried about it getting to Portugal. My niece sent me card and present before Christmas, I haven't seen or heard about it since and neither has she. It seems a bit much when post is not received with no explanation. I spoke to someone who hasn't received birthday or Christmas cards for 18 months. We did receive some Christmas cards last year though.

Rambling archer

Ours were done in 2020 - because of the expected delay with Covid-related shortages of staff declared, we applied 6 weeks earlier than necessary and as RedEric found last year the online application was the easiest bit. The photos were a pain to do - submitted one home-done one with pale cream background, but the other half with white hair fading into the background kept getting refused so eventually had a professional one done which was accepted as "fair" and is frankly much worse than the home-made offering that was rejected! Then the registered postage of the old passports in July/August took CTT ages - good job we had the tracking service to plot the progress. All in all it was a fairly efficient straightforward system. Oh and then DHL managed to cock up one new passport delivery!!!! but that got sorted out with repeated emails to HM Govt and DHL head office, but that is another story ... Ours (apart from the week it took for DHL to sort out their problem, took about 3-4 weeks.

Alan PT

Standard post is variable/poor UK-Portugal (CTT have a well publicised backlog). Couriers are fine*, possibly an extra day or two for clearance and some extra fees, depending on the package.

*Most couriers - DHL is as fine as DHL ever is - they will probably delay and temporarily lose things, but that's just standard DHL service