Dual Citizenship Within the CPLP: Which Member States Allow It and Which Don't
Dual Citizenship Within the CPLP: Which Member States Allow It and Which Don't
One of the most common questions from people relocating within the CPLP is whether they'll have to give up their original nationality to acquire another. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on which member state is involved — the CPLP has no unified rule on dual citizenship, and the nine members range from fully permissive to considerably more restrictive.
Why there's no single CPLP-wide answer
Citizenship law is decided entirely at the national level in each member state. The CPLP as a bloc has never harmonized nationality rules, and its cooperation agreements — including the Mobility Agreement — deal with movement and residency, not with whether a country allows its citizens to hold a second nationality.
Generally permissive members
- **Portugal**: allows dual and multiple citizenship without requiring renunciation of any other nationality, for both citizens by birth and by naturalization.
- **Brazil**: allows dual and multiple citizenship, including for naturalized Brazilians in most circumstances.
- **Cape Verde**: generally permits dual citizenship, including for its large diaspora population.
Members with more restrictive or evolving rules
Warning: nationality law changes over time, and enforcement in practice doesn't always match the letter of the law. Treat the summaries below as a starting point for questions to ask a specialist or consulate, not as a final answer for your specific situation.
- **Angola**: has historically applied stricter limits on dual citizenship, particularly around naturalization, and the practical treatment of dual nationals can depend on how and when the second nationality was acquired.
- **Mozambique**: has moved toward recognizing dual citizenship for parts of its diaspora in recent constitutional and legal reforms, but the scope and conditions have shifted over time and should be checked against current law rather than assumed.
- **Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, and Equatorial Guinea**: have less internationally documented case law on dual citizenship, and rules should be confirmed directly with each country's competent authority rather than inferred from other CPLP members' practices.
What this means in practice
- Acquiring Portuguese citizenship, for example, will not automatically cost a Brazilian or Cape Verdean their original nationality — both those countries allow it.
- The same move could carry real consequences for a citizen of a country with stricter rules, up to potential loss of the original nationality depending on how it's acquired.
- Rules can also differ depending on whether citizenship is acquired by birth, marriage, residency, or investment, even within the same country.
Practical takeaway
Don't assume that because Portugal, Brazil, and Cape Verde are relaxed about dual citizenship, the rest of the CPLP follows the same pattern. Nationality law is one of the areas where CPLP membership offers the least uniformity, and the stakes of getting it wrong — unintentionally losing a citizenship — are high enough to warrant checking the current rule for your specific country of origin.
Because dual citizenship rules vary so much by country and change over time, confirm your situation with a [citizenship specialist](/specialists) before applying for a second nationality.