Golden Visa Countries The Complete 2026 Guide — every open program, honestly priced

St Kitts & Nevis advertises citizenship at $250,000. A married couple will actually wire closer to $270,000 once due diligence and government processing fees land on top, and that gap between the brochure number and the bank transfer repeats — in different sizes and different currencies — across every one of the 18 golden visa programs still open in August 2026. This guide prices all of them the honest way: headline investment, then everything the headline leaves out, then the difference between the processing time the program advertises and the one applicants actually report.

It also covers the two things general golden-visa lists almost never do: a dated ledger of which programs have closed (several top-ranking articles still list Spain as open — it closed in April 2025), and what any of this does to a US tax return.

Key takeaways

• 18 golden visa and citizenship-by-investment programs remain open in August 2026, from Latvia’s €50,000 company route to New Zealand’s NZ$5 million investor visa. Spain, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, and Malta’s citizenship program have all closed since 2022.
• The advertised price is never the full price. Government, due-diligence, legal, and renewal fees add five figures to most applications — St Kitts & Nevis charges $10,000 in due diligence for the main applicant alone (as of August 2026).
• Advertised processing times are marketing; observed times are longer. Portugal’s statute allows 90 days, while applicants have been reporting 12–24 months through AIMA (observed, August 2026).
• US citizens keep their US tax obligations under every program on this list. Fund-based routes can trigger PFIC reporting, and FBAR/Form 8938 duties follow the accounts you open abroad.
• Golden visas sell residence; citizenship-by-investment sells a passport. The two products solve different problems, and the right choice depends on whether you want a place to live or a document to hold.

What is a golden visa — and which countries still have one in 2026?

A golden visa is a residence permit granted in exchange for a qualifying investment — typically in funds, companies, property, or a government donation — with no job offer, no employer sponsor, and usually little or no physical-presence requirement. As of August 2026, 18 countries run an open investment-migration program: ten sell residence permits, and eight — Turkey plus seven island states — sell citizenship directly.

The residence sellers are Portugal, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Cyprus, and Malta in Europe, plus the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and New Zealand. The direct citizenship sellers are Turkey, St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, St Lucia, Vanuatu, and Nauru. Passquire maintains a dedicated guide for each program — the Portugal Golden Visa guide is the deepest, because Portugal remains the most-searched program in the category.

The term “golden visa” is doing a lot of work in that list. A Greek golden visa is a renewable residence permit: you may live in Greece, but you hold your original passport. A St Kitts & Nevis “golden passport” is naturalization: you become a citizen in months, without ever living there. Conflating the two products is the single most common mistake first-time buyers make, and the difference drives everything downstream — taxes, travel rights, reversibility, and cost. This guide covers both, flags which is which throughout, and gives the decision framework its own section.

Demand is not slowing down while the map shrinks. Henley & Partners reported that applications from US nationals nearly doubled in 2025, and Americans have been the firm’s largest client nationality since 2023 (Henley & Partners, 2025). Fewer programs, more applicants: that squeeze is the backdrop to every number in this guide, and it is measured in depth in the Passquire Golden Visa Report 2026.

Which golden visa programs closed — and which are still open?

Five major programs have closed since 2022: the United Kingdom’s Tier 1 Investor visa (February 2022), Ireland’s Immigrant Investor Programme (February 2023), the Netherlands’ investor permit (January 2024), Spain’s golden visa (April 2025, under Organic Law 1/2025), and Malta’s citizenship-by-investment program (terminated after the Court of Justice of the EU ruled against it in case C-181/23, April 2025). Portugal narrowed but did not close: its real-estate route died in October 2023, while its fund and donation routes remain open in August 2026.

The status ledger below is dated because staleness is the defining failure of this content category — a top-ranking 2025 Forbes list still presented Spain as open months after the closure law passed.

Two structural lessons sit in that table. First, closures cluster in Europe and hit citizenship programs hardest: after the CJEU’s April 2025 Malta ruling, no EU member state sells citizenship directly, and every EU program left standing sells residence with a naturalization path measured in years. Second, routes close faster than programs. Spain’s entire program died, but Portugal and Hungary each amputated their property route and kept the rest — so “is the program open?” is often the wrong question. The right question is “is the specific route I am pricing still open, as of which date?”

There is no publicly announced closure date for any of the 18 open programs as of August 2026. But Latvia’s parliament passed amendments in June 2026 that would shorten company-route permits, scrap its real-estate and deposit routes and add a €150,000 state-fund route that does not yet exist (returned by the president for a second reading, so not yet in force), and the US EB-5 program carries two different statutory dates that are easy to conflate: regional-centre availability runs to 30 September 2027 under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(i), while 30 September 2026 is the grandfathering cutoff under 1153(b)(5)(S). Openness is a snapshot, not a promise.

What does a golden visa actually cost once every fee is counted?

Plan for the headline investment plus roughly 5–15% on top in unrecoverable fees, depending on program and family size. Every open program charges some combination of seven cost layers beyond the investment itself: government application fees, due-diligence fees, per-dependent surcharges, legal fees, translation and apostille costs, renewal fees, and — for fund and property routes — exit costs when you eventually withdraw. No major competing guide itemizes these, which is precisely why the advertised number and the wired amount never match.

A worked example with published figures, as of August 2026. St Kitts & Nevis prices its Sustainable Island State Contribution at $250,000, covering a family of up to four. Due diligence is billed separately: $10,000 for the main applicant and $7,500 for each dependant aged over 16. A couple therefore reaches $267,500 before processing, passport, and professional fees — about 7% above the headline — and a family with two adult dependants clears $282,500 (St Kitts & Nevis CIU published schedule, 2026).

The same layer-cake exists everywhere, in different proportions:

• Malta (MPRP) is nearly all fees by design: a €60,000 administrative fee, a €37,000 government contribution, and a €2,000 NGO donation are payable on top of the housing requirement — either a €375,000 property purchase or a lease of at least €14,000 per year held for five years (Residency Malta published terms, 2026). The cheapest compliant path commits roughly €169,000 over five years, of which €99,000 is pure fee.
• Portugal cannot currently tell you its own fees precisely: published 2026 fee tables conflict, with the application fee quoted between €632 and €843 and the initial approval fee between €6,314 and €8,419 per person. Passquire treats the ranges as unresolved rather than picking a number; the Portugal guide tracks both tables. On a family of four, the approval fee alone is a €25,000–€34,000 line item no brochure leads with.
• Grenada attaches a $50,000 government fee to its real-estate route for a family of up to four — on top of the $270,000 minimum property investment (Grenada CIU terms, 2026). The donation route has no such fee, which quietly narrows the real price gap between the two routes.
• The UAE is the outlier in the cheap direction: government fees for the 10-year property visa total AED 9,884.75 on Dubai Land Department’s own schedule (about $2,690) — trivial next to the AED 2 million property requirement (Dubai Land Department schedule, 2026).

Legal fees are the layer with the widest spread and the least publication. Market rates in 2026 run from a few thousand euros for a straightforward Caribbean donation file to €15,000–€30,000+ for an EU fund route with source-of-funds complexity — treat any flat-fee quote as an invitation to ask what is excluded. Translation, apostille, and courier costs are small individually but multiply per document and per family member; budget four figures, not three, for a family file.

The chart below puts all 18 programs on one scale — the cheapest officially published route for a single applicant. Two programs run off the right edge of a €500,000 scale by design: the story of this market is that most of it clusters between €50,000 and €300,000, while the US and New Zealand price for a different clientele entirely.

One number in that chart deserves its own caveat. Greece’s €250,000 tier applies only to commercial-to-residential conversions and listed-building restorations; the standard Greek property thresholds have been €800,000 in Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and every island above 3,100 inhabitants, and €400,000 elsewhere, since September 2024. The cheapest route and the typical route are not the same thing — that is true in Greece more than anywhere.

How long does a golden visa really take — advertised vs actual?

Expect weeks in the Gulf, months in the Caribbean and most of Europe, and one to two years in Portugal. Advertised processing times describe the decision window after a complete file reaches the authority; observed times include document assembly, backlogs, and post-approval steps — and the gap between the two is where most applicant frustration lives. Every figure below is labeled advertised (official or program-published) or observed (applicant and industry reporting), as of August 2026.

Sources for the ranges are listed in the Sources block; where only industry reporting exists, the table says so rather than dressing the number up as official.

Three patterns are worth extracting. First, speed correlates with what is being sold: programs selling a document (Vanuatu, UAE, Nauru) clear in days or weeks because there is nothing to integrate you into, while programs selling residence inside a legal system with courts and appeals (Portugal, the US) run on that system’s clock. Second, the advertised number describes the law, not the queue. Portugal is the canonical case: the statute gives the migration agency 90 days, and the observed range through AIMA has been 12–24 months (observed, August 2026). Third, volume moves the queue. Greece’s intake ran the other way in 2025 — the Ministry counts 9,373 initial permits in 2024 against 7,022 in 2025 — but the backlog those years built is what the queue is still clearing, and Italy’s investor-visa approvals grew about 63% in 2025. Surges arrive faster than any agency staffs up for them, and they outlive the demand that caused them.

Which European countries offer golden visas in 2026?

Seven European programs are open in August 2026: Portugal, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Cyprus, and Malta. All seven sell residence, not citizenship — an EU passport comes only later, through each country’s ordinary naturalization rules, typically after 5 to 10 years of legal residence. The cheapest entries are Latvia’s €50,000 company route and the €250,000 tiers in Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Italy.

Portugal — €250,000 to €500,000, the passport track with a longer clock

Portugal’s Golden Visa is open in 2026, with the real-estate route gone since October 2023. The main route is a €500,000 subscription into a CMVM-regulated investment fund; the cheapest is a €250,000 cultural-heritage donation. Physical presence averages just seven days per year, which is why Portugal remains the default choice for investors who want an EU foothold without moving.

What changed is the prize at the end. Under Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, in force since 19 May 2026, naturalization requires ten years of legal residence instead of five — and the clock starts when the first residence card is issued, not when you apply. With AIMA’s observed 12–24 month processing gap, the realistic filing-to-passport span is 11–13 years. Applications that reached the IRN by 18 May 2026 keep the five-year rule. Portugal is the program where the gap between marketing and mechanics is widest, which is why the full Portugal Golden Visa guide is the longest single guide on this site — including the US-taxpayer PFIC analysis that applies to any fund-based route.

Greece — €250,000 to €800,000, tiered by geography

Greece’s Golden Visa is open in 2026 and remains property-led, with thresholds tiered since September 2024: €800,000 in the Region of Attica, the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and every island above 3,100 inhabitants, €400,000 elsewhere, and a €250,000 tier reserved for commercial-to-residential conversions and listed-building restorations. The permit is permanent-style — five years, renewable as long as the investment is held — and Greece imposes no minimum stay at all.

The catch sits at the naturalization end. The investor permit does sit on the seven-year list where most others need twelve, but the statutory test is residence that is “lawfully and permanently” held — and a permit with no minimum stay gives you the first word free and the second not at all. Passquire’s Greece golden visa guide works through the queue data, the two different €250,000 routes, and what Article 100 §9 says about work rights.

Italy — €250,000 into startups, the quiet contender

Italy’s Investor Visa is open in 2026 with four routes: €250,000 into an innovative startup, €500,000 into an Italian limited company, €2 million into government bonds, or a €1 million philanthropic donation. There is deliberately no real-estate route. The initial permit runs two years, renewable, with no minimum residency requirement, and the nulla osta pre-clearance targets 30 days — one of the fastest approvals in Europe.

Italy’s approvals grew about 63% in 2025, a surge that still leaves it far smaller than Greece or Portugal. The startup route’s €250,000 entry matches Portugal’s donation tier but buys equity rather than a gift — recoverable in principle, illiquid in practice. Italian citizenship follows ordinary naturalization at ten years of residence. For US taxpayers, a direct shareholding in one operating startup generally avoids the PFIC regime that fund routes trigger, though CFC rules can apply to larger stakes — a distinction that makes Italy structurally interesting for Americans comparing €250,000 options.

Hungary — €250,000, Europe’s newest program

Hungary’s Guest Investor Program, launched in 2024, is open in 2026 with two routes: a €250,000 subscription into a Hungarian National Bank-approved real estate fund, or a €1 million donation to a public-interest trust. A planned €500,000 direct property option was struck by a December 2024 Gazette amendment days before its 1 January 2025 start, so it never took effect. The permit is long-dated — issued for ten years and renewable — with no meaningful physical-presence requirement.

The trade-offs are newness and the naturalization horizon. The program has no processing track record across political cycles, the fund universe is small and Hungary-specific, and Hungarian citizenship requires eight years of residence plus a language exam that non-resident investors will not casually pass. Hungary competes on permit length and price, not on a passport track. For a US taxpayer, the fund route carries the same PFIC flag as Portugal’s: a Hungarian real-estate fund is a foreign pooled investment, and the reporting consequences arrive with the first tax year.

Latvia — €50,000, the cheapest door into the EU

Latvia’s investor residence permit is the lowest-priced route into EU residency open in 2026: €50,000 invested into the equity of a Latvian company plus a €10,000 state fee, for a five-year permit. Alternative routes exist at €250,000 (real estate) and €280,000 (subordinated bank deposit). The permit requires only an annual renewal touch and minimal presence.

The asterisk is legislative, and it is bigger than it looks. In June 2026, Latvia’s parliament passed amendments that would cut the company-route permit from five years to two — and, in the same package, abolish both the €250,000 real-estate route and the €280,000 deposit route, replacing them with a €150,000 route into a state alternative investment fund that does not yet exist. The president returned the bill for a second reading on 19 June 2026, so the current rules still apply and permits issued under them keep their five-year validity (IMI Daily, June 2026). If it passes, Latvia keeps the cheap company door and loses the property one entirely. Applicants weighing Latvia are, in effect, pricing a closing window. Latvian naturalization takes roughly a decade of actual residence (temporary permit, then permanent residence, then citizenship), so like Greece, this is a foothold product, not a passport product.

Cyprus — €300,000, fast permanent residency

Cyprus’s permanent residency by investment program is open in 2026: €300,000 plus VAT into new residential property, commercial property, Cypriot company shares, or Cyprus-registered fund units, with proof of at least €50,000 in secured annual income from abroad (plus €15,000 for a spouse and €10,000 per child). What it grants is immediate permanent residence — no renewal treadmill — with approvals reported around six months in 2026.

Note the ancestry of the headline: Cyprus once sold citizenship directly, and that program closed in November 2020 after abuse findings. Today’s €300,000 program is residency only. Cypriot naturalization is available after about eight years of legal residence — but the permit only obliges you to visit once every two years, and years of visiting are not years of residing. Cyprus is bought for the Mediterranean base, the non-dom tax regime, and the option value, not for a passport plan.

Malta — permanent residence by contribution, not investment

Malta’s MPRP (Malta Permanent Residence Programme) is open in 2026 and is structured unlike anything else in Europe: rather than one recoverable investment, it stacks a €60,000 administrative fee, a €37,000 government contribution, a €2,000 charitable donation, and a five-year housing commitment — either buying property for €375,000+ or renting at €14,000+ per year. The rental path makes the five-year outlay roughly €169,000, most of it unrecoverable; in exchange, residence is permanent from day one.

Malta is also the reason EU citizenship-by-investment no longer exists. In April 2025 the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in Commission v Malta (C-181/23) that Malta’s citizenship program breached EU law, and Malta terminated it. The MPRP was not touched by the judgment — it sells residence, which member states may price as they wish. Maltese naturalization through ordinary residence remains legally possible and practically discretionary; nobody should buy the MPRP as a passport plan.

Which Caribbean countries offer citizenship by investment instead?

Five Caribbean states sell citizenship directly in 2026: St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, and St Lucia. The product is a passport in months — not a residence permit with a naturalization path — with donation routes from $200,000 to $250,000, little or no physical-presence requirement, and family pricing that typically covers four people. Four of the five agreed a US$200,000 regional floor through an OECS Memorandum of Agreement on 20 March 2024; St Lucia joined later.

That Memorandum of Agreement matters more than any single price. What it does not settle is whether the passport keeps the travel map it was sold with — the withdrawal record, the published refusal rates, and the regulator now standing up over all five programs are covered in Passquire’s guide to what a purchased citizenship can lose after it is granted. The floor took effect on 1 July 2024 and ended a decade of discounting wars — Dominica once sold at $100,000 — but it did not move everyone: St Kitts & Nevis had already repriced to $250,000 in 2023, ahead of the agreement, so the reset lifted Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, Grenada, and St Lucia. Caribbean pricing now moves as a bloc, upward. It was also a response to external pressure — the EU and US have both scrutinized these programs’ vetting, and visa-free access to Europe is the asset the five governments are collectively protecting.

St Kitts & Nevis — $250,000, the original

St Kitts & Nevis has run citizenship-by-investment since 1984 — the oldest program in the world — and prices it in 2026 at $250,000 for the Sustainable Island State Contribution, covering a family of up to four, with due diligence billed separately at $10,000 for the main applicant and $7,500 per dependant over 16. A real-estate alternative exists from $325,000 in approved developments with a seven-year hold.

The premium over Dominica or Antigua buys brand and durability: four decades of continuity, the strongest passport in the Caribbean CBI group, and the program other programs are benchmarked against. Files have been reported at four to eight months in 2026. St Kitts is the default answer to “which Caribbean program, if price is not the deciding factor?” — and the subject of its own forthcoming Passquire guide.

Dominica — $200,000, the price floor

Dominica’s citizenship program is the cheapest of the five in 2026: a $200,000 contribution to the Economic Diversification Fund for a single applicant, or $200,000 into government-approved real estate with a three-year hold. Reported processing runs about six months to approval-in-principle. The passport carries visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 140 destinations (industry count, 2026) — a tier below St Kitts, ahead of Vanuatu.

Dominica doubled its price in the 2024 regional reset (from $100,000), and the program funds a visible share of the national budget — hurricane-recovery housing and geothermal projects are the government’s showcase uses. The trade-off at this tier is diplomatic exposure: budget programs attract the most scrutiny from the EU and UK, and Dominica lost UK visa-free access in 2023 along with several neighbors. Cheapest and most durable are different axes.

Grenada — $235,000, the E-2 bridge

Grenada’s citizenship program prices at $235,000 for the National Transformation Fund donation (family of up to four) or $270,000 for shared-ownership real estate plus a $50,000 government fee, with a five-year hold. Files clear in a reported three to six months. Grenada’s differentiator is unique in the category: it is the only Caribbean CBI state with a US E-2 investor-visa treaty.

The E-2 bridge works like this: a Grenadian citizen who then makes a substantial investment in a US business can apply for a renewable US E-2 visa — a workaround used by nationals of countries without E-2 treaties (China, India, Vietnam are the classic cases). A domicile bar added by §5902(b) of P.L. 117-263, enacted 23 December 2022, blunted the “buy Sunday, file Monday” version of it — but the bar is narrower than it is usually reported. Under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(E) as amended, the three-year continuous domicile requirement applies only to an applicant who acquired the treaty nationality through a financial investment and who has not previously been granted E status. Grenadians naturalised by residence and existing E-visa holders fall outside it; the investor-citizenship buyer falls squarely inside. For US citizens the E-2 angle is irrelevant — you already live there — which is a reminder that program marketing is written for a global audience, not for you.

Antigua & Barbuda — $230,000, built for bigger families

Antigua & Barbuda prices citizenship at $230,000 for the National Development Fund route, covering a family of up to four, with a $260,000 University of the West Indies fund option that suits families of six or more, and real estate from $300,000. Reported processing runs six to nine months. Antigua is the only program of the five with any presence requirement at all — five days in the country within the first five years.

Antigua’s pitch is per-head economics: for larger households, the UWI route (which bundles a tuition waiver for one member) and the family-inclusive pricing regularly make it the cheapest total file in the Caribbean, even though Dominica’s single-applicant sticker is lower. The five-day visit is a formality for most families but a real logistical line item for the pure document-buyer — which tells you Antigua is mildly optimizing for citizens who show up.

St Lucia — $240,000, with the only refundable route

St Lucia prices its National Economic Fund donation at $240,000 in 2026, covering a family of up to four, and uniquely offers a National Action Bond route: $300,000 into non-interest-bearing government bonds, redeemable after five years, plus a $50,000 non-refundable government fee on top. The bond is the only Caribbean route where the principal comes back — you forgo interest and pay that $50,000, but the capital itself is a deposit, not a donation. Priced honestly, the bond’s unrecoverable cost lands close to the donation it competes with.

The caveat is the queue: 2026 reporting on St Lucia files spans 4 to 16 months — the widest observed spread of the five, with backlog reporting putting current files at the top of that range — against marketing that implies months. Price-wise, St Lucia sits mid-pack; the bond route’s effective cost (foregone yield on $300,000 for five years, plus fees) often lands near the donation’s cost anyway, so the real choice is between liquidity later and simplicity now. For a US taxpayer, note that a foreign government bond is a reportable foreign asset — refundable does not mean invisible to the IRS.

What about the US, the Gulf, and the Pacific?

Six open programs sit outside Europe and the Caribbean in 2026: Turkey ($400,000 property, direct citizenship), the UAE (AED 2 million property, 10-year residence), the United States (EB-5, $800,000+), New Zealand (NZ$5 million+), and the Pacific pair of Vanuatu ($130,000) and Nauru ($90,000), both selling direct citizenship. They span the entire market: the cheapest passport on earth and the most expensive residence permit in this guide are both in this section.

Turkey — $400,000 in property, citizenship in months not years

Turkey grants citizenship for a $400,000 real-estate purchase held three years, with alternative routes at $500,000 (bank deposit, government bonds, or fixed capital investment). There is no residence requirement, no language test, and the property is resalable after the hold — making Turkey the largest “recoverable-asset passport” program in the world. There is no government service standard; a clean file runs roughly four to nine months end to end, including the title-deed and valuation stages (industry reporting, 2026).

Two eyes-open caveats. The valuation rules are strict — the official appraisal, the foreign-exchange certificate, and the title-deed price must each independently clear $400,000 — and Istanbul’s investor-grade property market carries real currency and liquidity risk; the lira’s depreciation is the reason the program repriced from $250,000 to $400,000 in 2022. The Turkish passport itself reaches roughly 110+ destinations visa-free — no EU or US access — so buyers are typically purchasing a hedge and an asset, not mobility.

United Arab Emirates — AED 2 million, the zero-tax residence

The UAE Golden Visa is granted for owning property worth AED 2 million (about $545,000), with parallel tracks for investors, entrepreneurs, and specialists. Its duration depends on which authority’s page you read: the federal issuer ICP and the u.ae portal publish five years for the real-estate route, while the Dubai Land Department and Abu Dhabi’s ADRO publish ten. The authorities also diverge on mortgages — ICP still says the property must be “without loans”, while Dubai accepts a mortgaged property against “a bank letter indicating 2 million AED paid amount”, the same floor Abu Dhabi applies. Government fees for the Dubai route total AED 9,884.75 on DLD’s own schedule (about $2,690), and both Dubai counters publish a service time: 7 to 10 business days at the Land Department, 5 days at GDRFA. Passquire’s UAE golden visa guide sets the four positions side by side with their as-of dates.

What the UAE sells is a tax position with a visa attached: no personal income tax, no capital gains tax, and a base between Europe and Asia. What it does not sell is citizenship — there is no standard naturalization path, so the UAE column of any “path to passport” comparison reads “none.” US citizens should price one asymmetry honestly: the UAE’s 0% does not switch off US worldwide taxation, and the FEIE only shelters earned income — not the investment income most golden-visa holders live on.

United States — EB-5 at $800,000, and the Gold Card question

The US EB-5 program grants a green card for an $800,000 investment in a Targeted Employment Area (or $1,050,000 elsewhere) that creates ten jobs. It is the only program in this guide that leads to US permanent residence, and its legislative framework carries three dates that matter and are routinely conflated: petitions filed by 30 September 2026 are grandfathered under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(S); the regional-centre program itself is authorised to 30 September 2027 under 1153(b)(5)(E)(i); and the first inflation-based adjustment of the investment amounts is scheduled for 1 January 2027 under the Reform and Integrity Act.

The “Trump Gold Card” is not a new visa category. Executive Order 14351 of 19 September 2025 (90 FR 46031) directs that a $1 million individual or $2 million corporate gift be treated as evidence of eligibility under the existing EB-1A, EB-2 exceptional-ability and national-interest-waiver routes; the $5 million figure from the February 2025 announcement now attaches to an unreleased “Platinum” tier. It remains unauthorized by Congress and under challenge in AAUP v. DHS (D.D.C.), undecided as of August 2026; reporting on its price and status conflicts, and this guide treats it as an open question rather than an option. Practically: EB-5 is the statutory route, its timeline runs years rather than months, and it is the one program here where the buyer is opting into US worldwide taxation — the exact system every other program’s American clients are diversifying around.

New Zealand — NZ$5 million, the lifestyle flagship

New Zealand’s Active Investor Plus visa requires NZ$5 million (about US$3 million) in growth investments held three years with just 21 days of presence, or NZ$10 million in balanced investments over five years with 105 days. The 2025 reset removed the English test and slashed presence requirements, and demand responded: 573 applications covering 1,833 people and NZ$3.39 billion in proposed investment arrived within roughly the program’s first ten months — of which NZ$1.05 billion is actually invested to date, the rest pipeline (Immigration New Zealand, 2026). Immigration New Zealand’s service standard is 80% of decisions within three months; its reported average runs 36–37 working days.

New Zealand is the clearest example of a program priced as a scarcity good: it sells political stability, distance, and lifestyle to a clientele for whom $3 million is not the constraint. Citizenship is a real path but not a realistic one for the minimum-presence investor: the Citizenship Act 1977 requires 1,350 days of presence across five years and at least 240 days in each of those years, a floor that cannot be averaged away. A Growth investor who spends the mandated 21 days over three years is nowhere near it. Only families who genuinely relocate should read New Zealand as a passport route. From 1 June 2026, up to 20% of a Growth-category investment may go to philanthropy, a detail that says a lot about who this program is for.

Vanuatu and Nauru — the Pacific price floor

Vanuatu sells citizenship for a $130,000 contribution with files clearing in four to eight weeks — the fastest passport on the market — and Nauru, whose program was announced at COP29 in November 2024 and whose regulations were gazetted on 10 February 2025, lists a flat $115,000 contribution with an official $25,000 discount for applications filed before 31 December 2026 — an effective $90,000 — and decides in about three to four months (Nauru ECRCP contribution schedule, retrieved August 2026). Together they form the market’s absolute price floor, and both fund climate adaptation from the proceeds.

The discount is priced in mobility and standing. Vanuatu lost its EU visa-waiver in two steps: Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198 fully suspended the waiver agreement from 4 February 2023, and Regulation (EU) 2025/11 then moved Vanuatu from Annex II to Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 with effect from 3 February 2025 — a permanent change of status rather than another suspension. Either way the passport no longer opens Schengen. Nauru is new, small, and untested — 84 destinations on the Henley index of 16 July 2026, none of them the EU or UK, and that map is shrinking: Ireland removed Nauru from its visa-exempt list on 10 March 2025 and the UK imposed a visa requirement on 9 December 2025. Its launch-year discount signals a program still finding its market. The lesson generalizes: in citizenship-by-investment, the visa-free map is the product, and the cheap end of the market is cheap because that map is shrinking.

Can your family be included in a golden visa application?

Every program in this guide accepts a spouse and minor children on the main application; the real differences are adult children, parents, and the price per additional head. Caribbean programs bundle families into the headline price — St Kitts & Nevis, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, and St Lucia all cover a household of roughly four at the sticker figure — while European programs add dependants for incremental fees, and due-diligence charges apply per adult everywhere. Family size can move the total cost by six figures.

The published family rules, as of August 2026:

• St Kitts & Nevis: the $250,000 contribution covers up to four people; beyond that, $25,000 per additional child under 18 and $50,000 per additional adult dependant, plus $7,500 due diligence per dependant over 16.
• St Lucia: $240,000 covers the applicant and up to three dependants; additional dependants run $25,000 each, and a newborn under 12 months can be added for $5,000 — the cheapest family amendment in the industry.
• Antigua & Barbuda: $230,000 covers four; its $260,000 University of the West Indies route is priced for six or more and bundles a one-year tuition scholarship for one family member — the only program that pays part of itself back in tuition.
• Malta (MPRP): the same fee stack covers a spouse, children under 18, unmarried financially dependent children up to 28, and dependent parents and grandparents — the widest four-generation net in Europe.
• Cyprus: dependants raise the income test rather than the investment: €50,000 in proven foreign annual income, plus €15,000 for a spouse and €10,000 per child.
• Portugal: family reunification runs on the same permit terms, and dependants outnumber investors — in 2024, 2,909 family permits were issued alongside 2,081 main-applicant permits (AIMA reporting, October 2025).

Two structural points get missed. First, each family member multiplies the fee layers — biometric, card, and renewal fees are charged per person, per cycle, which is how a Portuguese family of four ends up paying five figures in card fees across a ten-year clock. Second, age-out risk is real on slow programs: a 17-year-old dependant on a file that takes two years may no longer qualify as a minor at decision time. Programs handle the cutoff differently, and on observed-slow programs (Portugal, St Lucia), filing order should be planned around the oldest dependant’s birthday.

How does US tax treat a golden visa?

No golden visa or purchased passport changes a US citizen’s tax position by one dollar: the United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live, and every program in this guide leaves that fully intact. What the programs do change is your reporting surface — foreign accounts, foreign funds, foreign companies — and that is where the expensive surprises live. The rules below apply as of the 2026 tax year; confirm current thresholds with a US tax professional.

The PFIC trap sits inside the most popular routes. Portugal’s €500,000 fund route, Hungary’s €250,000 fund route, and any Cyprus fund option all involve foreign pooled investment vehicles, which are presumptively PFICs (passive foreign investment companies) for US taxpayers. Without a timely QEF election — which requires the fund to issue a PFIC Annual Information Statement, something many European golden-visa funds do not do — the default regime taxes distributions and gains at top ordinary rates plus an interest charge, with effective rates that can pass 50%. Form 8621 is due per fund, per year. The question to put to any fund before wiring: “Will you provide a PFIC Annual Information Statement?” A hesitant answer is an answer.

FBAR and Form 8938 follow the accounts, not the visa. Opening the local bank account that almost every program requires triggers FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR) once aggregate foreign balances exceed $10,000 at any point in the year, and Form 8938 at higher thresholds ($200,000/$300,000 for taxpayers living abroad; $50,000/$75,000 stateside, filing single). Caribbean bond routes, fund units, and foreign company shares are all reportable specified assets. The penalties are disproportionate to the sums — FBAR non-willful penalties run per violation — and the forms are cheap to file. This is the easiest catastrophe in this guide to avoid.

Foreign real estate is the quiet exception. Directly held foreign property — a Greek apartment, a Turkish flat, a UAE villa — is not itself a reportable foreign financial asset on Form 8938, and rental income simply lands on Schedule E as usual. Property routes therefore carry structurally less US reporting than fund routes at the same price point. Hold that property through a foreign company, though, and you may have created a Form 5471 filing and possibly a CFC — undoing the simplicity you paid for.

Moving abroad changes the math; buying the permit does not. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion ($130,000 for 2025, inflation-adjusted annually) requires actually living abroad — 330 days out of 365, or bona fide residence — and excludes only earned income, not dividends, capital gains, or pensions. Foreign tax credits offset taxes you actually pay abroad, which in a 0% jurisdiction like the UAE is nothing. And the US exit tax belongs to a different decision entirely: it applies to those who renounce citizenship (covered expatriates above roughly $2 million net worth), not to anyone acquiring a second residence or passport. Passquire’s survey work on who is actually weighing that step is in the Golden Visa Report 2026.

Does a golden visa make you a tax resident of that country?

No — holding a golden visa does not by itself make you a tax resident anywhere. Tax residency almost everywhere follows physical presence (typically 183+ days in a year) or center-of-life tests, not immigration status. Since most golden visa programs require days of presence per year rather than months, the standard outcome is a resident permit holder who never becomes a local taxpayer. The picture only changes if you actually move — and then it changes completely.

For those who do relocate, several golden visa countries pair the permit with a special tax regime, which is often the real reason a jurisdiction was chosen:

• Portugal closed its famous NHR regime to new entrants at the end of 2023; its narrower successor (IFICI, often called “NHR 2.0”) offers a 20% rate on eligible professional income for qualifying new residents, as of 2026 — investors living on dividends mostly fall outside it.
• Greece offers qualifying new residents a flat €100,000 annual charge on foreign income under its non-dom regime, conditioned on a substantial local investment (regime terms as of 2026).
• Italy runs the largest flat-tax scheme in Europe: €200,000 per year on all foreign income for new residents, doubled from €100,000 in August 2024, for up to 15 years.
• The UAE simply has no personal income tax, and St Kitts & Nevis, Vanuatu, and Nauru levy no personal income tax on individuals either — a purchased passport from a zero-tax state changes nothing about where you owe tax unless you also live there.

Two warnings prevent expensive misreadings. First, triggering a new tax residency does not automatically end the old one — US citizens keep worldwide US taxation regardless, and non-US nationals can end up dual-resident, resolved (or not) by treaty tie-breakers. Second, flat-tax regimes interact badly with US taxation: a lump-sum €200,000 Italian charge generates foreign tax credits that may not map cleanly onto the US categories of income they nominally cover. The order of operations matters — pick the tax plan with an advisor first, then the visa that fits it, not the reverse.

EU residency or Caribbean citizenship — which fits your plan?

Buy European residency if the goal is a place to live, retire to, or eventually naturalize in; buy Caribbean citizenship if the goal is a second passport in hand within months. The EU route costs €250,000+ mostly in recoverable form and pays out over 5–10 years; the Caribbean route costs $200,000+ mostly as an unrecoverable donation and pays out immediately. They are different products for different problems.

The comparison, compressed:

• Time-to-value. Caribbean: a passport in roughly 3–16 months. EU: a residence card in months, a passport — if ever — in 5–10+ years of naturalization requirements, which in Greece, Cyprus, and Latvia include real physical residence most golden-visa holders never perform.
• Money shape. EU routes are mostly investments (funds, companies, property) that can in principle come back; Caribbean donations are gone by design, with St Lucia’s $300,000 bond the one refundable exception. Fees are unrecoverable everywhere.
• What it does for travel. For US citizens, a Caribbean passport adds little map — the US passport already reached 10th in the 2026 Henley ranking. Its value is as a contingency document. EU residence, by contrast, adds a right to stay somewhere specific, which no strong passport provides.
• Banking and friction. A second passport can ease account-opening where US documents trigger FATCA fatigue — banks in several jurisdictions quietly decline US paperwork — though FATCA follows citizenship, not documents, so the obligation remains regardless.
• Revocability and drift. Residence permits carry renewal conditions and can lapse; citizenship, once granted, is hard to lose but not unconditional — every Caribbean CIU can revoke for fraud in the application. And the ground moves: Vanuatu’s EU visa-waiver suspension shows the travel map attached to a purchased passport is a floating value, not a fixed one.

The travel mechanics deserve one paragraph of precision, because both sides of the market oversell them. An EU golden visa residence card allows movement through the Schengen Area for 90 days in any 180-day window — the same allowance a US tourist already has — plus unlimited time in the issuing country. It is not a right to live in Germany because you hold a Greek permit; free EU-wide settlement comes only with citizenship. A Caribbean passport, meanwhile, grants Schengen access as a visa-waiver visitor, subject to the same 90/180 arithmetic, and that access is diplomatic weather: Vanuatu’s waiver was suspended and then terminated, and the EU has openly reviewed the remaining CBI states’ waivers. Anyone whose actual requirement is “more than 90 consecutive days in Europe” needs a residence permit somewhere in Europe — no passport purchase substitutes for it.

Retirees weighing this fork are usually not choosing a document at all — they are choosing where the next twenty years happen, which pulls the decision toward residence programs with healthcare systems and toward criteria this guide does not rank. That decision has its own data in the Passquire Retirement Report 2026.

Why do golden visa applications get refused?

Refusals cluster around four causes: criminal history, gaps in source-of-funds documentation, incomplete or inconsistent disclosure, and sanctions or politically-exposed-person findings. Of the four, source-of-funds is the one that catches otherwise clean applicants: every program requires a documented chain from the origin of the capital to the qualifying investment, and an unexplained balance — not a suspicious one, merely an undocumented one — is enough to stall or sink a file.

Due diligence has tightened industry-wide since 2022, and it is layered: database and sanctions screening, third-party investigators on the ground, bank-level checks when the funds move, and increasingly a mandatory interview — St Kitts & Nevis and its neighbors added interviews from 2023 as part of commitments made under US and EU pressure. The five Caribbean units have also agreed to share information on refused applicants, so a denial in one program is now visible to the next. The era of quietly reapplying next door is over.

What this means in practice:

• Disclose everything, including the survivable. Minor, aged offenses are often waivable; a concealed minor offense discovered by an investigator is a refusal for misrepresentation — and misrepresentation, unlike the offense itself, also grounds later revocation of a granted citizenship.
• Build the source-of-funds file before choosing a program. Salary history, business-sale documents, brokerage statements, inheritance paperwork. Sale proceeds from crypto are accepted by several programs but demand the deepest paper trail — exchange records back to acquisition.
• Price the refusal scenario. As covered in the exit-economics section below, due-diligence and processing fees are not refunded on refusal. If your file has a known complication, the honest move is a pre-assessment by counsel before any fee is paid — most reputable firms will give a written risk view.
• Published refusal rates now exist — but only for five programs. The European Commission’s Staff Working Document SWD(2025) 429, of 19 December 2025, tabulates 2024 rejections against applications received for all five Caribbean citizenship programs, and the spread is an order of magnitude wide. Passquire reads that table, and explains why its arithmetic misleads on your personal odds, in the citizenship by investment guide. Everywhere else the old rule holds: most programs publish nothing, and the marketing claim “100% approval record” usually means an agent pre-filters applicants, not that the program approves everyone.

Can you get the money back? The exit economics nobody itemizes

Whether a golden visa’s cost is recoverable depends almost entirely on the route type: donations are gone by design, fees are gone everywhere, bonds come back at face value, and funds and property come back at market risk after a mandatory hold. Pricing a program without pricing the exit overstates the cheap routes and understates the recoverable ones — a $200,000 donation and a €500,000 fund position are closer in true cost than their stickers suggest.

The route types, in descending order of recoverability:

• Bonds. St Lucia’s $300,000 National Action Bond redeems at face value after five years; the true cost is five years of foregone yield plus fees. Italy’s €2 million government-bond route behaves similarly at a different scale.
• Property. Recoverable at market price after the hold — three years in Turkey and Dominica, five in Grenada, five for Malta’s qualifying property, indefinite-while-held in Greece and the UAE (sell and the permit basis goes with it). Investor-targeted property in golden-visa markets often trades at a program premium the resale market does not honor; Turkey adds currency risk on top.
• Funds and companies. Portugal’s and Hungary’s fund routes return capital only at fund maturity — lock-ups of 6–10 years are standard in Portugal’s golden-visa fund universe — and Latvia’s €50,000 and Italy’s €250,000 company routes return whatever the business is worth, which may be zero. These are investments with an immigration feature, not deposits.
• Donations and fees. Caribbean contributions, Portugal’s €250,000 heritage donation, Hungary’s €1 million trust donation, Malta’s €99,000 fee stack, and every due-diligence and government fee in this guide: gone the day you pay them. The honest way to read a donation program’s price is as the all-in, final, never-again number — which is also its virtue: nothing left to unwind.

One exit cost is systematically underpriced: failure. If an application is refused, the investment is typically returnable (you never got the permit), but due-diligence fees, government processing fees, and legal costs are not. On a Caribbean file that is $15,000–$25,000 of sunk cost; on a Portuguese fund file, it is fees plus months of capital lock-up. Refusal rates are not published by most programs — an absence worth weighing in itself.

Which golden visa is cheapest, fastest, and best in 2026?

The cheapest residence program open in 2026 is Latvia’s €50,000 company route (plus €10,000 state fee); the cheapest passport is Nauru’s, at an effective $90,000 while its discount runs to 31 December 2026. The fastest program overall is the UAE, whose Dubai counters publish 7–10 business days and 5 days; the fastest citizenship is Vanuatu’s at four to eight weeks. “Best” has no single answer — it decomposes into what you are optimizing for, and the honest ranking criterion should always be stated.

By stated criterion, as of August 2026:

• Cheapest EU entry: Latvia (€50,000 + fee), with a legislative reform pending its second reading — a closing-window price.
• Cheapest EU entry likely to still look the same in five years: Portugal’s €250,000 donation or Greece’s €250,000 conversion tier.
• Fastest to any passport: Vanuatu (4–8 weeks), with the caveat that its EU visa-free access is gone.
• Fastest to a credible passport: Grenada or St Kitts & Nevis at roughly 3–8 months, observed.
• Best passport at the end of the road: Portugal — an EU passport, on a ten-year clock that must be priced honestly.
• Best for a family of four on total cost: Antigua & Barbuda ($230,000 covering four, before fees).
• Best recoverable-asset structure: Turkey’s $400,000 property route or St Lucia’s $300,000 bond, for opposite reasons — asset upside versus principal guarantee.

Every ranking on this page uses one mechanical criterion — the cheapest officially published route, converted to euros — because composite “best program” scores smuggle in weights the reader cannot see. The per-program sections above are the weights; assign your own.

How do you actually apply? The process, start to finish

Every open program follows the same seven-stage skeleton: engage counsel, assemble documents, clear due diligence, make the qualifying investment, file, wait out processing, and collect the permit or passport. What varies is the order of investment versus approval — reputable programs let you invest after approval-in-principle — and the depth of the due-diligence stage, which has tightened everywhere since 2022.

1. Choose route before country. Decide donation vs fund vs property vs bond first — it determines recoverability, US tax surface, and total cost more than the flag does.
2. Engage a licensed agent or lawyer. Caribbean programs require applications through licensed agents; EU programs de facto require local counsel. Fee quotes should itemize government charges separately.
3. Assemble the file. Passports, apostilled police certificates from every country of long residence, source-of-funds documentation reaching back to the origin of the capital, medicals where required. Source-of-funds is where files stall.
4. Clear due diligence. Expect database screening, third-party investigators, and — in St Kitts, Grenada, and several others since 2023 — a mandatory interview.
5. Invest at the right moment. In most Caribbean programs, the contribution is paid only after approval-in-principle. In Portugal and Hungary, the investment precedes filing — which is exactly why refusal and delay risk should be priced before wiring.
6. File and wait — against the observed timeline, not the advertised one. Use the processing table above; ask your agent what their last five files actually took.
7. Collect, then diarize the obligations. Renewal dates, minimum-presence days, holding-period end dates, and — for Americans — the FBAR/8938/8621 filing calendar. Most revocations are missed-obligation stories, not fraud stories.

Sources

• St Kitts & Nevis CIU — SISC contribution and due-diligence fee schedule. https://www.ciu.gov.kn/ (retrieved 2026-08-10); corroborated via https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/st-kitts-and-nevis-citizenship-by-investment/ and https://immigrantinvest.com/citizenship-saint-kitts-and-nevis/
• Dominica CBIU — EDF and real-estate minimums. https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/dominica-citizenship-by-investment/ and https://getgoldenvisa.com/dominica-citizenship-by-investment-program (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Grenada CIU — NTF and real-estate terms, government fee. https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/grenada-citizenship-by-investment/ and https://immigrantinvest.com/grenada-citizenship-by-investment/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Antigua & Barbuda CIU — NDF/UWI routes. https://immigrantinvest.com/blog/antigua-barbuda-citizenship-investment/ and https://getgoldenvisa.com/antigua-barbuda-citizenship-by-investment-program (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• St Lucia CIU — NEF and National Action Bond; observed processing. https://ntltrust.com/citizenship-by-investment/st-lucia/ and https://iworld.com/en/blog/saint-lucia-citizenship (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Turkey — $400,000 property route and valuation rules. https://globalresidenceindex.com/turkey-citizenship-investment/ and https://istanbullawyerfirm.com/turkish-citizenship-by-investment (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• UAE — AED 2M property visa, fees and service standards. Dubai Land Department golden-visa application page https://dubailand.gov.ae/en/eservices/request-for-golden-visa-investor/ and GDRFA service page https://www.gdrfad.gov.ae/en/services/8ea80da4-f43e-11eb-0320-0050569629e8 (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• New Zealand — Active Investor Plus terms, uptake and processing. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/visas/active-investor-plus-visa and https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/active-investor-plus-delivers-3-billion-investment-new-zealand (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• New Zealand citizenship presence rule — Citizenship Act 1977 s8 (1,350 days / 240 per year). https://www.govt.nz/browse/passports-citizenship-and-identity/nz-citizenship/requirements-for-nz-citizenship/presence-requirements/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Turkey — thresholds and separate-valuation rule. TKGM guide https://www.tkgm.gov.tr/sites/default/files/2024-02/KILAVUZ-01-02-2024_1.pdf; repricing via Presidential Decision 5554, in force 13 June 2022 (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Hungary — Guest Investor Program routes; December 2024 removal of the property option before it took effect. https://immigrantinvest.com/golden-visa-hungary/ and https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/hungary-golden-visa/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Latvia — €50,000 company route; June 2026 legislative amendments and presidential referral. https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/latvia-golden-visa/ and https://solandworld.com/latvia-golden-visa-2026-the-eus-cheapest-door-is-still-open-but-the-rules-are-shifting/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Cyprus — €300,000 PR program, income requirements, naturalization horizon. https://www.astons.com/residency-by-investment/cyprus/ and https://apexcapital.partners/the-2026-guide-to-cyprus-residency-by-investment/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Malta MPRP — fee stack and property/lease thresholds. https://www.ccmalta.com/publications/malta-permanent-residence-programme-mprp-2026-requirements-costs-timeline and https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/malta-residency-by-investment/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Italy — investor-visa routes and timelines. https://getgoldenvisa.com/italy-golden-visa and https://arlettipartners.com/italy-golden-visa/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• New Zealand — Active Investor Plus categories, demand figures, June 2026 philanthropy change. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/media-centre/common-topics/investor-category and https://www.dlapiper.com/en-us/insights/publications/2025/12/active-investor-plus-visa-explained-new-zealands-updated-residency-by-investment-regime (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Vanuatu — DSP contribution and processing. https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/vanuatu-citizenship-by-investment/ and https://immigrantinvest.com/vanuatu-citizenship-by-investment/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Nauru — program launch and pricing. https://www.ecrcp.gov.nr/news and https://www.astons.com/citizenship-by-investment/nauru/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• USA — EB-5 amounts, grandfathering, and Gold Card status. https://www.gozellaw.com/blog/eb5-minimum-investment-amount-2025-2026 and https://www.epi.org/policywatch/trump-creates-gold-card-program-to-sell-access-to-employment-based-green-cards-announces-platinum-card-program-with-few-details/ (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• European Commission — Staff Working Document SWD(2025) 429 final, 19 December 2025; per-country Caribbean application and rejection table for 2024. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX%3A52025SC0429 (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• OECS Pressroom — Memorandum of Agreement on Caribbean citizenship programmes and the US$200,000 floor with effect from 1 July 2024, 22 June 2024. https://pressroom.oecs.int/caribbean-countries-pressing-forward-with-the-implementation-of-the-memorandum-of-agreement-on-citizenship-by-investment-programmes (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Spain closure — Organic Law 1/2025. https://www.boe.es/eli/es/lo/2025/01/02/1 (retrieved 2026-08-08)
• Malta CBI termination — CJEU judgment C-181/23, Commission v Malta, 29 April 2025. https://curia.europa.eu/juris/documents.jsf?num=C-181/23 (retrieved 2026-08-08)
• Portugal — Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026, AIMA fee-table conflict, observed processing. Passquire Portugal Golden Visa guide sources, https://diariodarepublica.pt/ (retrieved 2026-08-08)
• Greece thresholds and 2025 permit growth; Italy 2025 growth — program statistics as compiled in Passquire gauntlet research (verified 2026-08-08)
• Henley & Partners — US applicant demand and 2026 passport ranking. https://www.henleyglobal.com/ (retrieved 2026-08-08)
• IRS — Form 8621 (PFIC), FBAR (FinCEN 114), Form 8938 thresholds, FEIE. https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8621 and https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198 — full suspension of the EU–Vanuatu visa-waiver agreement from 4 February 2023. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec/2022/2198/oj (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Regulation (EU) 2025/11 — transfer of Vanuatu from Annex II to Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, applying from 3 February 2025. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2025/11/oj (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Government of Nauru — Gazette No. 51 of 10 February 2025, citizenship program amendment regulations (programme commencement). https://www.nauru.gov.nr/media/203092/gazette_51-25.pdf (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Henley & Partners — Henley Passport Index, global ranking edition of 16 July 2026 (Nauru 84 destinations). https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index/ranking (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(i) and (b)(5)(S) — regional-centre authorisation to 30 September 2027 and the 30 September 2026 grandfathering cutoff, as amended by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1153 (retrieved 2026-08-10)
• Executive Order 14351 of 19 September 2025, 90 FR 46031 — gift-based evidence of eligibility under EB-1A, EB-2 exceptional ability and the national-interest waiver. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/24/2025-18602 (retrieved 2026-08-10)