Residency by investment countries and programs in 2026

Funds are the growth route: Portugal's program now runs through regulated fund subscriptions rather than property, and Hungary's distinct new GIP is fund-based. Saleable or redeemable only on the governing terms and at an uncertain value; ourfund-route guide covers fees, terms, and the questions that expose a weak fund.

Property remains the door in Greece, Cyprus, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with tiered thresholds, designated ownership zones, presence rules and real transaction costs the brochures skip.

Business and capital routes, from Latvia's company investment to Italy's startup option to the multimillion tiers in Singapore and New Zealand, price residence against active-economy commitments rather than passive capital.

The table above carries each program's presence requirement, and the spread is the whole story: Greece and Hungary ask nothing to keep the permit, Portugal asks roughly a week a year, and citizenship-track residence anywhere demands genuine living. The trap sits in the middle: years on a zero-presence permit generally do not count toward a passport, so the cheapest presence rule and the fastest citizenship path are usually different programs. Our minimum-stay guidemaps the requirements currently documented in our coverage, with sources.

Some residence programs can support permanent residence after a qualifying period, often around five years; others remain renewable permits without the same progression. Citizenship moved further away in 2026: Portugal's new nationality law requires ten years of legal residence (seven for EU and CPLP nationals), counted from the first residence card, and Greece's seven-year track requires genuinely living there plus a language exam. The program pages carry each path with its conditions and ouranalysis of the Portugal changeexplains the new math that affected pre-2026 plans need to re-run.

Spain ended its golden visa in 2025, Portugal removed property in 2023, the UK and Ireland closed their investor routes before that, and the EU keeps pressure on the rest. A program's closure risk belongs in the purchase decision, priced, not footnoted, and the repricing reaches beyond the EU: Gibraltar multiplied its Category 2 net-worth bar to 5 million pounds this year. Ourprogram tracker records the openings, changes, and closures in Civita's coverage, and the Closing Window dataset shows how entry prices have ratcheted upward with each reform.