Spain Golden Visa, legacy cases only

No. The Spain Golden Visa is not available to new applicants and has not been since 3 April 2025. There is no investor residence permit, no EUR 500,000 property route, no EUR 1,000,000 share or deposit route, and no EUR 2,000,000 bond route. All four were repealed together.

This is worth stating plainly because much of the internet has not caught up. A large amount of advisory content, broker copy, and cached search pages still present Spain as a live residence-by-investment destination. It is not. Any page quoting a Spanish Golden Visa minimum investment in 2026 is either out of date or selling you a service for a program that closed over a year ago.

What still exists in Spain is residence through genuine income, work, or business activity. None of those is a passive wire-money-get-residence play. If passivity and zero presence were the appeal, Spain no longer offers it, and you should be looking at the alternatives further down this page rather than at any Spanish route.

The instrument was Ley Organica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, on measures for the efficiency of the Public Justice Service. Despite being a judicial-reform law, one of its final provisions reached into immigration law and ended the Golden Visa. The operative clause amended Law 14/2013 and stated: 'Se dejan sin contenido los articulos 63, 64, 65, 66 y 67.' Those five articles were the entire legal basis of the investor residence visa.

The law was published in the Boletin Oficial del Estado (BOE-A-2025-76) on 3 January 2025. Its general entry into force was set 'a los tres meses de su publicacion', three months after publication, which lands on 3 April 2025. That is the date the Golden Visa stopped accepting new applicants. The deadline to file was the day before.

Note the precise scope: it was Articles 63 to 67 that were voided, not 61 to 67. Some secondary sources state the range wrongly. The BOE text is unambiguous. Articles 61 and 62 of Law 14/2013, which sit outside the investor-visa block, were not part of the repeal.

Spain framed the abolition as a housing-affordability measure. When the Prime Minister announced the plan in April 2024, his office pointed to data attributed to the Ministry of Housing that roughly 94 of every 100 Golden Visa permits were linked to real estate purchases, concentrated in already-strained markets: Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia, Alicante, and the Balearic Islands. The argument was that housing should be a right, not a speculative asset, and that investor demand was inflating prices for residents.

Whether the Golden Visa was actually a significant driver of national house prices is debatable, and the program was never large in absolute terms. Issuance ran in the low thousands per year at its peak (around 3,273 in 2023 by government figures relayed in industry reporting), with roughly 11,000 permits issued across 2016 to 2024. The honest reading is that the closure was as much political as economic: a low-cost, high-visibility way to signal action on a housing crisis with far larger structural causes.

The reason this matters to you is durability. Because the closure was a deliberate political choice tied to a popular housing message, not a technical or budgetary tweak, a reversal would require a government willing to spend political capital reopening a route it just shut for optics. That is unlikely in the near term. Plan around a closed door, not a temporary one.

If you already hold a Spanish Golden Visa, nothing is taken from you. The same final provision that repealed the program inserted two transitional rules into Law 14/2013 to protect those already in the system.

First, pending applications. Investors, or their family members, who filed before 3 April 2025 may still receive the visa or permit, assessed 'conforme a la normativa vigente en la fecha de presentacion de la solicitud', under the rules in force on the date they applied. A file submitted before the cut-off is grandfathered.

Second, existing permits and renewals. Investor visas and authorizations valid on 3 April 2025 keep their validity for the full term for which they were issued. When you come to renew, the renewal 'se tramitara y resolvera conforme a la normativa vigente en la fecha de concesion de la autorizacion inicial', it is processed and decided under the rules that applied when your original permit was granted. In practice, you can keep holding and renewing your permit so long as you maintain the underlying investment and conditions.

One caveat for holders with citizenship ambitions: because the Golden Visa never carried a minimum-stay requirement, most holders never accumulated the ten years of genuine continuous residence that Spanish naturalization requires. The grandfathering protects your residence, not a shortcut to a passport. If citizenship is the goal, you will need to actually live in Spain enough to build that clock, the same as any other resident.

Spain is still one of the most desirable places in Europe to live, and there are still clean legal routes in. None of them is a passive investment play. Each requires genuine income, work, or business activity, and each requires you to actually spend time in the country. That is the trade. Here are the three that matter, and note that none of them is a golden visa.

Non-lucrative visa (NLV). For non-EU nationals who can support themselves without working in Spain: retirees, the financially independent, people living on passive income. You prove stable passive income tied to the IPREM indicator, around EUR 2,400 per month, roughly EUR 28,800 per year for a single applicant, plus more per dependent. The income must be genuinely passive: pensions, rental, dividends, investment returns, not salary or remote-work pay. The catch and the feature are the same: it requires substantial physical presence (effectively more than 183 days a year), which means it counts toward the ten-year naturalization clock in a way the Golden Visa rarely did.

Digital nomad visa (DNV). Created under the 2022 Startups Law and inserted into Law 14/2013, this is for remote employees, and some freelancers, working for companies outside Spain. The income test is tied to the minimum wage (SMI): after the 2026 wage increase to EUR 1,221 per month, the threshold is roughly EUR 2,849 per month for a single applicant (200% of SMI), about EUR 3,918 for a couple, plus around EUR 357 per child. Buying property does not qualify anyone for this visa; it is income and work based. Qualifying employees can also elect the Beckham Law flat-tax regime, covered below.

Entrepreneur visa. The Golden Visa repeal voided only Articles 63 to 67, the investor articles. The separate entrepreneur route under Law 14/2013 survives. It is for an innovative, entrepreneurial business project of general interest, favorably reported by Spain's Large Companies and Strategic Sectors Unit (UGE-CE) and ENISA. This is an active-business test, not a passive capital deposit. You are building or running something, not parking money.

Most people who searched for the Spain Golden Visa did not actually want Spain. They wanted a liquid, low-stay EU residence acquired by investment and held as a Plan B. That product still exists, it just moved. The right alternative depends entirely on your goal.

If you want the closest comparable to the old Spain Golden Visa, a passive, low-stay EU residence with an eventual path to a passport, go to Portugal. Its Golden Visa survived the reforms, now runs on funds and donations rather than property, and asks for only about 7 days a year of presence, the lowest in the EU. The one major change: the 2026 nationality reform, in force from 19 May 2026, pushed citizenship to 10 years (7 for EU and CPLP nationals), so buy it for the residence and optionality, not for a fast passport.

If you specifically wanted to buy property in the EU for residence, and budget matters, go to Greece. It is the main EU golden visa that still allows real estate, with a tiered system: EUR 800,000 in high-demand areas, EUR 400,000 elsewhere, and EUR 250,000 only for commercial-to-residential conversions or heritage restorations. There is no minimum stay. Note that short-term holiday rental of the qualifying property is banned, so treat it as a mobility tool, not a yield asset.

If you want flexibility, a founder or lifestyle flavor, and a powerful tax angle, look at Italy. Its investor visa starts at EUR 250,000 into an innovative startup and approves you before you wire a euro. There is no mandatory minimum stay, and Italy's flat-tax regime (EUR 300,000 per year on all foreign income for those moving tax residence from 1 January 2026, with earlier opters grandfathered at lower amounts) is a genuine magnet for high-net-worth relocators.

If you value permanence and family coverage over a citizenship path, consider Malta's Permanent Residence Program, which grants lifetime EU residence for the whole family with no obligation to live there. And if you want cheaper EU permanent residence with property, Cyprus offers it from EUR 300,000, with one important caveat: Cyprus is not in the Schengen Area, so it does not give the free movement that made Spain attractive.

Start from the question the Golden Visa was the wrong answer to: what are you actually buying? Sort the alternatives by the outcome you care about, not by sticker price.

If you want the lowest entry cost, Greece reaches EUR 250,000 on conversion and heritage projects, and Italy reaches EUR 250,000 into an innovative startup. If you want the lowest physical-presence burden, Greece, Italy, and Malta impose no annual minimum stay to maintain the permit, and Portugal asks for only about 7 days a year. If you want the fastest realistic route to an EU passport, Portugal is 7 years for EU and CPLP nationals and 10 for everyone else, but only if you build the underlying residence. No EU golden visa offers a fast or direct citizenship after the April 2025 CJEU ruling against Malta's citizenship-by-investment scheme.

If real estate ownership is part of the appeal, Greece and Cyprus still tie property to residence, and Malta requires property as a component; Portugal and Italy do not. If you want one-shot permanence rather than a renewable permit, Malta's MPRP gives lifetime EU residence and Cyprus gives indefinite permanent residence. And if Schengen free movement is the whole point, rule Cyprus out, because it sits outside the Schengen Area.

Our general view: do not chase a closed door, and do not let a broker sell you the most expensive route by default. Match the program to the goal. Buy residence and optionality where the presence and cost fit your life, and treat any EU residence-by-investment route as a residency asset that may not have a citizenship back end, rather than as a guaranteed passport pipeline.

If your real goal was always Spain itself, the closure changes the residence route, not the tax landscape. The key planning instrument for people moving today is the Special Expat Regime, commonly called the Beckham Law, set out in Article 93 of the Personal Income Tax Law (Ley 35/2006).

Under Beckham, qualifying applicants pay a flat 24% on Spanish-source employment income up to EUR 600,000 per year (47% above that), and most foreign-source income generally sits outside Spanish tax during the regime. It runs for the year of arrival plus the five following years, up to six years total. To qualify, you must not have been a Spanish tax resident in the prior five years, and your move must be linked to an employment relationship or a company directorship. Professional athletes are excluded, which is ironic given the regime is named after a footballer.

Two limits trip people up. First, the regime is built for employees; freelancers registered as autonomos are generally excluded and fall under standard progressive rates. The 2022 Startups Law extended Beckham to certain digital nomad visa employees, which is why the DNV and Beckham are often discussed together. Second, you must elect the regime via Modelo 149 within six months of registering with Spanish Social Security or starting the activity, or you forfeit it for the entire stay.

Outside Beckham, the default is ordinary residence taxation. You become a Spanish tax resident by spending more than 183 days in a calendar year in Spain or by centering your economic interests there, and tax residents are taxed on worldwide income at progressive rates of roughly 19% to 47% depending on region and bracket. None of this is personal tax advice. The 183-day test, the Beckham election, and your home-country exit and treaty position interact in fact-specific ways, so map it with qualified Spanish tax counsel before you move or file.

Spain closed the front door for investors, but it did not close the country. If you want to live in Spain, the non-lucrative, digital nomad, and entrepreneur visas are open, and they build toward citizenship in a way the Golden Visa never did. If you wanted the Golden Visa as a passive, low-stay EU residence held as insurance, that exact product is alive next door, in Portugal, Greece, and Italy, each with a different trade on cost, presence, and timeline.

The mistake to avoid is paying a premium chasing a route that no longer exists, or letting an advisor steer you to the most expensive replacement by default. Lead with your goal. The closure of one program is not the closure of your options; it is a prompt to buy the right one.