Golden Visas and Residency Through Property in Europe: the 2026 State of Play

If you are a non-EU buyer hoping to turn a European property purchase into a residence permit, the honest headline as of mid-2026 is that the door has narrowed sharply. Over the past three years the two schemes that most people meant when they said 'golden visa', Spain and Portugal, have either closed outright or removed property from the list of qualifying investments. Ireland shut its programme with a day's notice. Greece remains the main route where buying a home still earns residency, but it now costs a good deal more than it used to and the price depends on where you buy.

None of this is settled. Programmes, thresholds and eligible investments in this area change on short notice, sometimes by emergency legislation, and the direction of travel across the EU is restrictive rather than generous. This article sets out the state of play as of mid-2026 and links the official source for each country so you can check the current position yourself before you act. It is guidance, not legal or immigration advice.

The big shift: property is being written out

For a decade the deal was simple. Buy a qualifying property, usually from around 250,000 to 500,000 euros, and you and your family received a residence permit with light or no minimum-stay requirements, plus Schengen travel. Governments liked the foreign capital. Then housing costs became a front-line political issue across southern Europe, and ministers concluded that these schemes were pushing homes out of reach of locals while delivering little productive investment. The result has been a wave of closures and, where programmes survive, a deliberate move away from residential property toward funds, bonds and job creation.

The pattern is worth understanding before you look at any single country. A programme can be 'open' and still be useless to a property buyer if the real-estate route has been stripped out. Read each entry below for two separate facts: is the programme running at all, and does buying a home still qualify.

Portugal: the programme survives, property does not

Portugal's residence-by-investment scheme, officially the Autorizacao de Residencia para Investimento (ARI), is still open in mid-2026 and remains one of the more popular routes into EU residency. What changed is the menu. In October 2023, under the Mais Habitacao housing package, Portugal removed real estate as a qualifying investment altogether, including both direct purchases and property-heavy funds. You can no longer buy a flat in Lisbon or the Algarve and get an ARI for it.

The programme now runs mainly through qualifying investment funds (typically from 500,000 euros, in regulated funds that do not invest in real estate), plus routes for job creation, scientific research and cultural heritage. Applications are handled by AIMA, the agency that took over immigration functions from the former SEF, and processing has been slow. If you see a Portuguese 'golden visa via property' offer in 2026, treat it as a red flag. Check the current position on the official AIMA ARI page at aima.gov.pt.

Spain and Ireland: closed

Spain has ended its golden visa entirely. Organic Law 1/2025, published in the official state gazette in January 2025, repealed the investor-residence regime, and the closure took effect on 3 April 2025. No new applications have been accepted since. The government was blunt about why: it said around 94 of every 100 of these visas were tied to real estate in already-stressed urban housing markets. Permits granted before the cut-off keep their validity and can still be renewed under the old rules, but the route is shut to newcomers. The Spanish government's own announcement is on La Moncloa.

Ireland closed its Immigrant Investor Programme back in February 2023, with effect from close of business on 15 February and barely a day's notice. The government said the programme had done its job during the recovery years and cited concerns raised by the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the OECD about security, money laundering and circumvention of EU law. Existing holders and applications already in the system were unaffected, but there is no live investor route into Irish residency today. See the official closure FAQ from Ireland's Immigration Service Delivery.

Greece: still open, now tiered and pricier

Greece is the headline exception: the property route is alive, and it is the main reason people still talk about golden visas at all. But it is no longer the cheap 250,000-euro ticket it once was. As of mid-2026 the thresholds are tiered by location. The top tier of 800,000 euros applies to the highest-demand areas, broadly the wider Attica region (Athens), the Thessaloniki regional unit, Mykonos, Santorini and islands above roughly 3,100 inhabitants. Most of the rest of the country sits at 400,000 euros. In both tiers the purchase generally has to be a single residential unit of at least 120 square metres.

A lower 250,000-euro threshold survives for narrower cases, chiefly conversions of commercial buildings to residential use and the restoration of listed historic properties. Note too that properties bought under the scheme cannot be let out as short-term Airbnb-style rentals, a restriction Greece has been actively enforcing. Because the exact zoning and figures shift, confirm the current rules against the official Greek registry entry on mitos.gov.gr_%E2%80%93_Initial_issuance), administered by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, before committing.

Italy and Hungary: routes without property

Italy's Investor Visa has never been a property scheme and still is not. As of mid-2026 the qualifying routes are 2 million euros in Italian government bonds, 500,000 euros into an Italian limited company, 250,000 euros into an innovative startup, or a 1 million euro philanthropic donation. It grants a two-year permit, renewable, with no minimum-stay requirement. Buying a house in Tuscany does not qualify you. The thresholds and conditions are set out on the official portal at investorvisa.mise.gov.it, run by the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy.

Hungary relaunched a residency-by-investment route, the Guest Investor Programme, from 1 July 2024. It is fund-based, not a direct property purchase. The live routes as of mid-2026 are a minimum 250,000 euros into a real-estate fund approved by the Hungarian central bank, held for at least five years, or a 1 million euro donation to a public-interest higher-education foundation. An earlier 500,000-euro direct-property option was dropped before it ever really opened. So even the 'real estate' route here means buying units in a regulated fund, not a flat you can live in.

Malta and Cyprus: the citizenship crackdown

Malta ran the EU's last citizenship-by-investment scheme, a genuine 'golden passport' that sold nationality rather than mere residency. On 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Commission v Malta (Case C-181/23) that the scheme breached EU law, holding that a member state cannot hand out its nationality, and with it EU citizenship, in exchange for predetermined payments. That judgment ended citizenship-by-investment in the EU. It did not ban residency-by-investment golden visas, which are legally distinct. The judgment is on EUR-Lex.

Cyprus had already scrapped its own citizenship-by-investment scheme in November 2020 after abuse scandals. It still runs a permanent-residency-by-investment programme, with a headline threshold around 300,000 euros plus a foreign-income requirement, and property can qualify. But the Cypriot parliament has been weighing reforms that could tighten or suspend it, so treat any figure you read as provisional and check the current legal position before relying on it.

Brussels is the bigger story

None of these closures happened in isolation. The European Commission has pressed member states for years to wind down investor-citizenship schemes and to tighten investor-residence ones, citing risks around security, money laundering, tax evasion and corruption, and arguing that selling EU rights erodes trust between member states. Its position and history are set out on the Commission's own investor citizenship schemes page. The European Parliament has pushed in the same direction; its research service published a detailed briefing on golden passport and visa schemes762395) that is worth reading if you want the institutional view.

The practical takeaway is that the trend is one-way. Even where a route is open today, assume it is under scrutiny and could be raised, restricted or closed with little warning, exactly as Spain's was. Plan for the programme you can use now, not the one you hope will still exist in two years.

The 2026 map at a glance

The table below summarises the position as of mid-2026. Figures are indicative headline minimums and change frequently; always confirm against the official source linked above before acting.

Residency, citizenship and tax are three different things

It is easy to blur these, and the blurring is where costly mistakes happen. Almost everything left standing is residency, not citizenship. A golden visa gives you the right to live in a country and, usually, to travel in Schengen; it does not make you a citizen and it does not hand you an EU passport. Citizenship, where it is even possible, comes later, through years of lawful residence and naturalisation, on that country's own terms.

• Minimum-stay rules vary enormously. Greece and Italy ask for little or no physical presence; other routes and later naturalisation steps demand real, continuous residence. Read the fine print before you assume you can keep living elsewhere.
• Tax residency is a separate legal test from immigration status. Holding a residence permit does not automatically make you tax-resident, and becoming tax-resident can have large consequences for your worldwide income. Take specialist cross-border tax advice early.
• Buying a property for a visa and buying a property to live in or invest in are different decisions with different maths. A home that also earns you residency is a bonus; a bad property bought only to tick a visa box is still a bad property.
• Do the due diligence you would do on any major purchase, and more. Independent valuation, clean title, planning and tax checks, and local legal representation are not optional when a residence permit rides on the transaction.

This is the point where local, independent professionals matter. Across Greece (Athens), Italy, Portugal and Spain, Veted lists vetted real-estate agents, lawyers, surveyors and contractors, so that whether or not a purchase is tied to a visa, you can line up your own valuation, conveyancing and survey rather than relying on whoever is selling you the scheme.

The short version, as of mid-2026: if your plan was to buy a home in Europe and receive residency for it, Greece is essentially the last major open door, and it is more expensive and more location-dependent than the schemes it outlived. Everywhere else, either the programme has closed or property has been written out of it in favour of funds, bonds and donations. Check the official source, take proper advice, and never let the visa do the thinking for the purchase.