A golden visa is a country’s grant of renewable residency rights to a foreign national in exchange for a qualifying investment — usually real estate, a business, or a government fund — rather than for a job offer or a family tie.
In plain terms
It’s a residence permit bought rather than earned through work or family. The permit usually comes with few of the usual strings — no job requirement, often no minimum stay — but it stays conditional on holding the underlying investment, and it is not the same thing as citizenship. Confusing the two is the single most common error people make with the term.
How it works
A golden-visa program sets a minimum investment amount and a qualifying asset class — typically real estate, a government fund, or a direct business stake — and grants a renewable residence permit once the investment is made and verified. The permit confers the right to live in the country, and, within the EU and similar blocs, often to travel visa-free within it, but it can lapse if the investment is sold or a renewal condition goes unmet. Most programs also run a slower, separate naturalization track, typically five to ten years of continued residence, that can eventually convert the permit into citizenship — though the investment alone never buys a passport directly.
The United States runs its own version through the EB-5 immigrant investor visa: an $800,000 investment in a project located in a Targeted Employment Area (or $1,050,000 outside one), structured to create at least 10 full-time US jobs, which leads first to conditional permanent residency and then, once the investment and job creation are verified, to a green card.
Golden visas and golden passports — direct citizenship-for-cash programs, as distinct from residency — are legally different things, and the distinction now has real teeth: on 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Malta’s cash-for-citizenship program violated EU law, because selling citizenship “divorced from any genuine link” with the country undermines the mutual trust the EU’s own citizenship framework depends on. The ruling struck down a passport-sale scheme specifically; residency-by-investment golden visas elsewhere in the EU were not directly affected.
The numbers
- US EB-5: $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area, or $1,050,000 outside one, unchanged since the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022; requires at least 10 full-time jobs created.
- Greece: real-estate minimums of roughly €800,000 in Athens, Thessaloniki, and the highest-demand islands, or €400,000 in lower-demand zones, under the zone-based pricing in effect since September 2024.
- UAE: AED 2,000,000 (roughly $550,000) of certified property value for a renewable 10-year residence permit, with no minimum-stay requirement.
- Portugal: the real-estate route ended in October 2023; the remaining fund-investment route runs roughly €500,000, with the citizenship clock lengthened from five years to ten under a nationality-law overhaul passed in 2026.
- CJEU ruling against Malta’s citizenship-by-investment program: 29 April 2025, Case C-181/23.
What people get wrong
People use “golden visa” and “golden passport” interchangeably, but a residence permit and a citizenship are different products with different legal protections — a government can revoke a residency permit far more easily than it can strip citizenship, and the 2025 EU court ruling against Malta struck down a passport-sale scheme specifically, not the residency-by-investment programs that remain legal, and common, across the EU. The other misconception is that these programs are a fast lane to a second passport. In nearly every country running one, the investment buys only the residence permit; citizenship still requires years of continued, and usually substantive, physical presence afterward.
Related
Read more: The US Wealth Visa: EB-5, EB-1, and Inbound Millionaire Immigration · Residency and Citizenship: Why the Wealthy Buy Options Across Borders
See also: Domicile vs residency · Non-dom · Expatriation / exit tax