How a golden visa application works: who files it, what the state charges, and what stops it

Every guide to golden visas answers the same question, and it is the wrong one to answer first. How much is easy to find. What decides whether your file moves is the next question down: who is allowed to put the application in, whether the money has to be in place before you apply or after, what the administration is required to do within what period, and what it does with the file when something is missing.

Those answers are published. They sit in national procedure registries, agency FAQs and legal notices rather than in brochures, and they differ enough between jurisdictions that a process described in general is a process described wrongly. This page sets out the application itself for the four states whose instruments this site covers, from primary sources, with each figure attributed to the document it came from.

Start with the fact that surprises people most: one of the four does not let you file your own application at all.

Cyprus is absent from the comparison for the reason given on our golden visa page — its regulation could not be established from any primary source, and a procedure we have not read is a procedure we do not describe.

Who files a golden visa application, and where

Portugal. The application is filed on the Portal ARI, the dedicated portal AIMA operates for the residence permit for investment under article 90-A. AIMA describes the portal as the place to register applications and family reunification, to register duly mandated legal representatives, to upload the documents the analysis requires, and to generate the payment document. The investor, the household or a mandated representative may each register and file. Renewals do not go through the same door: titles that expired from 22 February 2020 up to 31 December 2026 are renewed on a separate Portal de Renovações.

Greece. Submission is digital only, through the electronic applications portal of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum. The responsible body is that ministry's Directorate for Residence Permits. A third-country national may apply personally or through a proxy, on a power of attorney executed before a Greek consular authority or before a foreign notary and carrying a Hague apostille — and, on the listed-property route, may do so before entering Greece.

Malta. Here the answer changes. Residency Malta Agency states it in one line: "MPRP applications must be submitted through a Licensed Agent." There is no self-service channel. The 2025 amendments to the programme regulations then define who that agent may be: a person qualifies to apply for a licence to act as an agent only if he is a public accountant or auditor, a lawyer, or a financial advisor, duly licensed; the Agency may grant the licence only if satisfied of a clean police conduct certificate and of professional indemnity cover of not less than €500,000. The licence itself costs €5,000 a year.

That is a structural difference, not a formality. In Portugal and Greece the intermediary is optional and you are the applicant. In Malta the intermediary is a licensed, insured, individually accountable channel, and the state has deliberately placed a regulated professional between itself and every applicant.

United Arab Emirates. Applications run through the smart platforms of the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security — the ICP website and the ICA UAE Smart app — and, for Dubai, through the GDRFA golden visa portal. The entry point is not an application but a nomination request: the ICP publishes a "nomination request for golden residence" service, and specific categories add a further step. Creatives need a recommendation from the Ministry of Culture; the exceptional-talent category requires recommendation letters from the relevant authorities.

The golden visa application process, stage by stage

The stages are not the same shape in each country, and the difference that matters is where the money sits when you file.

In Portugal and Greece the investment comes first. Portugal's document list is built around a declaration from a credit institution authorised or registered in Portugal with the Banco de Portugal attesting the transfer actually made of an amount equal to or above the legal minimum, together with documentation proving the investment was made when the law required and is still held. Greece's list is built around a notary's certificate on the property transfer and proof of registration at the Land Registry. Neither of those documents can exist before the money has moved. The application is therefore an account of something already done.

In Malta the order is deliberately reversed. The administrative fee for the main applicant is €60,000, and the 2025 legal notice splits it: €15,000 on submission and €45,000 after approval. The €37,000 contribution and the qualifying property — owned or rented — attach to the later stage. You are screened before you commit the capital, not after. For an applicant whose main fear is committing several hundred thousand euro into a file that then fails, that sequencing is worth more than a threshold comparison.

In the UAE the process opens with the nomination, and the substantive question of eligibility is settled at that point rather than at the end.

Portugal adds a stage the other three do not. After the file is accepted, AIMA schedules the in-person appointment itself — the agency states that scheduling follows the progress of the file, the state of the portal application and operational availability, and that where a file has been accepted it may contact the applicant or the mandated representative to confirm continued interest before scheduling. You do not book it. On renewals the appointment exists only to take biometrics.

Documents required for a golden visa

The lists differ by route, but they are built from the same seven things: identity, lawful entry, clean record, the money, the asset, health cover, and a photograph to specification.

Portugal's published list for the ARI portal is the fullest of the four:

• documentation on the investment, updated, proving unequivocally that it was made at the time the law required and is still held;
• a declaration from a credit institution authorised or registered in Portugal with the Banco de Portugal, attesting the transfer actually made of at least the legal amount;
• a valid passport — and where the applicant holds more than one nationality, the passport for each;
• valid certificates of no debt to Social Security and to the Tax Authority, or of non-registration with them;
• a declaration on the applicant's honour attesting compliance with the minimum quantitative and temporal requirements of the investment activity;
• personal tax identification numbers from the country of origin, of residence or of tax residence, or proof that none exist;
• a criminal record certificate from the country of origin or of permanent residence, issued less than three months earlier, translated into Portuguese and certified before the Portuguese consular representation or apostilled.

Where the investment runs through a sole-shareholder company, an updated commercial registry certificate showing the applicant as the shareholder is added.

Greece's list for the golden visa routes published in the national procedure registry runs to seven or eight items: the travel document with a valid entry visa or proof of exemption; a notarial certificate confirming the property details, the payment method and, on that route, the listed status of the building; proof of registration at the Land Registry or a lawyer's certificate; on the change-of-use route, an engineer's technical report; a copy of the applicant's E9 property declaration; an insurance policy from a private provider; and a recent colour photograph in hard copy and in digital JPEG2000 format.

Three mechanical rules are worth more than they look, because each of them is a common cause of a file stalling:

• Format. Portugal requires PDF, with each file no larger than 4 MB, split into parts with clear labelling where necessary.
• Do not tidy up. Documents already submitted must stay on the file. Updated versions are added; earlier ones are not deleted.
• Translation is not always required. Portugal applies article 49(8) of the Civil Registry Code: documents written in English, French or Spanish need no translation where the competent officer commands the language. Everything else must be translated and either consularly certified or apostilled.

What the state charges to process the application

Greece publishes a single figure and it is small: €2,000 for the residence permit plus €16 for the electronic printout of the permit, €2,016 in total, for the initial issuance.

Malta publishes the opposite: the €60,000 administrative fee for the main applicant, split €15,000 and €45,000 across the two stages and non-refundable, then the €37,000 government contribution, a €2,000 donation to a local NGO registered with the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations, €7,500 for each adult dependant other than the spouse, and €500 per person for the residence card, which covers five years. For a single applicant that is €99,000 in state charges before the qualifying property — a purchase of at least €375,000, or rent of at least €14,000 a year — and before the capital-asset test of €500,000 including €150,000 in financial assets, or €650,000 including €75,000.

Portugal charges through a Documento Único de Cobrança, issued by the portal or at the counter, under the fee schedule approved by Portaria 307/2023. Cash is not accepted; payment at an appointment is by bank card. A DUC paid late may not reconcile automatically, and AIMA's own guidance is to query a figure that looks wrong before paying rather than after.

The ICP does not publish a fee for golden residence on its service page; the amount is presented at the electronic payment step.

Golden visa processing time: the deadline and the queue

Two different numbers get called the processing time, and conflating them is why so many published estimates are wrong. One is what the state undertakes to do. The other is how long it actually takes. Only one of them is a commitment.

Greece has both kinds, and they do not agree with each other. Article 100 §10 gives two months from the complete file reaching the issuing authority. The state's own National Registry of Administrative Public Services publishes a shorter figure for the same procedures — a deadline of completion of 50 days. Against either, 13,499 files were queued in November 2025, 10,703 of them in Attica, with waits reaching eighteen months.

Portugal has its deadline in the statute, and it is shorter than the figure most pages quote: article 82 of Lei 23/2007 gives 60 days to decide a grant and 30 days to decide a renewal, with tacit approval on a renewal where the delay is not attributable to the applicant. In practice the stage runs one to three years, and as of 4 August 2026 AIMA had roughly 30,000 undecided cases. Any page quoting "six to nine months" for Portugal is describing neither the law nor the queue.

Malta publishes no decision deadline for applicants. The six-month period that appears in the 2025 amendments is the Agency's deadline for deciding an application for an agent's licence, not for deciding an applicant's file — a distinction easy to misread and worth stating plainly.

The UAE publishes no processing time on the service page either; our own verification of the Emirati instruments puts the practical range at two to four weeks, which is an order of magnitude away from the European programmes for reasons that are structural rather than administrative.

Golden visa application status: what you can actually check

There is no single tracker, and what each system exposes follows directly from who was allowed to file.

In Portugal, the portal shows the file as "em análise", which means only that it awaits processing according to the state of the file, document validation and any need for scheduling. AIMA asks applicants to confirm five things before enquiring further — that the application is up to date, that all required documents are submitted, that the contact details are correct, that no notification is outstanding, and that no fee remains to be issued or paid — and routes status questions through its contact form under a dedicated subject. Where a file has been accepted but no appointment has been set, the agency directs the applicant to request scheduling by email.

In the UAE, the ICP smart platforms carry the application and its status in the same account that submitted it.

In Greece, the portal that received the application holds it.

In Malta, you have no direct channel, because you were never the filer. Status comes through your licensed agent. That is the trade the programme makes, and it is worth understanding before choosing it rather than after.

Why golden visa applications stall or fail

The published guidance names failure modes that no ranking guide mentions, and almost none of them are the ones people worry about.

A missed appointment can close the file. AIMA states that where an applicant fails to attend a rescheduled appointment without duly justified reason, the file may be archived under the applicable law, and that the absence can prevent analysis continuing and compromise the grant or renewal. The appointment is set by the agency, not by the applicant, which makes this the least controllable stage in the process.

Documents expire mid-process. Portugal's criminal record certificate must have been issued less than three months earlier, and the agency measures document validity against the date the analysis fee was paid. A certificate valid on the day you uploaded it and expired by the day the fee was paid counts as missing.

A defective power of attorney stops a proxy filing. Greece requires it to be executed before a Greek consular authority or a foreign notary and to carry the Hague apostille. A notarised mandate without the apostille is not the document the procedure asks for.

Due diligence reaches past the applicant. Malta's checks are described as rigorous and multi-tiered and extend to donors, benefactors and business associates. An applicant with a clean record can be refused on somebody else's, and the €60,000 administrative fee is not refundable.

Refunds are not automatic anywhere. Portugal's position on an unfavourable decision is that where a refund is due, processing depends on validation by the competent services and on the applicant supplying an IBAN and a tax number. Before an unfavourable decision is taken, a notification is issued — the prior hearing the Code of Administrative Procedure requires — and that notification is the last point at which a file can usually be saved.

Frequently asked questions

Where this sits in the rest of the site

What a golden visa actually is, what each state's instrument is called in its own law and where the thresholds stand is on the golden visa page. What a property purchase achieves in each jurisdiction, and where it no longer achieves anything at all, is in the property piece. What each route asks you to earn, and what living in each country costs, is in the income piece. What happens in Portugal once the permit is granted — the renewals, the card, and permanent residence at five years — is in its own guide. The Greek procedure in detail, and the route the market invented in February 2026, is in the Greece process guide. And the acts behind every jurisdiction page, with the date each was read, are on the sources page.

If you are at the filing stage

We do not sell property and we do not give legal advice. What we do is put a person who knows what they are asking in front of a licensed firm in the right jurisdiction.

The questions on this page have a general answer, which is above, and a specific one, which depends on your nationality, where your money currently sits, which documents your home state issues and how quickly it issues them. That second answer is what a regulated adviser produces for your file. Send the enquiry through the form. We take no part in the fee.

Sources: where each figure comes from

• Portugal — the Portal ARI, mandated legal representatives, the document list, the PDF and 4 MB rules, translation under article 49(8) of the Civil Registry Code, DUC payment, scheduling and archiving, and the position on refunds: AIMA's frequently asked questions on the residence permit for investment activity, read 5 September 2026.
• Portugal — the 60-day deadline for a grant and 30 for a renewal, with tacit approval on renewal: article 82 of Lei 23/2007, read from the 2007 Diário da República original; the article is not in the amendment list of Lei 61/2025, but no consolidated text could be opened, so treat it as very likely current rather than verified. The one-to-three-year practical range and roughly 30,000 pending files as of 4 August 2026: our verification file for Portugal.
• Greece — the responsible authority, digital-only submission, proxy filing with an apostilled power of attorney, the document lists, the €2,000 permit fee plus €16 printout, and the 50-day deadline of completion: the National Registry of Administrative Public Services records for the golden visa procedures, read 5 September 2026. Legal basis as recorded there: article 100 of Law 5038/2023, as amended by article 64 of Law 5100/2024, with the implementing joint ministerial decisions.
• Greece — the two-month issuing deadline of article 100 §10, and 13,499 files queued in November 2025 with 10,703 in Attica: our verification file for Greece, where article 100 was read in full.
• Malta — the licensed agent requirement, the multi-tiered due diligence extending to donors, benefactors and business associates, the €60,000 administrative fee, the €37,000 contribution, the €2,000 NGO donation, €7,500 per adult dependant, €500 per residence card, the €375,000 purchase and €14,000 annual rent thresholds and the capital-asset test: Residency Malta Agency's legal framework page for the MPRP, read 5 September 2026.
• Malta — the €15,000 and €45,000 split, the agent qualification and the €500,000 professional indemnity requirement, the €5,000 annual licence and the six-month decision period for agent licences: Legal Notice 146 of 2025 amending S.L. 217.26, read 5 September 2026.
• UAE — the ICP as the receiving authority, the smart platforms and the ICA UAE Smart app, the nomination request as the entry point and the Ministry of Culture recommendation for creatives: the UAE government's official golden visa page and the ICP golden residence service page, read 5 September 2026. The two-to-four-week practical range: our verification file for the UAE.
• Not published here: a single fee figure for the Emirati golden residence, because the ICP does not publish one on the service page; and any decision deadline for Maltese applicants, because none is published.