Guides & Research

Golden visa and citizenship by investment: guides with sources

Guides that follow one decision to the end, and research on what has changed in the rules: the golden visa and citizenship routes of five jurisdictions, and living in Poland as a foreigner. Every entry lists the sections of our sources page its figures were checked against, and carries the date it was written — because a threshold that was right in August may not be in March, and an article that does not say when it was written is asking to be believed on trust.

September 7, 2026Costs
Cost of living in Portugal, from the figures the Portuguese state publishes
Almost every page answering this question prints a monthly budget and names no source for it. The first result at the time of writing is one couple's household costs, with no statistic behind it at all. Portugal's statistical office publishes median rent per square metre by municipality, from signed contracts rather than advertisements, and median purchase prices by region. Those are the figures below, each with the release it came from and the date it was read.
Jurisdictions pt
September 6, 2026Rules
Portugal golden visa requirements in 2026, and what is left of the programme
The Portuguese golden visa still exists, and almost nothing about it works the way the guides describe. Property was repealed in 2023 and no tier of any amount survived. The income requirement everyone says is waived is not waived, and the article that would have waived it names one exception only. Since 19 May 2026 the route ends at ten years of residence rather than five. Every figure below is quoted from the instrument that sets it, with the date the text was read.
Jurisdictions pt
September 5, 2026Rules
Greece golden visa process in 2026: the fifty days, the apostille, and three routes the market fuses
Search interest in the Greek golden visa process has risen more sharply than in any other query on this subject, and the reason is a real one: a law passed in February 2026 rebuilt the country's admission routes. What the market then wrote about that law is wrong in a specific and correctable way. The 250,000 euro startup golden visa is not invented — it is fourteen months older than the law it is credited to. And the provision the February law actually added is an employment visa that ends the day the job does.
Jurisdictions gr
September 5, 2026Rules
Malta residence permit and card: the eight-week wait, the weeks you cannot travel, and what it costs
Malta does not issue a TRC card. The document is the eResidence card, Identità issues it, and the part nobody writes down is what happens between applying and holding it: eight to ten weeks, during which the receipt in your hand is expressly not a travel document and cannot get you back into the country. The renewal window is narrower than most people assume, the fee depends entirely on the basis you applied under, and the portal withdraws applications on its own after sixty days.
Jurisdictions mt
September 5, 2026Relocation
Malta digital nomad visa: the income, the five months, and the wall at four years
Malta's nomad permit is the cheapest way into the country and the only Maltese route that counts your days rather than your money. It also ends. Four years is the maximum, the agency states in terms that it leads to no permanent residence and no citizenship, and it forbids you from earning anything at all from a company registered in Malta. Every one of those is published, and almost none of it appears in the pages selling the permit.
Jurisdictions mt
September 5, 2026Rules
Golden passport: what a golden visa actually leads to, and how long it really takes
Golden passport is a phrase with no legal referent anywhere in these four jurisdictions. What each of them actually offers is a residence permit and a clock, and the clocks do not count what most people think they count. Three separate periods get collapsed into one in almost every comparison table: the permit's own renewal conditions, the presence test for long-term residence, and the naturalisation period. They are different lengths, they count different things, and only one of them ends in a passport.
Jurisdictions gr · mt · pt · ae
September 5, 2026Rules
How a golden visa application works: who files it, what the state charges, and what stops it
Every golden visa guide answers the same question, which is how much. Almost none answers the one that decides whether your file moves: who is allowed to submit it, whether the money has to be in place before you apply or after, and what an administration does with a file when something is missing. Those answers are published — in national procedure registries, agency FAQs and legal notices — and they differ enough between jurisdictions that a process described in general is a process described wrongly.
Jurisdictions pt · gr · mt · ae
September 4, 2026Relocation
Portugal residence card, renewal and permanent residency: what happens after the permit
Almost everything written about Portuguese residency stops at the moment the permit is granted. What follows is five years of renewals, a plastic card that expires on a different schedule from the permit behind it, and a permanent status that most pages confuse with a different one created by EU law. This page is about that part, and every rule in it is quoted from the statute that sets it.
Jurisdictions pt
September 4, 2026Relocation
Living in Greece: what it costs, by the state's own numbers
Every guide to living in Greece prints the same confident numbers and none of them says where the numbers came from. This one gives the source for each: the state's own household survey, the ministerial decision that sets the minimum wage, the circular that sets social contributions, and two rent datasets that measure different things — what landlords ask, and what tenants signed.
Jurisdictions gr
September 1, 2026Relocation
Malta permanent residence programme in 2026: the cost, the presence rule, and what replaced the passport
Malta sells three different things under one word. The permanent residence programme costs about €126,000 above the price of a property and publishes no rule about how long you must be on the island. The nomad permit costs a fraction of that and will not renew unless your bank statements prove five months a year. The expensive route asks for your money and nothing else; the cheap one asks for your time. That is the opposite of how both are sold.
Jurisdictions mt
August 30, 2026Rules
UAE golden visa rules in 2026: what changed, and which instrument says so
Two Dubai rules changed in 2026 and thousands of people are applying under them. Neither has been published as an instrument — the report every other page relies on says so in terms, and we walked the registers to check. Meanwhile pages updated in July and August are still selling a threshold that was repealed in April. Every figure below carries the article that sets it, or a statement that none does.
Jurisdictions ae
August 28, 2026Relocation
Greece golden visa requirements, residency and the 7% tax in 2026
Greece asks €800,000 in Attica and €400,000 elsewhere, and the two €250,000 exceptions carry no minimum floor area at all. It asks a person living on their own income to prove €3,500 a month under a ministerial decision no competitor page cites. And whether either route ever reaches permanent residence turns on something almost nobody writes down: not which permit you hold, but how many days you spend in the country.
Jurisdictions gr