Golden Visa (fund)

Moving to Portugal: residency, tax and property

Portugal grants residency against a qualifying investment, most commonly a fund subscription: property was removed as a route by Lei 56/2023, and the law now bars any investment aimed even indirectly at real estate. It is no longer the fast passport it was — naturalisation took ten years for non-EU nationals in May 2026 — and its strength has moved to the tax side.

From: €500,000
First permit: 60 days by law, a year or more in practice
Tax regime: IFICI, 20% flat for 10 years

The real number

What Portugal actually costs

The threshold is the investment alone. Transfer taxes, professional and government fees and the first renewal are not optional — everyone pays them, every time.

Advertised: €500,000
Everything else: €28,000
Real, first year: €528,000

Sources Verified against primary sources on 23 August 2026 — statutes, ministry tariffs and official fee schedules. Figures are for ONE main applicant and cover entry and the first renewal; dependants are priced differently in every jurisdiction and are not included. Amounts in euro; the UAE threshold is AED 2,000,000 converted at 4.288 on the same date. See the working →

Who the Portugal golden visa suits

Portugal fits somebody whose money can sit still for five years and who wants a European tax position rather than a European passport in a hurry. The qualifying investment is a fund subscription, not a flat: property was removed as a route in 2023, and the law now bars an investment aimed even indirectly at real estate — a fund that holds buildings does not qualify.

It does not fit anybody in a hurry. The statute allows ninety days for a decision and the reality is a year to three, and it does not fit somebody whose plan was a fast passport: that plan stopped working in May 2026.

What Portugal's €500,000 threshold consists of

€500,000 buys units in a non-property collective investment fund with a maturity of at least five years, at least 60% of it invested in companies seated in Portugal. Four other routes exist and are less used: ten jobs created (eight in a low-density area), €500,000 into scientific research (€400,000 in low-density), €250,000 into cultural heritage (€220,000 low-density), or €500,000 into a company that creates five permanent jobs.

The government fees are not small and are per person. From 1 March 2026: €842.80 to analyse the application, €8,418.90 to grant the permit, €4,210.30 to renew it — and a family member costs the same as the main applicant to grant. Filing online takes 25% off.

What changed in Portuguese law, and when

Two changes matter and both are recent. Lei 56/2023 removed the real-estate routes and the plain €1.5m capital transfer. Then Lei Orgânica 1/2026, in force 19 May 2026, rewrote the nationality law: naturalisation now takes seven years for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and ten for everybody else, counted from the day the residence permit was issued rather than the day it was applied for, with an exam on language and on culture and history. It is not retroactive — applications pending on that date are decided under the old five-year rule.

Renewing the Portuguese permit and the IFICI tax regime

The permit is renewable and requires very little physical presence, which is what makes it a tax and mobility instrument rather than a move. IFICI is the tax half: 20% flat on Portuguese employment and self-employment income from a qualifying activity for ten years, most foreign income exempt, pensions and income from blacklisted jurisdictions carved out. Registration closes on 15 January of the year after you become resident, and missing it costs the whole regime.

Sources: art. 3 of Lei 23/2007 as amended by Lei 56/2023; the AIMA fee table under Portaria 307/2023; art. 58-A of the EBF with Portaria 352/2024/1; Lei Orgânica 1/2026.

Buying property here — Buying property in Portugal: the rules, the costs and the new surcharge

Questions about Portugal

What is a golden visa, exactly?: A residence permit granted because you placed a defined amount of money in the country — not because you have a job offer there, family there, or protection needs. That is the whole of the idea. It is not a passport and not a travel visa, and none of these five states calls it a golden visa in its own law: Portugal issues an ARI, Greece a residence permit for investment activity, Malta a permanent residence certificate, the UAE a ten-year golden residence. The marketing name is the market's, which is worth knowing before you read anyone else's page about it.
Can I get residency without buying property?: Yes, in four of the five. Portugal removed property from its Golden Visa in 2023 altogether — what is left is funds and job creation. Greece, Cyprus and Malta allow alternative routes, but their thresholds are usually higher.
Where is the entry threshold lowest?: On the threshold alone, Greece — but only in a narrow case most buyers do not qualify for. Since 1 September 2024 Greece has three tiers: €800,000 across Attica, the Thessaloniki regional unit, Mykonos, Thira and islands above 3,100 people; €400,000 everywhere else; and €250,000 only by exception, for converting premises to residential use, rebuilding an industrial building idle five years, or fully restoring a listed one — with the works finished before you file. Otherwise: Malta €375,000 to buy or €14,000 a year to rent, the UAE AED 2,000,000 (about €490,000 at 4.08), Portugal €500,000 into a fund. For Cyprus we publish no figure: the threshold in its regulation 6(2) could not be established from any primary source.
Does the permit let me work anywhere in the EU?: No. An investment residence permit lets you live in the issuing country and travel freely in Schengen, but it carries no right to work in other EU states. Working in the issuing country itself is usually allowed; the conditions differ.
After how many years can I apply for citizenship?: Malta about five years by naturalisation, Greece seven, Cyprus eight, Portugal seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and ten for everyone else — that last figure changed in May 2026 and used to be five. The UAE has no citizenship route here at all. Everywhere the clock counts years of actual legal residence, not years of holding the status, so a permit that requires a few days a year accrues nothing on its own.
Do I have to live there to keep the status?: To keep the permit, almost nowhere: a few days a year is usually enough. For citizenship, yes — actual residence is required, and this is where expectations diverge most often.
Does buying property make me a tax resident?: No. Tax residence is decided by days of presence and centre of vital interests, not by ownership. Buying a house and remaining a tax resident of your own country is an ordinary situation.
What if the rules change after I apply?: Applications are normally assessed under the rules in force on the filing date, but there is no guarantee: Portugal and Greece have both changed terms with a short transition. That is the main argument against a long gap between deciding and filing.

Portugal: guides and research

Buying property in Portugal as a non-resident: the 7.5% IMT rate, stamp duty and what it costs every year after
Most pages about buying in Portugal still show a progressive IMT scale that starts at zero. For a non-resident buying a home, that scale no longer applies at all: Decreto-Lei 97/2026 added a paragraph to the transfer tax code under which the rate is always 7.5%, with no relief and no discount. There are three ways out of it, and one of them can be claimed after the purchase.
Best country to move to from the USA: the income each route asks for, and the two clocks that follow
The first page of results for this question is Reddit, a moving company, an expat tax service and three YouTube videos. Between them they will rank the weather. None of them states the number that decides whether an American is eligible at all: the monthly income each route requires, which differs between two neighbouring EU countries by a factor of nearly four.
Short-term rental rules in five jurisdictions: what a listing must show in 2026
Every jurisdiction this site covers now answers the same question in its own way: before a property can be advertised for short stays, it must carry a number issued by the state. Dubai calls it a holiday home permit, Portugal a registration in the RNAL, Greece an AMA, Cyprus a registration number, Malta a licence. From 20 May 2026 an EU regulation makes the number itself part of the listing across the four European jurisdictions, and makes the platform check it. This is what each one requires, who issues it, what it costs and what happens to the owner who skips it.
Moving to Portugal from the UK: the 2025 tax treaty that replaced the 1968 one
Search this and you get the Brexit answer: freedom of movement ended, you need a visa now. True, and five years old. The instrument that actually decides a Briton's tax position in Portugal was replaced at the end of 2025 — a convention signed in 1968 gave way to one signed in September 2025, which reached UK income tax on 6 April 2026. The tax advisers' page on the first screen was written before it was signed.
Moving to Portugal from the US: the ten-year citizenship clock and the treaty's saving clause
Most pages for Americans have caught up with the ten-year citizenship period. Almost none of them says when the ten years begin, and since 19 May 2026 that answer has changed for everyone whose file was not already open. The second thing nobody expects: the sentence letting the United States keep taxing you is not in Article 1 of the tax convention. Article 1 is one sentence long and does not contain it.
Portugal's D8 digital nomad visa is two different visas, and only one of them goes anywhere
Portugal has two digital nomad visas. They share a name, a nickname and an income threshold, and they lead to entirely different places: one is a stay of under a year, the other is a residence visa that ends in a permit. The market prints one euro figure and lets readers guess which visa it belongs to. Underneath that, the regulation that governs the second one still routes anybody already in Portugal through paragraphs of the law that were repealed in June 2024.
Portugal's nationality law in 2026: what Lei Orgânica 1/2026 actually changed, article by article
Search for Portuguese citizenship and the first page of results will tell you five years and ten years at the same time, and almost none of it names the law that changed. Lei Organica 1/2026 did two things on 19 May 2026, in two different articles, and the second one is missing from the English-language market entirely: it repealed the paragraph under which time spent waiting for a residence permit counted towards naturalisation.
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.

We write when a rule changes in one of the five jurisdictions

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