Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment: The Complete 2026 Guide

This guide sets out the Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment Programme as it actually stands in the summer of 2026. It is longer than most published summaries because the programme is more complicated than most published summaries admit, and because several of the figures in wide circulation are wrong.

Every monetary figure below is a government or official cost, taken from the governing legislation, from a statutory instrument, or from the Citizenship by Investment Unit. Each is dated and sourced in the final chapter so that you can check it yourself. Where an official source contradicts itself, and Antigua’s do so in at least four places, we say so and tell you which one to rely on rather than quietly choosing the more attractive number.

We have deliberately not published professional or legal fees as fixed figures. They vary with family size, the complexity of your source of funds, the route you choose and the jurisdictions you are connected to. Any firm quoting a single number without knowing those things is guessing. We give honest ranges where ranges exist, and we say plainly where no reliable published figure exists at all.

Three warnings before you start.

First, Antigua and Barbuda is in a genuinely unsettled period. The United States restricted entry for Antiguan nationals with effect from 1 January 2026. The European Commission wrote to the Prime Minister in June 2026 asking the country to phase the programme out by 2028. A Bill raising the residency requirement was laid before Parliament in July 2026 and has not yet become law. None of this makes the programme a bad decision, but it does make an out of date guide an actively dangerous one.

Second, the law is unusually hard to read. There is no consolidated text. To state the current rules you have to read the 2013 Act as amended by four later Acts, together with the Regulations that sit in the Schedule to that Act as substituted in 2016 and amended by six statutory instruments since. We have done that work, and we cite the instrument for each figure.

Third, this is general information and not legal, tax or investment advice. If you are seriously considering an application, the sensible next step is a conversation about your own circumstances rather than a longer article.

Figures verified against primary sources on 3 August 2026.

Antigua and Barbuda has run a citizenship by investment programme since 2013. It is one of five in the Eastern Caribbean, alongside St Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia. A shorter overview sits on our Antigua and Barbuda programme page, and our citizenship by investment hub covers the other routes we advise on. It is mid-sized by application volume, cheap by regional standards on a large family, and it has the lowest published rejection rate of the five.

What Antigua does better than its neighbours

Three things, and they are real.

One contribution covers the whole family. The National Development Fund route costs US$230,000 whether you apply alone or with a spouse, children and dependent parents. There is no family-size tiering on the contribution itself. Only the processing fee scales. For a family of four or more this is the cheapest headline entry into any Caribbean programme.

Children under twelve are free to vet. Due diligence on a dependent child aged 0 to 11 costs nothing at all. No other programme in the region is as generous on young children.

The rejection rate is the lowest of the five. The European Commission put Antigua’s 2024 rejection rate at 1.7 per cent, against 5.3 per cent for Saint Lucia and 6.5 per cent for Dominica. That cuts both ways, and we come back to it in Chapter 15, but on its face it means a well prepared application is very likely to be approved.

What it does worse

There is no fast-track. We searched the 2016 Regulations and every statutory instrument made since, plus the whole of the Citizenship by Investment Unit website, for any expedited, priority or accelerated option. There is none, and no fee for one. St Kitts and Nevis does operate an accelerated process. If speed is your binding constraint, that difference matters.

The Unit has stopped publishing statistics. The Act requires a report to Parliament every six months. The most recent one published covers January to June 2024 and went up on 15 October 2024. Nothing has appeared since. As of today that is a gap of more than two years.

The United States position is the worst of the five. Antigua and Dominica were named in the December 2025 Presidential Proclamation. Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia were not.

Nothing on the price or fee side of the Antiguan programme has changed since 1 August 2024. Everything that has changed since is external, and most of it is unfavourable. This chapter separates the two.

The 2024 repricing, correctly described

The single most repeated error about Antigua is that the National Development Fund contribution rose in two steps, from US$100,000 to US$200,000 and then to US$230,000. It did not.

The statutory figure was EC$540,000, or US$200,000 at the pegged rate, for a single applicant or a family of up to four, with EC$675,000 for five or more, from 2016 onwards. It was masked by a Limited Time Offer of US$100,000 that ran from October 2018 and was repeatedly extended. On 31 July 2024 the offer expired, and Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 reset the statutory figure to US$230,000. In practice the market moved from US$100,000 to US$230,000 in one step.

The instrument itself is worth pinning down, because dates in circulation vary. Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 was approved by Resolution of the House of Representatives on 18 July 2024, made by the Prime Minister on 25 July 2024, and published in the Official Gazette Volume XLIV No. 43 of 25 July 2024. It contains no commencement clause, so it took effect on publication. The widely quoted date of 1 August 2024 is not the commencement date of the instrument; it is the day after the Limited Time Offer expired.

The same instrument converted the National Development Fund and real estate figures into United States dollars, raised real estate to US$300,000, restructured the University of the West Indies Fund, rewrote the fee schedule and created a new schedule of auxiliary service charges. It did not touch the business investment route, which is why that route still carries a currency problem, discussed in Chapter 3.

The regional price floor

In March 2024 the Prime Ministers of the five Eastern Caribbean citizenship states signed a Memorandum of Agreement. Gaston Browne signed for Antigua and Barbuda on 20 March 2024. Clause 2 commits the parties to a minimum investment threshold of US$200,000, to be reached no later than 30 June 2024, with any later change to be made unanimously.

Two points about that document are routinely misreported and both matter.

The first is its legal status. Clause 10 says, in terms, that the Memorandum “is a statement of intent and does not create legal obligations under international or domestic law” and that it “does not constitute a legally binding agreement and is not enforceable in any court of law”. Any guide describing it as a binding regional treaty is simply wrong. What makes the floor real in Antigua is not the Memorandum; it is Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50, made under section 6 of the 2013 Act. Antigua legislated above the floor, at US$230,000 rather than US$200,000.

The second is the anti-discounting limb, which is the part with teeth. Clause 2 provides that the threshold “shall represent the actual amount of funds received and applied towards the applicant’s qualification under the CBIP, and not the gross amount of funds paid by an applicant from which deductions including the payment of commissions, are made”. In plain terms, the US$200,000 must reach the programme net of agent commission. If an intermediary offers you a discount off the headline contribution, that is not a commercial concession. It is the thing the five states specifically agreed to stop.

The regional regulator

The Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority, ECCIRA, is real, is coming, and is not yet operating.

An Interim Regulatory Commission first met on 24 September 2024, chaired by the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, Timothy Antoine, with Lieutenant Colonel Edward Croft of Antigua and Barbuda as Deputy Chair. The ECCIRA Agreement itself was signed by Prime Minister Browne on 18 September 2025 and announced in Castries on 23 September 2025. Antigua implemented it domestically through the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority Agreement Act 2025, No. 18 of 2025, assented and gazetted on 6 November 2025. That Act runs to 106 pages and carries the full 99-article Agreement as its first Schedule, which makes it the most authoritative public text of the treaty anywhere. A commencement instrument, Statutory Instrument 2026 No. 45, was circulated with Official Gazette No. 43 of 16 July 2026. Its text is not published and we have not been able to read the date it appoints, so we cannot tell you that the Act is in force, only that the instrument exists.

When it does start work, ECCIRA will have real powers over Antigua’s Unit: binding standards and directives, six-monthly reporting, special audits, inspection and investigation including the power to compel production of documents and to verify source of funds and beneficial ownership, regional registers of applicants, licensees and developers, and administrative fines, with the principal offences carrying penalties up to US$250,000 (obstruction is capped at US$200,000). Article 87 creates an Appeals Tribunal. Article 99 provides for a state to suspend its participation if it temporarily ceases its programme, a clause plainly drafted with a European wind-down in mind.

One thing ECCIRA does not do, and this is under-reported: it does not set the price floor. A full-text search of the 106-page Act, including the Agreement, returns no minimum investment, no price floor and no anti-discounting provision. The US$200,000 floor rests on the non-binding Memorandum plus each state’s own domestic law, and on nothing else.

Two further points. The Authority is reported to be headquartered in Grenada, although the treaty text says only that it will sit “within a Participating State”. And among its functions is the setting of common minimum standards for agent licensing and due diligence, with the prospect of common minimum prices once it is live. Prices are unchanged today, but a co-ordinated increase is a foreseeable consequence of the Authority starting work.

We are not going to give you a launch date. The Central Bank said in December 2025 that it expected the Authority to be operational “in 2026”. Antiguan press reporting in July 2026 said September. Neither is a commitment, and we have not seen an appointment of a Director General or a Board.

What has not changed

• No new investment options and none closed. Exactly four, unchanged since 1 August 2024.
• No fee changes since Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50.
• No programme suspension. Antigua is accepting and processing applications normally.
• No new passport. There is no polycarbonate or next-generation biometric Antiguan passport in 2026. We checked every 2026 Cabinet Note, the 2026 Budget Statement, both 2026 Throne Speeches and the Unit’s own website. The live passport application form is still Form L, revision ATG-1/2017. What Cabinet did approve, on 22 January 2026, was a replacement of the Immigration Department’s border management system and e-visa platform, which is a different thing. Claims about a new biometric passport, or about a named supplier, are not supported by any government source we could find.

There are four routes, not five. We say that plainly because a persistent myth adds a charitable or non-profit option, and Chapter 16 explains where that myth comes from.

1. National Development Fund contribution

US$230,000, flat. Set by Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50, which replaced regulation 7. The operative words are that the contribution is “in the amount of Two Hundred and Thirty Thousand (US$230,000.00) United States Dollars”, payable by “a single applicant or a family”.

That flat structure is the defining commercial feature of the Antiguan programme. One contribution covers the main applicant, spouse, dependent children and dependent parents aged 55 and over. The old split between EC$540,000 for a small family and EC$675,000 for a larger one is gone. Only the processing fee scales with family size, and it scales gently.

The Fund itself is not a creature of the citizenship legislation. It was established under section 42(2) of the Finance Administration Act 2006, is non-profit, reports to Parliament every six months and is audited by an internationally recognised accounting firm.

This route accounted for 611 of 739 applications, or 82.68 per cent, in the last period for which the Unit published figures, January to June 2024.

2. Real estate

US$300,000 minimum purchase price, in an approved project. Regulation 6(4) as replaced by Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 reads: “The full purchase price of the real estate shall be at least three hundred thousand (US$300,000.00) dollars in United States currency.”

You will see US$360,000 quoted in places. The clean text of the instrument on the government legislation site spells the figure out in words as well as numerals, and it is US$300,000. We have not been able to establish where the higher figure originated.

Three features of this route are stricter than the marketing suggests, and all three are in the regulation rather than on the website.

The five years run from first programme use, not from your purchase. The regulation provides that a property used to satisfy the programme “shall only be resold once for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of another applicant under the programme and the resale may not be validly completed for this purpose until a period of five years has passed since the property was first used under the programme”. If you are the second programme owner of a unit, your own clock is not the one that counts.

Note that the Unit’s own website contradicts this, saying the property cannot be resold until five years after the purchase. The instrument is the better authority, and the two readings can produce very different dates. Get the position confirmed in writing for the specific unit you are buying.

Resale into the programme is available once, and once only. Read literally, a unit can serve two citizenship applications in its lifetime and no more.

The sanction for early disposal is loss of citizenship. Disposal before five years, or before the development has been substantially completed, results in deprivation of citizenship and disqualification from further participation, unless Cabinet grants an exemption or the applicant makes a replacement qualifying investment contemporaneously with the disposal. Note the word contemporaneously. This is a roll-over provision, not a liquidity event. Note also that the two limbs are cumulative: on a stalled development, the substantial completion limb can bite for as long as the project remains unfinished.

Real estate must sit in a project approved by Cabinet on the application of a developer, after consultation with the investment authority. A private individual reselling their own unit is not a developer, and nothing in the published legislation creates a qualifying secondary market. Chapter 13 deals with what that means for your exit.

3. Business investment

US$1,500,000 as a sole investor, or US$5,000,000 jointly between at least two people, each contributing at least US$400,000. The business must be approved by the Minister and published in the Gazette.

There is a genuine legal wrinkle here that we have not seen addressed anywhere else, and if you are considering this route you should know about it.

Regulation 9 was never redenominated into United States dollars. Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 converted the fund and real estate figures but left the business regulation alone. The regulation still reads in bare dollars with no currency named at all: “four million dollars” for a sole investor, “thirteen and a half million dollars” for a joint investment, “one million and eighty thousand dollars” each. On the 2016 drafting these are East Caribbean dollars.

At the fixed peg of EC$2.70 to US$1.00, the joint figures convert exactly: EC$13,500,000 is US$5,000,000 and EC$1,080,000 is US$400,000. The sole-investor figure does not. EC$4,000,000 is US$1,481,481, and the Unit publishes US$1,500,000. The gap is about US$18,500.

The practical answer is to budget to the Unit’s published figure of US$1,500,000, because that is what will be asked of you. The point of raising it is that this route has the thinnest volume of the four, just two applications in the last published six-month period, and the drafting has not been maintained. If you are contemplating a seven-figure business investment on the strength of a regulation that has not been updated in a decade, get the position confirmed in writing before you commit.

4. University of the West Indies Fund

US$260,000, inclusive of processing fees, minimum six people. Set by Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50, which replaced regulation 6A. Each dependant beyond the sixth adds US$10,000. One family member receives a one-year, tuition-only scholarship to the University of the West Indies.

This is a niche route with a specific shape. For a family of exactly six it can be cheaper than the Fund route once processing fees are counted, because processing is bundled. For a family of four it is not competitive. It accounted for 18 of 739 applications in the last published period.

Be careful with the scholarship. It is tuition only, for one year, for one family member. It is not a place, it is not accommodation, and it is not a degree.

The published minimum investment is the beginning of the cost, not the end of it. This chapter assembles everything the state charges, distinguishing between what the Unit publishes on its website, what the statutory instrument prescribes (which is more), and what is charged in practice without appearing in either (which is the part that catches people out).

All figures below come from Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50, gazetted 25 July 2024, unless stated otherwise.

Government processing fees

Charged per application, not per person, and scaled by family size.

Ten per cent is payable on submission and is non-refundable, with the balance due on approval. That split is stated by the Unit on its website rather than in the instrument.

Due diligence fees

Charged per person, payable on submission, non-refundable.

Two notes on that table. The instrument contains no due diligence line for a dependent parent or grandparent at all; the US$4,000 figure comes from the Unit’s website, which refers to a parent and not to a grandparent. And the instrument’s line for an adult dependent child reads simply “18 years and over” with no upper band, the age 30 being an eligibility cap rather than a fee band.

The Unit’s own website carries two typographical errors on this table that we should flag, because both are in the direction of alarming you unnecessarily. One column of its business investment panel shows a spouse due diligence fee of US$75,000, and renders the joint business figure with a doubled currency symbol. Every other table on the same site, and the statutory instrument itself, say US$5,000. Use the instrument.

Passport and certificate fees

The renewal fees are in Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 but are not on the Unit’s published fee page. They are a real, recurring cost of holding this citizenship and you should budget for them. A family of four adults renewing every five years is US$4,000 each cycle before any professional cost.

The auxiliary services schedule

Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 created a new schedule of service charges which, as far as we can tell, has never been published on the Unit’s website. It is worth knowing about because several items apply to ordinary post-approval life rather than to the application. Note that the instrument marks three of them, the replacement certificate, the late renewal fee and the confirmation letter, as charges on agents or authorised representatives rather than directly on applicants.

That last line is the most informative item on the whole schedule. It tells you that the Unit treats the thirty-day post-approval payment window as a live deadline and has priced the consequence of missing it.

The interview, and its fee

The Regulations do contain an interview power. Regulation 5(11) provides that an applicant “may be required to attend an interview”, and it contemplates that interview taking place in Antigua and Barbuda or at an embassy or High Commission. So the power is discretionary and, on the face of the Regulations, in person.

What is universally reported, and what licensed agents apply in practice, is something firmer than that: an interview for the main applicant and dependants above a certain age, conducted virtually by an independent provider, at US$1,500 per application rather than per person, for applications submitted from December 2023 onwards.

We want to be precise about the status of that practice, because it is not what most guides tell you. We could not verify it from any government source. The Unit has published no memorandum, no policy and no fee. Its “how to apply” page still says an interview “may be required” and the application form still says you “could” be asked to attend. The US$1,500 appears nowhere in Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 or on the published fee schedule. The reported age threshold is given as 16 in 2023 agent reporting and as 18 by some 2026 sources, and we cannot resolve which is right.

Our advice is to budget US$1,500 and expect an interview, because that is what the market consistently reports, while treating the detail as agent practice rather than as law and asking your agent to confirm the current position in writing. We have included the US$1,500 in the worked examples below and flagged it there.

Adding family members after approval

Charged per person, and standard due diligence and passport fees apply on top.

One caveat. The Unit’s dependants page shows US$20,000 for the 6 to 17 band, against US$25,000 in the statutory instrument. We have not been able to reconcile the two. Budget to the higher figure and ask your agent to confirm in writing before you rely on the lower one.

Worked examples

These cover government and official costs only. They exclude professional fees, which we discuss below, and they exclude the cost of the real estate itself where relevant.

Single applicant, National Development Fund route

Family of four (two adults, two children aged 8 and 14), Fund route

Note what happened there. Adding a spouse and two children to a single application cost US$17,900, because the contribution itself did not move. That is the Antiguan proposition in one table.

Family of six (two adults, two children under 12, two parents aged 60), Fund route

At that family size, the University of the West Indies route becomes worth modelling: US$260,000 inclusive of processing, plus due diligence of US$21,500, plus the interview and passports, comes to roughly US$285,100. Roughly ten thousand dollars less, plus a year of tuition. Whether that is the right answer depends on details the tables cannot capture, which is rather the point of taking advice.

Professional fees, honestly

We do not publish fixed professional or legal fees, and we would be sceptical of anyone who does.

What we can tell you is the shape. You will pay a licensed agent, and agent charges in this market vary widely with family size and with how complicated your source of funds is to evidence. A single applicant with salaried income and one jurisdiction is a very different piece of work from a family of six with operating businesses in three countries and a trust. On the real estate route you will additionally need conveyancing, and for that the only published guidance in Antigua is market-sourced rather than official: the range quoted by local practitioners is one to two per cent of the purchase price, typically with half payable up front. There is no Bar Association fee scale we could locate.

Anyone can quote you a single number. Very few can tell you honestly what drives it. If you want a figure that reflects your actual circumstances rather than an average, get in touch and we will put a proper quotation together.

Regulation 5(1) sets a short positive test. Any person who is at least eighteen years of age, proposes to make a qualifying investment, and meets the application requirements may apply as a main applicant.

The interesting material is all on the exclusion side, and Antigua’s exclusions are not the same as its neighbours’. Do not assume that because you know the St Kitts or Dominica position you know this one.

The published restricted countries list

Antigua’s restricted list was set by a Cabinet decision of 26 February 2020 and is published on the Unit’s website. It contains six countries:

• Afghanistan
• Iran
• North Korea
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen

Iraq is not on the list. Syria is not on the list. Both appear on other Caribbean programmes’ lists and are frequently attributed to Antigua in error.

Note the source type. This is a Cabinet decision published on a website. It is not in the Act, not in the Regulations and not in any statutory instrument. That makes it easier to change, and it means the published version is the only version you can check.

There is an important exception, in the Unit’s own words. Nationals of listed countries remain eligible if they were “born in these restricted countries but who migrated before the age of majority and/or have maintained permanent residence in any country other than those on the restricted country list, for a period of not less than 10 years and maintain no economic ties to any restricted country”. Everyone must still satisfy due diligence in full. The exception is genuine and is used: the last published statistics record approved applicants born in several listed countries.

Russia, Belarus and Ukraine

This is the messiest corner of the Antiguan rules and we are going to describe it as it is rather than tidy it up.

Applications from nationals of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were suspended in 2022, briefly reopened for Russians and Belarusians, and then suspended again. We are being deliberately vague about the dates because we could not verify a single one of them from a government source. The chronology in circulation comes from unpublished circulars to licensed agents, reported second hand. A search of archived captures of the Unit’s entire website returns no mention of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine or any suspension.

One thing is verifiable and it is the important one: these three countries have never been added to the published restricted countries list, which still shows only the six from February 2020.

If you hold Russian, Belarusian or Ukrainian nationality, the honest position is that the published official sources do not tell you where you stand and you need current confirmation from a licensed agent before spending anything.

The visa refusal bar, which has become much more important

An applicant is ineligible if they have “been denied a visa to a country with which Antigua and Barbuda has visa-free travel and who has not subsequently obtained a visa to the country that issued the denial”.

Read that carefully in light of Chapter 10. Antigua has visa-free arrangements with a long list of countries. A historic Schengen or United Kingdom refusal that was never subsequently cured will bar you, regardless of how old it is or how minor the reason. This provision predates the current United States measures but sits awkwardly alongside them.

If you have ever had a visa refused anywhere, disclose it to your agent at the outset. It is frequently survivable if handled properly at the start and frequently fatal if discovered later.

Criminal history

The eligibility rules were recast in 2020 around custodial sentences “in excess of twelve (12) months”, and the test has a second, conjunctive limb: the conviction must also be one for which the applicant could not be regarded as rehabilitated under the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Act 2013. Note that the Unit’s own citizenship page still publishes the superseded pre-2020 wording, which turned on a maximum penalty of six months. Use the 2020 test. Beyond the formal test, due diligence is conducted by independent firms and the Unit shares denial information with the other four programmes under the first of the Six Principles agreed at the United States and Caribbean roundtable of 25 February 2023. A denial in St Kitts, Dominica, Grenada or Saint Lucia is expected to follow you to Antigua.

That reciprocal denial regime is the single strongest argument against making a speculative application anywhere. You get one clean first attempt across the whole region.

Who counts as a dependant

The definition was substituted by Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 and is generous by regional standards:

• A spouse.
• A child of the main applicant, or of the main applicant and spouse, aged 30 or younger.
• A child of any age who is physically or mentally incapacitated and fully supported.
• A parent or grandparent of either spouse aged 55 or older and fully supported.
• A parent or grandparent of any age who is incapacitated and fully supported.
• An unmarried sibling of either spouse under 18, with parental consent.
• An unmarried sibling of either spouse over 18.
• The spouse or child of a dependant.

Two of those are unusual and worth pausing on. The age 30 ceiling for children is high; several competing programmes stop at 25 or 26. And the inclusion of unmarried siblings, at any age, is close to unique. If you have an adult unmarried sibling you support, Antigua may be the only realistic route to including them.

Post-approval additions are dealt with in Chapter 4. One point of precision: the age 35 condition that appears in the instrument is narrow. It applies to adding the spouse or child of an existing dependent child, and it is measured against the age of the existing dependant rather than of the person being added. The general post-approval fee table carries no age 35 cap.

A further note for anyone reading the Unit’s dependants page alongside this: that page states US$20,000 where the instrument says US$25,000, gives a different age for an incapacitated child, and omits the incapacitated parent limb entirely. Where they conflict, the instrument is the law.

Because the contribution is flat and the fees are not, Antigua rewards thinking about family composition before you file rather than after. This chapter sets out where the real decisions are.

Include everyone you can, at the start

The arithmetic is unusually one-sided. On the Fund route, adding a spouse costs US$5,000 in due diligence and US$300 for a passport, with no change to the contribution and no change to the processing fee if you remain within a family of four. Adding a child under twelve costs US$300. That is the entire marginal cost.

Compare that with adding the same people later: US$10,000 for a child under six, US$25,000 for a child aged six to seventeen, US$50,000 for an adult, in each case plus due diligence and passport fees on top. The penalty for waiting is between thirty and one hundred and sixty times the cost of including someone at the outset.

The practical rule is that if a person is eligible now and there is any realistic prospect you will want them included, include them now.

Where the processing fee steps

The processing fee is US$20,000 for a family of up to four and rises by US$10,000 for each person above four. The fifth person therefore costs US$10,000 in processing before any due diligence. This is the only place where family size drives a large step, and it is worth modelling carefully at the boundary. A family of exactly four is the sweet spot of the Antiguan structure.

Dependent parents

Parents and grandparents of either spouse aged 55 and over can be included, at US$4,000 due diligence each plus US$10,000 processing each if they take you above four. Two parents added to a family of four therefore costs about US$28,000 all in, with no change to the contribution.

The 55 threshold is low by regional standards. It is also worth noting that the requirement is that they be “fully supported” by the main applicant, which is a substantive test rather than a formality, and the Unit does ask for evidence of it.

Adult children

Children up to and including age 30 qualify as dependants. Above 30 they do not, and there is no route to add them later, because post-approval additions are capped at age 35 and require that the person was already a qualifying dependant.

If you have a child approaching 30, that is a hard deadline and it is the single most common reason we see families move a decision forward.

Siblings

Unmarried siblings of either spouse can be included, and unlike most programmes there is no upper age limit on an unmarried sibling over 18. This is a genuine and under-used feature. The practical constraints are that the sibling must be unmarried at the time of application, and the general “fully supported” expectations apply to dependants who are not the spouse or minor children.

The point most families get wrong

A child born to you after your citizenship is granted does not automatically become an Antiguan citizen. This is dealt with fully in Chapter 14, because it is a citizenship law point rather than a programme point, but it belongs in your family planning too. Antigua does not use the usual “otherwise than by descent” formula. The Constitution confers citizenship at birth on a child born abroad only where a parent is a citizen under two specific provisions, neither of which covers citizenship acquired by registration under the 2013 Act.

There is a fallback: a child under eighteen who is the child of a citizen is entitled to be registered on application. But it is an application right that expires at eighteen, not automatic transmission. If you take Antiguan citizenship and later have children abroad, you must actively register each of them before their eighteenth birthday or they get nothing.

Very few guides mention this. It is one of the most consequential facts in the whole programme for a family in their thirties.

You cannot apply directly. Every application must be filed through an agent licensed by the Unit. There are currently 33 licensed agents and 60 authorised representatives on the published lists, although both lists are undated and carry no version history, so treat them as indicative and verify your agent’s licence separately.

The stages

1. Engagement and preliminary assessment. Route selection, family composition, an honest look at source of funds and at anything in your history that due diligence will surface.
2. Document assembly. Police certificates from every country of residence, birth and marriage certificates, evidence of source of funds, medical certificates, professional references. This is where almost all of the elapsed time goes, and it is the only part of the process you control.
3. Submission. Filed by the agent. Ten per cent of the processing fee and the full due diligence fees are payable now and are non-refundable.
4. Due diligence. Conducted by independent firms retained by the Unit, with a check against the national Financial Intelligence Unit under the third of the Six Principles.
5. Interview. The Regulations give the Unit a discretionary power to require one, in Antigua or at a mission. In practice an interview is universally reported, conducted virtually, at US$1,500 per application. See Chapter 4 on the status of that practice.
6. Notification. Regulation 5(14) requires the Unit to notify the agent within three months of submission that the application has been approved, denied, or “delayed for cause and is still being processed”.
7. Payment. On approval, thirty days to pay the balance of the processing fee and to deposit the contribution, complete the property purchase or execute the business investment.
8. Oath of allegiance. Taken in Antigua and Barbuda or at any Antiguan embassy, high commission or consulate.
9. Certificate of registration and passport.

For how these stages compare across the region, see our guide to the Caribbean citizenship by investment process.

How long does it actually take

We are not going to give you a number, and we would ask you to be suspicious of anyone who does.

The Unit publishes no processing time for citizenship applications. We checked the frequently asked questions page, the how to apply page, the brochure page, the homepage, the investment options pages and the fee schedule. There is no published figure anywhere. It does publish a turnaround for visa applications, which is a different product and is sometimes quoted misleadingly. Every “three to six months” or “four to seven months” claim we could trace led back to an agent’s marketing page rather than to the government.

The only timing figure with a legal basis is the three-month notification duty in regulation 5(14), and it is critical to understand what it is not. It is a duty to tell you something within three months, and one of the three permitted things to tell you is that the application is delayed for cause. There is no outer limit on that delay anywhere in the Regulations. Antigua is not obliged to decide within three months and does not promise to.

There is also no expedited option. We searched the Regulations, all six statutory instruments made since 2016 and the whole Unit website for any form of the words expedited, fast-track, urgent, priority or accelerated. There are no matches anywhere and no fee for one. If you are told your application can be accelerated for a payment, that is not a government product.

The thirty-day payment window

Once approved, you have thirty days to complete the payment. Missing it is expensive: the auxiliary services schedule prices “continuation of approved application where payment missed the legal timeframe” at US$3,000. Have the funds staged and ready before approval rather than after it, particularly if they are moving across borders or out of an investment account that takes time to liquidate.

If you are refused

Regulation 5(17) gives thirty days to appeal a denial to the Minister, who must refer it to a review committee. Enhanced due diligence on a subsequent application costs double the standard fee. And under the regional denial-sharing arrangement, a refusal in Antigua is expected to be visible to the other four programmes.

What we would tell you to do differently

Two things, both unglamorous.

Front-load the source of funds work. In our experience this is the difference between an application that moves and one that sits. Assemble a clean, documented, chronological account of where the money came from before anything is filed, not in response to a query six weeks in.

Disclose everything at the engagement stage, particularly visa refusals, prior applications to other programmes, and anything at all in your criminal record however historic or minor. Almost all of it is manageable when it is known at the start. Very little of it is manageable when the due diligence firm finds it first.

This is the most important chapter in the guide for anyone planning around the programme, because the answer is about to change and most published material has not caught up.

What the law says today

Section 4(1)(a) of the 2013 Act, as replaced by the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2016, permits the Minister to deprive a person of citizenship if that person “does not spend at least 5 days in Antigua and Barbuda during the period of five calendar years after his registration”.

Five days in five years. The Unit’s website still says five days. As a matter of law, on 3 August 2026, that is the requirement.

The history is worth knowing because it shows the direction of travel: the original 2013 text required 35 days. The 2014 amendment cut it to 5. The 2016 amendments restated 5.

What is happening now

On 14 July 2026 the Prime Minister presented the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026 to Parliament. In doing so he said that the residency requirement rises to 30 days cumulative over the first five years, that it applies to the applicant and to dependants, and, significantly, that 30 days was already being applied administratively.

The Bill was gazetted for introduction in Official Gazette No. 42 of 9 July 2026. We have confirmed that the Bill exists. The account of what the Prime Minister said comes from Antiguan press reporting of 15 July 2026 rather than from an official record, and the text of the Bill is not published. It is reported to have passed the lower house, with Senate debate around 23 July 2026. We have not been able to confirm assent, and the 2026 Acts index does not yet contain a citizenship by investment amendment.

Residency is not the only thing in the Bill. As reported, it also introduces an annual independent financial audit of the Unit, a biennial independent operational audit, publication of audit reports on the Unit’s website within thirty days, mandatory corrective action on adverse findings, six-monthly reporting to the regional Authority, and a power for that Authority to order a special audit where there is evidence of systemic governance failure. If it passes in that form it is the most significant governance reform the programme has had.

So the honest position is this: the statute says 5 days, the government says it is applying 30, and legislation to make 30 the law is pending. If you are modelling this decision, plan for 30 days. Anyone telling you five days is the operative planning assumption in 2026 is reading the statute and not the room.

Note also the context. The United States Proclamation of December 2025 identified Antigua expressly on the basis that it “has historically had CBI without residency”. The European Commission’s June 2026 letter turns on the absence of a genuine link. A rising residency requirement is the government’s principal answer to both, and there is no reason to expect the direction to reverse.

How it is enforced

Not by an immigration officer counting days at the airport. By passport renewal.

A citizen by investment holds a five-year passport, against ten years for an ordinary national passport. Renewal is expressly stated by the Unit to be “subject to the recipient having spent a total of 5 days in Antigua and Barbuda … within the 5 year period”. The day count is checked when you come back for a new document.

Note the consequence: this is not a one-off hurdle at year five. It is a recurring condition of continuing to hold a usable travel document, checked every five years for as long as you hold the citizenship.

What happens if you do not comply

Deprivation under section 4(1) is discretionary, not automatic. The Minister “may” make an order. But if an order is made, section 4(2) is unambiguous: a person deprived of citizenship “shall not be entitled to repayment of any investment, contribution or purchase price”.

There is a right of appeal to the High Court with legal representation, and section 4(4) provides that the decision of the High Court is final.

There is one further wrinkle. The 2020 amendment inserted a power for the Minister to suspend the day-count requirement by Order. The power is not limited to disease: it extends to infectious disease “or such other grounds as he considers necessary”. We could not find any such Order ever having been gazetted, so we cannot tell you whether the COVID-era years were formally disapplied. If your five-year window included 2020 or 2021, ask.

The oath

Every successful applicant must take the oath of allegiance or affirmation in the form set out in the Third Schedule to the Citizenship Act. Regulation 5(16) allows this to be done in Antigua and Barbuda or at any Antiguan embassy, high commission or consulate, which is more flexible than several competing programmes.

Remote administration by video is possible but narrower than it sounds. The 2020 amendment permits an oath by “zoom, skype or similar audio-visual technology” only where the Unit is satisfied that travel restrictions imposed by a government prevent attendance. It is not a convenience option. The conditions are strict: a notary present, live broadcast to the Unit, a recording, the applicant’s face in full view throughout, a conflict bar on the notary, and the applicant bears all costs. The statutory charges are US$250 to prepare the oath document and US$100 for a copy of the signed version.

Travel access is the reason most people look at this programme, so it deserves to be described precisely rather than in the round numbers the industry prefers.

The headline number, and what it means

The Henley Passport Index for July 2026 places Antigua and Barbuda 24th, with access to 154 destinations.

That figure is not 154 visa-free countries, and you should not repeat it as though it were. Broken down from Henley’s own per-destination data, the 154 consists of 119 visa-free, 28 visa-on-arrival and 7 electronic travel authorisation destinations. A further 31 destinations require an e-visa and are excluded from the count entirely; 41 require a conventional visa. If you download Henley’s own summary you will see it presented as 154 visa free against 72 visa required, because it rolls e-visa destinations in with visa-required ones. The underlying data is the same.

The distinction matters practically. Visa-free means you board with a passport. Visa-on-arrival means you pay and queue at a border that can refuse you. An electronic travel authorisation means you apply and pay in advance, and it can be declined.

The destinations that actually matter

Canada, which is widely misreported

Antigua and Barbuda is a visa-required country for Canada. It is listed as such on the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada entry requirements page, last modified 17 July 2026. Any guide that tells you Antiguans can obtain a Canadian electronic travel authorisation as a matter of course is wrong.

There is a narrow carve-out, and it is genuinely useful if you fit it. An Antiguan national may apply for an electronic travel authorisation instead of a visa only if all three of the following hold: they have held a Canadian visitor visa in the previous ten years or currently hold a valid United States non-immigrant visa; the intended stay is normally six months or less; and they are travelling by air. By car, bus, train or boat, including cruise, a visa is always required.

Note the interaction with Chapter 10. The most common way an Antiguan qualified for that carve-out was by holding a valid United States visa. For anyone who does not already hold one, that door is now substantially narrower.

Europe, and the two systems to keep separate

Visa-free access to the Schengen area is intact. Antigua and Barbuda remains on Annex II of the EU visa regulation and no suspension has been enacted. The German Federal Foreign Office visa requirement list, dated 3 June 2026, confirms no visa for stays up to 90 days in any 180 without employment.

Two separate EU systems are worth distinguishing because they are constantly conflated.

The Entry Exit System is an automated border record of entries and exits. It has been fully operational at all external Schengen crossings since 10 April 2026. It is not a visa and there is nothing to apply for, but it does mean your 90 in 180 is now counted by machine rather than by a stamp an officer may or may not read correctly.

ETIAS is a pre-travel authorisation, costing 20 euro. It is not yet live. The European Union has not published a start date. Its current wording is only that it will give notice several months before launch, followed by a transitional period and then a grace period. Earlier statements referring to the last quarter of 2026 no longer appear on the authoritative pages. We are not going to give you a launch date, because the European Union has not given one.

Chapter 11 deals with the more serious European question, which is whether that visa-free access survives at all.

One unadvertised risk at the Schengen border

Visa-free on paper is not always visa-free at the desk. Since August 2025 there have been reported refusals of entry to Norway of Caribbean citizenship by investment passport holders, at Bergen and Oslo, on the reasoning that a passport issued without the holder ever attending in person is not accepted as valid. The Norwegian immigration authority has denied any change of policy. We cannot tell you how widespread this is, and it is not an official position we can cite. But it is the kind of practical risk that never appears in a passport index ranking, and it is worth knowing before you route a first trip to Europe through Oslo.

CARICOM, which is not what most guides claim

An Antiguan passport does not currently give you the right to live and work anywhere else in the Caribbean.

CARICOM full free movement did begin, but it began on 1 October 2025 and it involves exactly four countries: Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Nationals of those four can travel to any of the other three to reside, work and remain indefinitely, with access to emergency and primary health care and to public primary and secondary education for their children.

Antigua and Barbuda is not part of that group. It was named as neither a participant nor a prospective participant in the February 2026 or July 2026 Heads of Government communiqués. Grenada and Saint Lucia notified in July 2026 that they are taking steps to join. Antigua did not.

What Antigua remains part of is the older skills-based regime. A Certificate of Recognition of CARICOM Skills Qualification allows the holder to seek and take up employment without a work permit in participating states, but only if you fall within a defined skill category: university graduates, media workers, sportspersons, artistes, musicians, nurses, teachers, artisans holding a vocational qualification, domestic workers, agricultural workers, private security officers, holders of associate degrees, and aviation personnel, added in July 2025. It is employment-focused and category-gated, and it is not a general right of residence.

One correction to a claim we have seen in both directions. A spouse and dependants may move with the certificate holder, and a spouse may work without a permit. What is not automatic is their access to public health care and education, which depends on the 2018 Protocol on Contingent Rights, ratified by only two states.

If regional mobility is a material part of why you are considering Antigua, look at the actual entitlement rather than the phrase “CARICOM free movement”.

This is the largest practical change to the value of an Antiguan passport in the programme’s history, and it happened in the last eight months. Any guide that does not lead with it is out of date.

Presidential Proclamation 10998

Proclamation 10998 was issued on 16 December 2025 and published in the Federal Register on 19 December 2025. Section 5(b) deals with Antigua and Barbuda specifically. Its stated ground is that “Antigua and Barbuda has historically had CBI without residency”.

The operative words are that the entry into the United States of nationals of Antigua and Barbuda “as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas, is hereby suspended”. Consular officers are additionally directed to reduce the validity of any other non-immigrant visa.

Unpack that. It covers business and tourist travel, student visas, exchange visitor visas, and immigrant visas. The immigrant limb is routinely omitted in secondary coverage and it is the most consequential: it is not merely a restriction on visiting the United States, it is a suspension of the route to permanent residence there.

The measure took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on 1 January 2026. It applies to nationals who were outside the United States on that date and who did not hold a valid visa. No pre-existing visa was revoked. If you already held a valid United States visa on 31 December 2025, it continues to be honoured.

Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica were named. Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia were not, although Grenada was later added to the visa bond programme from 2 April 2026, so “not named in the proclamation” is not the same as untouched. Within the Eastern Caribbean programmes this is a real differentiator, and it runs against Antigua.

Visa bonds

Separately, Antigua and Barbuda was added to the United States visa bond programme with an implementation date of 21 January 2026.

This has just changed. What began as a pilot became a permanent programme by final rule published in the Federal Register and effective 3 August 2026, with the bond tiers raised to US$10,000, US$15,000 or US$20,000. The State Department country list had not been updated to reflect this at the time of writing, so you will still see the older tiers of US$5,000, US$10,000 and US$15,000 quoted in most places, including on official pages. Bonds are set at interview for B-1 and B-2 applicants and posted on Form DHS I-352 through Pay.gov.

One condition of a bond deserves particular attention because it is unusual and is easy to fall foul of. A bonded traveller must enter and exit the United States only through designated commercial air ports of entry, including Customs and Border Protection preclearance facilities. Charter aircraft, general aviation, land crossings and sea arrivals are all prohibited. For a Caribbean traveller, that rules out a good deal of ordinary regional movement, including some cruise itineraries and private aviation.

The change most people have missed

Alongside the proclamation, the United States revised its visa reciprocity schedule for Antigua and Barbuda in early 2026. Non-immigrant visas for Antiguan nationals are now issued single-entry with three months validity, against multiple-entry with ten years validity previously.

For anyone who does still obtain a United States visa, this is arguably a bigger practical change than the proclamation. A ten-year multiple-entry visa is a travel document you use for a decade. A single-entry three-month visa is a document you re-apply for every trip, paying and queueing each time.

What the government has said

The Unit published two statements. The first, on 19 December 2025 from Ambassador Sir Ronald Sanders, confirmed that existing validly issued visas continue to be respected in all categories, that no visa issued before 31 December 2025 was revoked, and that new applications would be subject to arrangements concerning the collection of biometric information from Antigua and Barbuda passport holders. It was explicit that this applies to “all citizens … including citizens by birth, descent, naturalisation, or investment”.

That last point is important and cuts both ways. The measure is directed at the citizenship programme but it does not distinguish between citizens by investment and citizens by birth. Ordinary Antiguans are affected identically.

The second statement, on 7 January 2026, said no bond applies to existing visa holders, described Antigua’s inclusion in a visa bond pilot applying “only to a very narrow category of new visa applicants”, noted that no government was told in advance, and candidly acknowledged “overstays and charges on the US public purse, including unpaid hospital bills, by a small number of our nationals”.

On 2 August 2026 the Prime Minister wrote to the President of the United States seeking a review of Antigua’s inclusion, citing biometric cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security and the pending residency legislation. That is reported rather than published, and no outcome is known.

How to think about it

Three observations, offered without spin.

The measure is reversible in principle. It rests on a proclamation, not on legislation, and the stated ground, citizenship without residency, is precisely what the pending thirty-day Bill addresses. Grenada, St Kitts and Saint Lucia were spared, which shows the list is not simply “all CBI states”.

But it is not reversible on any timetable you can plan around. Nothing has moved in eight months and the July 2026 letter has produced no public response.

And the practical planning point is straightforward. If United States access is a material part of why you want a second passport, Antigua is currently the wrong Caribbean programme. Grenada additionally offers an E-2 treaty route to the United States that Antigua does not. If United States access is not material to you, this chapter changes your calculus much less than the headlines suggest.

Visa-free access to the Schengen area is the most valuable single feature of an Antiguan passport for most applicants. It is also the feature most at risk. This chapter sets out where things actually stand, without either the industry’s reassurance or the press’s alarm.

Where it stands today

Antigua and Barbuda remains visa-exempt. It is on Annex II of the EU visa regulation, no suspension has been enacted, and Antiguans travel to the Schengen area without a visa for 90 days in any 180. That is the position on 3 August 2026 and nothing in this chapter changes it.

What changed in the law

Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 of 26 November 2025 entered into force on 30 December 2025. It amends the visa suspension mechanism in two ways that matter here.

First, it makes the operation of an investor citizenship scheme a self-standing ground for suspension. The new provision refers to “the operation, by a third country listed in Annex II, of an investor citizenship scheme under which citizenship is granted to a person, in exchange for pre-determined payments or investments, without that person having any genuine link to that third country”.

Before this, the Commission had to reach for migration or security grounds. Now the programme itself is the ground. That is a structural change, not a rhetorical one.

Second, it recalibrates the statistical triggers. A “substantial increase” of 30 per cent now suffices, across refusals of entry, irregular stay, asylum applications, serious criminal offences and refused readmissions. The 50 per cent figure that this replaced sat in a recital of the earlier regulation rather than in its operative provisions, so this is a tightening and a hardening at the same time. The regulation separately raises the low asylum recognition rate trigger to below 20 per cent.

One point of accuracy: the Antiguan government’s own press release describes the mechanism as having been adopted “on 31 December 2025”. That is incorrect. The regulation is dated 26 November 2025 and entered into force on 30 December 2025.

The Brunner letter

On 25 June 2026 the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, Magnus Brunner, wrote to Prime Minister Browne formally requesting that Antigua and Barbuda phase out its citizenship by investment programme by 1 June 2028, over a 24-month transition. The letter asks for interim measures by September 2026, specifically the exclusion of EU-sanctioned individuals and reinforced vetting for all nationalities, and says the response will be reflected in the Visa Suspension Mechanism Report due in December 2026.

Identical letters went to the other four programmes.

We have this from the Antiguan government’s own publication of it, on 6 and 7 July 2026. It has not been published by the Commission. Two qualifications follow from that. The first is that we are reading one side’s account, albeit a primary one. The second, and more important, is about status. The Commission’s own language is that it “formally requested” the phase-out, and the Antiguan government describes it as a formal communication. But no legal suspension procedure has been commenced against Antigua’s visa exemption. This is the stage before that, and the distinction is worth holding on to.

The five states responded jointly through the OECS in July 2026 and a high-level mission to Brussels followed. The Prime Minister has floated an electronic travel authorisation style screening arrangement as an alternative to phase-out, and has said publicly that the country may ultimately have to choose between the programme and full access to the United States and Europe. That is a striking admission from the government that runs it.

Antigua’s position, stated publicly, is that the programme will continue and that it will not agree a unilateral phase-out without quantified replacement revenues. Given that the programme was about 11 per cent of government revenue in 2025, that is an understandable stance, and it also tells you how hard this will be to resolve.

What we think, and how confident we are

We are going to give you a view, because a guide that lists considerations and refuses to weigh them is not much use.

Our reading is that some material change to the European position is more likely than not before the end of 2028, and that outright suspension of visa-free access within that window is possible but not the most likely single outcome. The most likely outcome, in our view, is a negotiated tightening: higher thresholds, a real residency requirement, mandatory exclusions, enhanced information sharing, and continued visa-free access on that basis. The residency Bill of July 2026 is consistent with exactly that path.

We hold that view with moderate confidence and we would change it quickly on evidence. The things we would watch are: whether Antigua delivers the September 2026 interim measures; what the December 2026 Visa Suspension Mechanism Report says; and whether the Commission commences a formal procedure against any of the five.

What we would say plainly is this. If your decision only works with Schengen visa-free access, and it would not work without it, do not buy a Caribbean citizenship in 2026. Buy a European residency instead, where the access is not contingent on someone else’s political process. If Schengen access is one benefit among several, and the citizenship would still be worth having without it, then Antigua remains a rational purchase at today’s prices.

The United Kingdom, for contrast

The United Kingdom position is materially better than the European one and better than several of Antigua’s neighbours’.

Antigua and Barbuda is not a UK visa national. It was not part of the July 2023 group that lost visa-free access, which was Dominica, Honduras, Namibia, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu. Antiguans need only an Electronic Travel Authorisation, required since 8 January 2025, currently £20.

The comparative warning is real, though. In March 2026 the United Kingdom imposed a visit visa requirement on Nicaragua and Saint Lucia, and the explanatory memorandum accompanying that change stated that citizenship by investment is “inherently high-risk”. The United Kingdom has now removed visa-free access from two of the five Eastern Caribbean programmes, Dominica in 2023 and Saint Lucia in 2026. Ireland went further in June 2026, imposing visa requirements on St Kitts and Nevis as well as Saint Lucia. No United Kingdom or Irish measure names Antigua, and Antiguans continue to travel to both on an electronic authorisation only. But three of the five programmes have now lost visa-free access to at least one of these two countries, and the precedent is not comforting.

What has gone right

It is worth recording that Antigua’s transparency position has genuinely improved, because it is the one direction of travel in this chapter that runs the right way.

Antigua was added to the EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, Annex I, on 17 October 2023, for failing to hold a “Largely Compliant” rating on exchange of information. It moved to Annex II on 8 October 2024 pending a further review. Following an in-depth review with an on-site visit in April 2025, the Global Forum upgraded Antigua to Largely Compliant in a report published on 21 January 2026, and the Council removed Antigua from Annex II entirely on 17 February 2026. It now sits among the jurisdictions the EU treats as cooperative with no pending commitments.

The list is revised twice yearly, so a further revision is expected in the autumn of 2026, although we have not seen a date confirmed.

“No income tax” is the most repeated claim about Antigua and Barbuda and it is true of the income tax statute and misleading about almost everything else. This chapter sets out what a resident individual actually pays.

Before any of it: citizenship does not make you tax resident in Antigua and Barbuda, and it does not by itself change your tax position anywhere else. If you remain tax resident in your home country, taking an Antiguan passport changes nothing about your liability there. Anyone selling this programme as a tax solution without asking where you are resident is not advising you.

What genuinely does not exist

Personal income tax was abolished in 2016. The instrument is the Personal Income Tax (Amendment) Act 2016, No. 8 of 2016, assented on 23 June 2016, which cut the personal allowance for the 2016 income year, set the final employer remittance at 15 August 2016 and the final individual return at 30 September 2016. Note a technicality that trips up researchers: there is no “repeal Act”. The imposing statute, the Personal Income Tax Act 2005, was never formally repealed and remains on the statute book, spent.

It has not been reintroduced. The 2026 Budget Statement, delivered on 4 December 2025, refers back to the 2016 abolition approvingly and proposes no reintroduction. The 2026 revenue measures are compliance-focused: sales tax electronic invoicing, revenue department digitisation, and a property tax review that remains a committee recommendation rather than an enacted change.

Also absent: inheritance and estate tax, gift tax, and net wealth tax.

Capital gains, with two important carve-outs

There is no general capital gains tax. But there are three land-related charges that function as one and that most guides omit entirely. Note also that the Land Sales Duty Act, Cap. 236, imposes a duty expressly described as being on capital gains, at up to 25 per cent, on gains from the sale of the freehold within designated special development areas. “No capital gains tax” is safe only with the word general in front of it.

Land Value Appreciation Tax. Under the Non-Citizens Land Holding Regulation Act, Cap. 293, section 19(1), a non-citizen disposing of land pays 5 per cent of the uplift in value. No conveyance from a non-citizen may be stamped until it is paid. If you buy Antiguan property before you obtain citizenship, this can follow the transaction.

Non-Citizens Undeveloped Land Tax. Under Cap. 294, undeveloped land held by a non-citizen attracts an annual tax that escalates: 5 per cent of value in year one, 10 per cent in year two, 15 per cent in year three, and 20 per cent in year four and thereafter. Cabinet has issued declaration orders under it in both 2025 and 2026. If you buy a plot and do not build, this is punitive and it is real.

What you do pay

Add the employee-side figures together and an employed resident faces roughly 13 to 15.5 per cent of income in social security, medical benefits and education levy. That is not an income tax, but it is not nothing, and “zero tax” is not an accurate description of living in Antigua.

Note also that the education levy in particular functions as a de facto income tax on earnings, which is the sort of thing worth knowing before you relocate on the strength of a headline.

Tax residency

The Income Tax Act, Cap. 212, defines an individual as resident if they have a permanent place of abode in Antigua and Barbuda and are physically present for some period in the basis period, or if they are physically present for not less than 183 days, or by continuity with an adjacent qualifying year.

There is no nationality limb. The test is abode plus presence. The citizenship programme’s five-day condition is a citizenship-retention condition, not a tax test, and it comes nowhere near making you tax resident.

One practical caveat for anyone planning around this: the Inland Revenue Department issues tax identification numbers to persons liable to tax. There is no routine number for a non-working resident individual, and we could not find any published process or criteria for obtaining an individual tax residency certificate. If your planning depends on being able to evidence Antiguan tax residency to a third party, establish that you can before you rely on it.

Transparency and information exchange

An honest word here, because the reason most people ask about this is not the one they say out loud.

Antigua and Barbuda is a Common Reporting Standard participating jurisdiction and has been exchanging financial account information since 2018. The OECD’s 2025 automatic exchange peer review update, published 2 December 2025, rates its legal framework as “In Place But Needs Improvement”, and, less comfortably, rates its effectiveness in practice and its overall position as non-compliant. We mention the second half because a guide that quoted only the first half would be flattering by omission, and Antigua’s exchange of information record is genuinely mixed: strong and improving on the request-based standard, weak on automatic exchange in practice. It has been party to the multilateral tax convention since 1 February 2019 and has a Model 1 agreement with the United States in force since 7 June 2017. It has 151 exchange of information relationships, 145 of them in force.

Antigua’s citizenship programme was on the OECD’s list of residence and citizenship schemes identified as potentially high-risk for circumventing the Common Reporting Standard as at 2018. It is not on the current list, which now contains only three Panamanian schemes.

The practical conclusion is straightforward. This citizenship will not hide an account from your home tax authority, it was never capable of doing so, and any adviser who implies otherwise is describing a crime rather than a strategy.

Two further points that clients ask about and that guides tend to leave out. Antigua and Barbuda is not on the Financial Action Task Force list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, the so-called grey list, as at the June 2026 plenary. It remains under enhanced follow-up with the Caribbean regional body from its 2018 mutual evaluation. And in February 2026 some 13,500 international business companies were struck off the register, with further offshore bank closures reported, which is worth knowing if you expect this citizenship to come with easy Antiguan banking. It does not.

Treaties

Do not describe Antigua as having a treaty network. It has 21 information exchange agreements, 19 of them in force, and those provide no relief from double taxation at all. On the relief side there is the CARICOM multilateral agreement, in force since 1999 and operative with ten other CARICOM states, a 1963 arrangement with Switzerland surviving as an extension of an old United Kingdom treaty, and a United Kingdom arrangement dating from 1947, in force since January 1948 and amended in 1968, which the United Kingdom still lists as live. A United Kingdom information exchange agreement additionally came into force in May 2011. An agreement with the United Arab Emirates is signed but not in force, as are information exchange agreements with Canada and Portugal.

The practical point stands even with the United Kingdom arrangement in the picture: this is a thin and largely antique network. If your planning requires modern treaty relief, do not assume Antigua provides it, and take advice on the specific pairing.

If your planning requires treaty relief, Antigua will not provide it.

The real estate route is the second most used, at about 15 per cent of applications in the last published period. It is also the route where the gap between the marketing and the evidence is widest. This chapter is deliberately unhelpful to anyone trying to sell you a unit.

What you actually pay, on top of the price

A foreign buyer of residential freehold faces the following. Note that some of these fall away once you are a citizen, and one of them does not.

The licence figure is the one most often quoted wrongly. It was 5 per cent until 2020, when the Non-Citizens Land Holding Regulation (Amendment) Act 2020 created a schedule of rates where the Act previously had none. It is now 7 per cent for freehold. Strictly it is a stamp duty charged on the licence rather than a licence fee, which is why it sits on top of the ordinary conveyance duty rather than instead of it. Every “5 per cent” figure in circulation, including on some widely used international property sites, is pre-2020 and stale.

Two important points about the licence and citizenship. If you complete the purchase after your citizenship is granted, no licence is needed, because a citizen by registration under the 2013 Act is a citizen for the purposes of that Act. But if you were licensed as a non-citizen first, section 6(2) provides that the obligations continue to apply “despite a later acquisition of citizenship”, until they have all been complied with and the Minister issues a certificate of compliance. Becoming a citizen does not wipe the slate.

There are class exemption orders from the licence for OECS citizens and for CARICOM Skills Certificate holders. There is no equivalent order for citizens by investment.

The stamp duty conflict

We are going to flag a discrepancy rather than paper over it.

On the face of the Stamp Act, Cap. 410, the conveyance charge is $2.50 per $100, and a further $5.00 per $100 is payable “by the vendor or transferor”. That is 2.5 per cent, 5 per cent on the seller, 7.5 per cent combined. We read the schedule directly and checked all four amending Acts; none alters the headline rates. Note that the schedule expressly allocates only the vendor’s 5 per cent; it does not name who bears the base 2.5 per cent, which falls on the purchaser by practice rather than by the words of the statute.

However, several widely used commercial sources state 7.5 per cent for the vendor and 2.5 per cent for the purchaser, making 10 per cent combined. The most likely explanation is that the statutory 7.5 per cent total has at some point been misattributed to the vendor alone and the error has propagated. The Inland Revenue Department publishes no rates on its stamp duty page, so we cannot settle it from an official source.

If you are selling, this is a difference of 2.5 per cent of the price and you should get it confirmed by local counsel rather than by any guide, including this one.

Sales tax on the transaction

Sales tax generally does not apply to a residential property transfer: the Schedule of exempt supplies covers sales of real property to the extent they relate to residential premises, and unimproved and agricultural land. It can arise on improved commercial property sold in the course of a taxable activity. And it does apply at 17 per cent to your lawyer’s fee, which people forget when budgeting, and to an estate agent’s commission where that agent is registered for sales tax.

The exit, which is the part to think hardest about

Here is the chapter’s central point, and we would rather you were annoyed by it now than surprised by it in five years.

There is no published data on citizenship by investment real estate resale outcomes in Antigua and Barbuda. No resale prices, no time to sale, no discount to purchase price, and no resale volumes. The Unit does publish counts of real estate applications, so acquisition activity is partly visible. What is entirely invisible is anything about the exit.

This is not a failure of our research. It is a documented gap. The International Monetary Fund’s 2025 paper on Eastern Caribbean citizenship programmes, which covers the region rather than Antigua specifically, states that “limited transparency obscures the total scale of ECCU CBI investments” and that while members generally disclose aggregate donation amounts, “information on direct project investments is largely lacking”. The same paper recommends that standardised ex-post assessments of citizenship project outcomes be created, a recommendation that only makes sense because they do not exist.

We searched Antigua’s 2025 and 2026 Article IV reports for resale, unsold, vacancy and property price. Zero hits in each. The Fund’s statistical annex lists citizenship programme investment inflows as a data gap. The regional central bank publishes no property price index. Antigua’s statistics division publishes no property price index.

The Unit’s own reports cannot help, by design. The Regulations require reporting of “the amounts of the purchase prices”, which is acquisition only. There is no obligation to report any disposal or resale price whatsoever. Even perfect compliance with the reporting duty would produce no resale data.

Even the industry’s own transparency benchmarking does not measure this. The 2024 index of citizenship programme transparency scores around thirty disclosure criteria and not one of them relates to resale or secondary market outcomes.

So when a developer or agent tells you what these units resell for, ask them for the source. There is no source. Any specific resale discount figure, any “average CBI property resells for X per cent”, any time-to-sale figure, is invented.

Why the exit is structurally difficult

It is worth understanding why the data does not exist, because the reason is also the risk.

A qualifying secondary market does exist, but it is deliberately narrow. The instrument permits a programme property to be resold once to satisfy another applicant, and not until five years have passed since the property was first used under the programme. Beyond that single permitted resale, the qualifying investment must be a purchase in a project approved by Cabinet on the application of a developer, and a private individual reselling their own unit is not a developer.

The consequence is that a given unit can serve two citizenship applications in its life and no more, and that if you are the second programme owner there is no third. When you sell, you are in most cases not selling to another citizenship applicant at a citizenship price. You are selling into the ordinary Antiguan open market, which is a thin, illiquid, high-end second-home market. Resale prices are therefore open-market prices, and nobody collects or publishes those either.

We should record one caveat in fairness. The consolidated 2016 Regulations are not published on the government legislation site, and Cabinet’s power to grant an exemption is discretionary and unpublished, so we cannot entirely exclude a contrary provision we have not seen.

Our view

Choose the real estate route if you want to own property in Antigua on its own merits and the citizenship is a bonus. Do not choose it because you have been told the investment is recoverable in five years. On the published evidence, nobody knows whether it is, and the people telling you it is have not looked.

The Fund route costs US$230,000 and is gone. The real estate route costs US$300,000 plus roughly 11 per cent in transaction costs, and is illiquid for at least five years with an unknown exit. On the numbers, the Fund route is the honest default unless you specifically want the asset.

Acquiring the citizenship is the beginning. This chapter covers keeping it, losing it, and whether your children get it.

Dual citizenship

Antigua and Barbuda permits dual citizenship. Section 115 of the Constitution provides that a person shall not, solely because they are a citizen of another country, be deprived of citizenship, refused registration, or required to renounce the other citizenship, and that an Antiguan passport shall not be refused or withdrawn on that ground.

Two caveats, and we have not seen either addressed elsewhere.

The first is textual. Section 115(1) is anchored to a person who “on 1st November 1981, is a citizen or entitled to be registered as such”. It is not plainly drafted as a free-standing right for people who acquire citizenship afterwards. Practice permits dual nationality generally and the Citizenship Act contemplates citizens who are also nationals of another country, so the practical answer is clear. But it is practice supported by a strong inference, not an unambiguous constitutional guarantee, and it deserves to be described that way.

The second is more concrete and matters to a specific group. Section 39(1)(a) of the Constitution disqualifies from election to the House of Representatives any person who is, “by virtue of his own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power or state”. Section 30(1)(a) does the same for appointment to the Senate, and there are corresponding provisions vacating a seat mid-term. There is no proviso and no exception. Voluntarily acquiring another nationality is an act of one’s own. If you ever contemplate standing for the Antiguan Parliament, take advice first.

Passing citizenship to children

This is the most consequential and least reported feature of Antiguan citizenship, and we flagged it in Chapter 6.

Section 113(b) of the Constitution confers citizenship at birth on a person born outside Antigua and Barbuda if, at the date of birth, either parent “is or would have been but for that parent’s death, a citizen by virtue of section 112 of this Constitution or paragraph (a) of this section”.

Antigua does not use the familiar “otherwise than by descent” formula. It uses a closed cross-reference to two routes only: section 112, which is the 1981 transitional cohort, and section 113(a), which is birth in the territory. There is a separate limb at section 113(c) for a child born abroad to a parent in Government service, which will not assist a citizen by investment.

A citizen by investment is a citizen by registration under the 2013 Act. That is neither of those two routes. A child born abroad to a citizen by investment therefore acquires nothing automatically.

The fallback is section 114(1)(f), which entitles “any person under the age of eighteen years who is the child, stepchild or [legally adopted] child of a citizen” to be registered on application, made by a parent or guardian, with an oath under section 117.

Read those two together and the practical rule is: you must actively register each child born abroad before their eighteenth birthday. If you do not, the entitlement lapses and there is no route back. Descent under section 113(b) is also one generation only, so a child who does acquire citizenship that way cannot pass it on either.

Separately, the Unit does operate a post-approval route for adding a future child of a dependent child, and a future spouse, at the fees in Chapter 4. That covers grandchildren through a dependent child. It does not cover your own later-born children, who go through section 114(1)(f).

Revocation

There are two separate regimes and citizens by investment are exposed to both.

Under the 2013 Act, section 4(1) permits the Minister to deprive a person of citizenship where they fail the day-count condition, used false identification documents, concealed material facts, made fraudulent representation, or have “sold or offered for sale” the document evidencing citizenship. Section 4(2): no refund of any investment, contribution or purchase price. There is a right of appeal to the High Court with counsel, and section 4(4) makes that decision final.

Under the general law, the Constitution permits Parliament to provide for deprivation of a citizen by registration where registration was obtained by false representation, fraud or wilful concealment of material facts, or on conviction in Antigua and Barbuda of treason or sedition. Section 8 of the Citizenship Act mirrors that exactly, and section 8 is the provision that applies to citizens by registration, which is what a citizen by investment is.

It is worth knowing that the equivalent provision for naturalised citizens, section 9, is materially wider: it reaches convictions anywhere in the Commonwealth for treason or sedition, convictions anywhere carrying seven years or more, convictions within five years of naturalisation carrying twelve months or more, disloyalty or disaffection shown by act or speech, trading with the enemy, and activities prejudicial to safety or public order. Citizens by registration are not subject to those wider grounds. That is a meaningful protection and it is rarely mentioned.

One thing that is not a ground under the general law: residence abroad. The old imperial provision allowing deprivation for prolonged residence outside the country was not carried across into the Citizenship Act. That is worth knowing, but do not read it as an all-clear, because the 2013 Act contains a live residence-based ground of its own in the day count, and that is the one that applies to you.

Procedurally, the Minister must be satisfied that continued citizenship is “not conducive to the public good” and must give written notice. A committee of enquiry is mandatory on request where the ground is one of the section 8 grounds, and discretionary for section 9. Note also that the Citizenship Act contains an ouster clause providing that the Minister’s discretion is not to be questioned. For a citizen by investment that clause is displaced by the 2013 Act, which gives an express right of appeal to the High Court with counsel and makes that decision final.

How secure is this in practice

Two honest observations.

Citizenship obtained cleanly, with full disclosure and properly evidenced funds, is secure. The revocation grounds are overwhelmingly about fraud and concealment, plus the day count. There is no discretionary power to revoke because policy changed.

But the day count is a live, recurring condition, checked at every five-year passport renewal, and the government has said it is already applying thirty days rather than five. If you acquire this citizenship intending never to visit Antigua, you are acquiring something you may not be able to keep.

You are buying citizenship of a real place with a real economy, and its condition is part of the risk. This chapter sets out the facts.

The currency peg

The East Caribbean dollar has been fixed at EC$2.70 to US$1.00 since 7 July 1976, when the currency moved off a sterling peg. That is fifty years unbroken, as of last month, and one of the longest-standing pegs anywhere in the world. The peg was originally set by the East Caribbean Currency Authority and has been maintained by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, which succeeded it in 1983, across eight member territories. In a region where a great deal else is uncertain, monetary stability is the thing Antigua has genuinely got right, and it is the reason the East Caribbean and United States dollar figures in this guide convert cleanly.

The economy

Tourism is the largest contributor to GDP. On the official 2024 figures at current 2018 prices, wholesale and retail accounted for 16.67 per cent of output, construction 13.74 per cent, and accommodation and food services 13.22 per cent, with hotels alone at 11.62 per cent. Financial intermediation was 10.70 per cent and public administration 7.87 per cent.

On arrivals, be careful which number you are quoting. The regional central bank records 1,139,465 visitors in 2024, a record, and 1,112,640 in 2025, a decline of about 2.4 per cent. The figure of around 1.3 million that circulates for 2025 was a December forecast, not an outturn. The 2026 Budget Statement uses a slightly higher 2024 figure of 1.19 million.

Construction has grown substantially, from about EC$291m in 2013 to about EC$712m in 2024 on a consistent basis, which is not unconnected to the citizenship programme.

How dependent is the government on this programme

This is the number that should shape how you read Chapter 11, so we give it precisely.

In 2025, on the figures in the 2026 Budget Statement, non-tax revenue was EC$289.7m, “including $157 million from the Citizenship by Investment Programme”, against total revenue and grants of EC$1.42bn. The programme was therefore about 11 per cent of all government revenue.

For 2026 the government has budgeted EC$120m of citizenship receipts within non-tax revenue of EC$240.7m, against total revenue and grants of EC$1.51bn: about 8 per cent. That is a budgeted decline of roughly 24 per cent against the 2025 preliminary outturn, although against the 2025 approved budget, which also carried EC$120m, the 2026 figure is flat. Either way, the government is budgeting well below what it actually collected last year.

The May 2026 Throne Speech put cumulative receipts at more than EC$2bn since 2013 and described the programme as worth more than 10 per cent of GDP. We report that as the government’s claim rather than as a fact, because the government’s own Estimates put citizenship receipts at about 1.3 per cent of GDP in 2024 and 2.5 per cent in 2025. The cumulative figure and the annual share are being conflated somewhere.

Two conclusions follow. Antigua cannot casually abandon this programme, which is why the European negotiation will be slow and hard. And it is not so dependent that the state falls over without it, which is why a negotiated tightening is more plausible than either capitulation or collapse.

Transparency, and a caveat

Section 5 of the 2013 Act requires the Minister to report to Parliament every six months. The most recent report published by the Unit covers 1 January to 30 June 2024 and was posted on 15 October 2024. Nothing has been published since. As at today, the most recent published report covers a period that ended more than two years ago.

It is worse than a simple gap. The Regulations require each report to be prepared within fourteen days of the half-year ending. In practice the reports for the first half of 2023, the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024 were all posted on the same day, 15 October 2024. Counting from then, five half-year periods are now unpublished.

This became a live political issue in July 2026, when an opposition senator told the Senate that no audit report on the Unit had been produced in over a decade and that audit and disclosure provisions had previously been removed from the citizenship legislation. The Prime Minister’s response in Parliament was that audits have been done but that he did not have the date of the last one. We report the exchange because it is on the record; we are not in a position to adjudicate it. It is also the clearest explanation of why the pending Bill contains the audit provisions described in Chapter 8.

If you are relying on the Unit’s public reporting to understand programme volumes, that source has stopped.

For context, the last published report showed 739 applications in the half-year: 611 to the Fund, 108 real estate, 18 to the university fund and 2 business, with US$62,975,000 in fund contributions received.

A note on the census

Treat all Antiguan population data as soft. The commonly quoted figure of 103,603 is not a 2024 measurement; it is a projection produced in 2021 from the 2011 census, and the same statistical office publishes a second series giving 103,793 and projects 106,365 for 2026. The last completed census was in 2011. The 2025 Population and Housing Census is still in the field, having been suspended in April 2026 around the general election and resumed in July.

The five Eastern Caribbean programmes are more alike than they were before the 2024 price harmonisation. What differentiates them now is family economics, the United States position, and speed.

Entry price

All five now sit at or above the US$200,000 floor. Antigua’s donation route is US$230,000 flat, with no family-size tiering. That single feature is the whole comparative case.

For a single applicant, Antigua is unremarkable and several neighbours are cheaper. For a family of four it is competitive. For a family of six, including dependent parents, it is usually the cheapest of the five, because the contribution does not move and the marginal cost is only processing and due diligence. Chapter 4 works that through.

The United States, which now dominates the comparison

This is the most important line in the table and it is the one that has changed most recently.

If United States access matters to you, the ranking is clear and Antigua is at the bottom of it with Dominica. If it does not, this table is close to irrelevant to your decision.

A sixth programme is coming

St Vincent and the Grenadines announced a citizenship programme for launch during 2026, with a residency requirement built in from the start. If it launches on those terms it will be the first Eastern Caribbean programme designed around the genuine link test that the United States and Europe are pressing on the existing five, which may make it the reference point rather than the newcomer.

Speed

Antigua has no expedited option. St Kitts and Nevis does. None of the five publishes a reliable processing time, so any comparison of standard timelines is comparing marketing claims rather than data. The one structural difference that is real is the availability of an accelerated route, and Antigua does not have one.

Rejection rates

On the European Commission’s 2024 figures, Antigua rejected 1.7 per cent of applications, the lowest of the five. Saint Lucia rejected 5.3 per cent and Dominica 6.5 per cent.

We would encourage you to read that in both directions. From an applicant’s perspective it means a well prepared application is very likely to succeed. From a regulator’s perspective a very low rejection rate is exactly what invites the scrutiny described in Chapters 10 and 11. It is a selling point today and it is part of the reason the programme is under pressure.

Residency

All five are moving in the same direction, towards requiring a genuine link. Antigua’s statutory requirement is five days in five years and the government says it is already applying thirty. St Kitts, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia are each dealing with the same European letter. Anyone marketing a Caribbean citizenship on the basis that you will never need to visit is selling you last decade’s product.

Family features unique or near-unique to Antigua

• Flat contribution regardless of family size.
• No due diligence fee at all for children under twelve.
• Dependent children up to and including age 30.
• Dependent parents and grandparents from age 55.
• Unmarried siblings of either spouse, with no upper age limit.
• A university fund route that bundles processing fees for six or more people.

Where we would send you instead

Honest answers, because they matter more than a table.

If your priority is United States access, look at Grenada for the E-2 route, or accept that no Caribbean programme gives you what a United States immigration route gives you.

If your priority is speed, look at St Kitts and Nevis.

If your priority is European residency rather than a Caribbean passport, look at the European programmes. A residence permit in an EU member state is not exposed to the visa suspension mechanism at all, because it is not a visa exemption. See our guides to the Portugal Golden Visa and the Greece Golden Visa, and our UAE Golden Visa guide if a low-tax residence base is the real objective.

If your priority is a large family at the lowest total cost, and United States access is not essential, Antigua is a strong answer and probably the strongest of the five.

For a route-by-route comparison across the region, see our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison and the St Kitts and Nevis complete guide.

Every one of these appears on multiple published pages about the Antiguan programme. Each is wrong, and we give the correction and the reason.

1. “The contribution went from US$100,000 to US$200,000 and then to US$230,000.” It went from US$100,000 to US$230,000 in a single step on 1 August 2024. The US$200,000 figure was the statutory amount all along, masked by a limited time offer.

2. “The real estate minimum is US$360,000.” It is US$300,000. The clean text of the 2024 instrument spells the amount out in words as well as numerals.

3. “Spouse due diligence is US$75,000.” It is US$5,000. The US$75,000 is a typographical error on one panel of the Unit’s own website, contradicted by every other table on the same site and by the statutory instrument.

4. “There are five investment options, including a charitable or non-profit route.” There are four. Regulation 8 is headed “Charitable Investments” and is routinely misread, but it is a power for the Minister to approve non-profit organisations to receive allocations from the National Development Fund. It is a disbursement power describing what the Fund may spend money on. It is not a way in.

5. “The 2024 Memorandum of Agreement is a binding regional treaty.” Article 10 says it “does not create legal obligations under international or domestic law” and “is not enforceable in any court of law”. What binds in Antigua is the domestic statutory instrument.

6. “Processing takes three to six months.” The Unit publishes no processing time for citizenship applications at all. Every figure of this kind we could trace originated on an agent’s marketing page. The only statutory timing rule is a duty to notify within three months, and one of the permitted notifications is that the application is delayed for cause, with no outer limit.

7. “There is an expedited option.” There is not. We searched the Regulations, every statutory instrument since 2016 and the entire Unit website for expedited, fast-track, urgent, priority and accelerated. No matches, no fee, no product.

8. “Iraq and Syria are restricted nationalities.” Neither is on Antigua’s published list, which contains six countries: Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Other programmes’ lists are different. Do not import them.

9. “The residency requirement is five days.” On the statute, yes. But the Prime Minister told Parliament in July 2026 that thirty days is already being applied administratively and that legislation is pending. Plan for thirty.

10. “Antigua issued a new biometric polycarbonate passport in 2026.” No government source supports this. The live application form is still the 2017 revision. What Cabinet approved in January 2026 was a replacement border management and e-visa system, which is a different thing entirely.

11. “The non-citizen land holding licence is 5 per cent.” It has been 7 per cent for freehold since the 2020 amendment replaced the whole schedule. Several major international property sites still publish the old figure.

12. “An Antiguan passport gives you CARICOM free movement.” It does not. Full free movement began on 1 October 2025 among four countries: Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Antigua and Barbuda is not among them and has not notified an intention to join.

13. “There is no way to resell a citizenship property into the programme.” There is, but exactly once, and not until five years after the property was first used under the programme. That is narrower than the marketing implies and wider than the sceptics claim.

A fourteenth, which is less a myth than an omission: a child born to you abroad after you acquire this citizenship does not become Antiguan automatically. See Chapter 14. This is the single most important thing missing from most published guides.

What is the cheapest way to get Antiguan citizenship in 2026?

The National Development Fund route at US$230,000. For a single applicant the total official cost, including processing, due diligence, the interview and a passport, is US$250,300. For a family of four it is US$268,200. Professional fees are additional and vary with your circumstances.

How long does the Antigua citizenship by investment process take?

Nobody can tell you honestly, because the Citizenship by Investment Unit publishes no processing time for citizenship applications. The only legal timing rule requires the Unit to notify your agent within three months that the application has been approved, denied, or delayed for cause. There is no outer limit on a delay for cause and there is no expedited option.

Do I have to visit Antigua and Barbuda?

Yes. The statute requires at least five days in Antigua and Barbuda during the five years after registration, and the Prime Minister told Parliament in July 2026 that thirty days is already being applied administratively with legislation pending. The day count is checked when you renew your passport, every five years. The oath of allegiance can be taken at an Antiguan embassy or consulate rather than in the country.

Can Antiguan citizens travel to the United States?

Not on a new visa in most categories. Presidential Proclamation 10998 suspended the entry of Antiguan nationals as immigrants and on B-1, B-2, F, M and J visas with effect from 1 January 2026. Visas issued before 31 December 2025 were not revoked and continue to be honoured. If United States access is central to your plans, Antigua is currently the wrong Caribbean programme.

Can Antiguan citizens travel to Europe without a visa?

Yes, 90 days in any 180, and that remains the position today. The European Commission wrote to the Prime Minister in June 2026 asking Antigua to phase the programme out by 1 June 2028, and a 2025 regulation made investor citizenship schemes a self-standing ground for suspending visa-free access. No formal suspension procedure has been commenced. Chapter 11 sets out our view on the risk.

How many countries can I visit visa-free with an Antiguan passport?

The Henley Passport Index for July 2026 gives 154 destinations accessible without a prior visa, ranking Antigua 24th. That breaks down as 119 visa-free, 28 visa-on-arrival and 7 requiring an electronic travel authorisation. It is not 154 visa-free countries. Note also that visa-free on paper is not always visa-free at the border: there have been reported refusals of Caribbean citizenship by investment passport holders at Norwegian airports since August 2025.

Do I need a visa for Canada with an Antiguan passport?

Yes. Antigua and Barbuda is a visa-required country for Canada. There is a narrow carve-out allowing an electronic travel authorisation instead, but only if you have held a Canadian visitor visa in the past ten years or hold a valid United States non-immigrant visa, the stay is six months or less, and you are travelling by air.

Is there any tax on my worldwide income if I become Antiguan?

Citizenship alone does not make you tax resident and does not create an Antiguan tax liability. Antigua abolished personal income tax in 2016 and has not reintroduced it. If you actually become resident, you would face sales tax at 17 per cent, property tax, social security and medical benefits contributions and an education levy, which together take roughly 13 to 15.5 per cent of an employed person’s earnings. Taking this citizenship does not change your tax position in your home country.

Will my children born later be Antiguan?

Not automatically. This is the single most misunderstood point about Antiguan citizenship. The Constitution confers citizenship at birth on a child born abroad only where a parent is a citizen under two specific provisions, neither of which covers citizenship acquired by registration under the 2013 Act. A child under eighteen who is the child of a citizen is entitled to be registered on application, but that right expires at eighteen. You must actively register each child born abroad before their eighteenth birthday.

Can I include my parents and my adult children?

Yes. Parents and grandparents of either spouse aged 55 and over qualify if fully supported, and children up to and including age 30 qualify. Unmarried siblings of either spouse also qualify, with no upper age limit, which is close to unique among these programmes. Because the contribution is flat, adding people is unusually cheap, and adding them later is unusually expensive.

Can I sell the property after five years and get my money back?

Possibly, but nobody can tell you at what price. There is no published data anywhere on resale outcomes for citizenship real estate in Antigua: no prices, no volumes, no time to sale. The International Monetary Fund confirmed in 2025 that information on these investments is largely lacking. The Unit reports acquisition prices only and has no duty to report disposals. Any specific resale figure you are quoted is invented.

Is dual citizenship allowed?

Yes, and there is no requirement to renounce another nationality. One caveat: holding another nationality by your own act disqualifies you from sitting in the Antiguan Parliament.

Can Antigua take my citizenship away?

Only on defined grounds: failing the day count, false documents, concealment of material facts, fraudulent representation, or selling the citizenship document. There is no power to revoke because policy changed. Deprivation carries no refund of your investment, and there is a right of appeal to the High Court whose decision is final. Notably, residence abroad is not a ground.

Every figure in this guide was verified against the sources below on 3 August 2026. Where a source is inconsistent with itself, or with another official source, we have said so in the relevant chapter rather than choosing the more favourable reading.

Legislation of Antigua and Barbuda

• Citizenship by Investment Act 2013, No. 2 of 2013. Assented 28 March 2013, Official Gazette Volume XXXIII No. 20 of 11 April 2013, commenced 4 September 2013 by Statutory Instrument 2013 No. 23.
• Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act 2016, No. 2 of 2016, assented 31 May 2016. Substituted the Schedule with the Citizenship by Investment Regulations 2016, which remain the operative rules, and repealed Act No. 7 of 2014.
• Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2016, No. 21 of 2016, assented 2 February 2017. Replaced sections 4(1) and 4(3) and inserted a new section 4(4). This is the deprivation and residency provision quoted in Chapters 8 and 14.
• Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act 2018, No. 10 of 2018.
• Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act 2020, No. 25 of 2020, assented 30 October 2020. Inserted section 4(5), the power to suspend the day-count requirement.
• Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50, Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Regulations 2024. House Resolution 18 July 2024, made 25 July 2024, Official Gazette Volume XLIV No. 43 of 25 July 2024. The operative pricing and fee instrument for every figure in Chapters 3 and 4.
• Earlier statutory instruments consulted: 2013 No. 24, 2014 No. 47, 2015 No. 16, 2017 No. 76, 2018 No. 16, 2019 No. 10, 2020 No. 7 and 2020 No. 85.
• Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority Agreement Act 2025, No. 18 of 2025, assented and gazetted 6 November 2025, carrying the 99-article Agreement as Schedule 1. Commenced by Statutory Instrument 2026 No. 45, circulated with Official Gazette No. 43 of 16 July 2026.
• Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026, gazetted for introduction in Official Gazette No. 42 of 9 July 2026, Notice No. 24. A Bill only; not law as at 3 August 2026.
• Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda 1981, Chapter VIII, sections 111 to 118 on citizenship, and sections 30 and 39 on parliamentary disqualification.
• Citizenship Act, Cap. 22, in particular sections 7 to 13.
• Income Tax Act, Cap. 212, sections 2, 32, 35, 39 and 40.
• Personal Income Tax Act 2005, No. 1 of 2005, and Personal Income Tax (Amendment) Act 2016, No. 8 of 2016, assented 23 June 2016.
• Antigua and Barbuda Sales Tax Act 2006, No. 5 of 2006, as amended by the Revenue (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023, No. 13 of 2023, gazetted 29 December 2023.
• Property Tax and Valuation Act 2006, No. 20 of 2006, and the Property Tax (Rates of Tax) Order 2024, Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 65, in force 1 January 2025.
• Stamp Act, Cap. 410, Schedule, and the four amending Acts of 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2019.
• Non-Citizens Land Holding Regulation Act, Cap. 293, as amended by Act No. 9 of 2018 and Act No. 32 of 2020, and the Non-Citizens Undeveloped Land Tax Act, Cap. 294.
• Unincorporated Business Tax Act 2016, No. 7 of 2016. Board of Education Act 1994, No. 11 of 1994, sections 13 to 15. Social Security Act, Cap. 408. Medical Benefits Act, Cap. 271.

All legislation was read on the Government of Antigua and Barbuda legislation portal, laws.gov.ag, and the Official Gazette at gazette.laws.gov.ag.

A caution we think readers deserve: there is no consolidated text of the Act or the Regulations. There is no Chapter number for the Citizenship by Investment Act in the revised edition. We also found that Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 10 amends a “regulation 15” that does not appear in the 2016 text and was never inserted by any instrument in the public index, which means at least one citizenship statutory instrument made between 2016 and 2019 is missing from the government’s own portal. Its content is unknown to us.

Government of Antigua and Barbuda

• Citizenship by Investment Unit, cip.gov.ag: investment options, schedule of fees, dependants, how to apply, frequently asked questions, passport, reports and news pages, all retrieved 3 August 2026.
• Restricted countries list, Cabinet decision of 26 February 2020, published on the Unit’s frequently asked questions page.
• Citizenship by Investment six-monthly report, 1 January to 30 June 2024, posted 15 October 2024. The most recent report published.
• Unit statements on United States visa restrictions, 19 December 2025, and on visa bonds, 7 January 2026.
• 2026 Budget Statement, delivered 4 December 2025, and the May 2026 Throne Speech.
• Office of the Prime Minister press release of 6 and 7 July 2026 publishing the European Commission letter of 25 June 2026.
• National Bureau of Statistics, statistics.gov.ag. Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission for the 30 April 2026 general election result.

Regional and international

• Memorandum of Agreement on citizenship by investment programmes, signed for Antigua and Barbuda by the Prime Minister on 20 March 2024, published by the OECS Commission. Article 2 on the price floor and Article 10 on legal effect are quoted in Chapter 2.
• Six Principles agreed at the first United States and Caribbean roundtable on citizenship by investment, 25 February 2023, St Kitts and Nevis. Implementation status from the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank statement of 5 September 2024 following the third roundtable.
• Eastern Caribbean Central Bank statements on the Interim Regulatory Commission, first meeting 24 September 2024, and on the Regulatory Authority.
• European Commission, Report under the visa suspension mechanism, COM(2025) 792 final, 19 December 2025, for rejection rates and regional application volumes.
• Regulation (EU) 2025/2441 of 26 November 2025, in force 30 December 2025, amending the visa suspension mechanism. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, Annex II.
• Presidential Proclamation 10998 of 16 December 2025, Federal Register Volume 90, No. 242, 19 December 2025, section 5(b). United States Department of State, Countries Subject to Visa Bonds, last updated 13 May 2026.
• United Kingdom Immigration Rules, Appendix Visitor: Visa National List and Appendix ETA National List. Statement of Changes HC 1715 of 19 July 2023 and HC 1691 of 5 March 2026.
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, entry requirements by country, modified 17 July 2026, and the electronic travel authorisation eligibility carve-out.
• German Federal Foreign Office visa requirement list, dated 3 June 2026, for the Schengen position. European Commission travel-europe portal for the Entry Exit System and ETIAS status, modified 17 July 2026.
• Henley Passport Index, 2026 edition, July 2026 global ranking, and its per-destination data for Antigua and Barbuda.
• OECD Global Forum, Peer Review Report on Exchange of Information on Request, Antigua and Barbuda, published 21 January 2026. OECD Peer Review of the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information, 2025 Update, published 2 December 2025. OECD list of residence and citizenship by investment schemes potentially high-risk for CRS circumvention.
• Council of the European Union, list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes: Annex I listing of 17 October 2023, move to Annex II of 8 October 2024, and removal of 17 February 2026.
• International Monetary Fund: Selected Issues Paper 2025/067 on Eastern Caribbean citizenship programmes, Antigua and Barbuda Article IV Country Reports 25/096 and 26/097, and DataMapper for GDP figures.
• CARICOM Secretariat statements on full free movement, 30 September 2025, and the communiqués of the 50th Heads of Government meeting, February 2026, and the 51st, July 2026.
• Eastern Caribbean Central Bank on the currency peg, and on visitor arrivals for 2024 and 2025.
• Antigua and Barbuda Statistics Division, gross domestic product by economic activity at current 2018 prices, 2011 to 2024.
• United States Department of State final rule on the visa bond programme, effective 3 August 2026, and the visa reciprocity schedule for Antigua and Barbuda as revised in early 2026.
• Financial Action Task Force plenary outcomes, June 2026, for the absence of Antigua and Barbuda from the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring.
• Antiguan press reporting of the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026 and of the Senate exchange on audits, July 2026, used and identified as press reporting rather than as an official record.
• Reports of entry refusals in Norway of Caribbean citizenship by investment passport holders since August 2025, and the Norwegian immigration authority denial of any policy change.

What we could not verify

In the interests of being useful rather than impressive, these are the things we looked for and could not confirm from a source we would rely on:

• Whether the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026 has passed the Senate or received assent, and the text of the Bill.
• Whether any Order was ever made under section 4(5) suspending the day-count requirement during the pandemic years.
• The current operative status of the suspension on Russian and Belarusian applicants, and whether the correct date is August 2022 or March 2023.
• The commencement date appointed inside Statutory Instrument 2026 No. 45, which is circulated as a print-only supplement.
• Whether the fifth ratification of the regional Authority agreement has been deposited, and who its officers are.
• Any government source at all for the mandatory interview policy, its age threshold or the US$1,500 fee. The Regulations contain only a discretionary interview power.
• Whether the vendor bears 5 or 7.5 per cent stamp duty, and who the statute intends to bear the base 2.5 per cent.
• Any published figure for the licence fee payable by an authorised representative.
• Whether Antigua and Barbuda participates in the ICAO public key directory.
• The scale of the reported Norwegian border refusals, which the Norwegian authorities deny reflect any policy change.
• The opposition allegations about unaudited citizenship funds, which we report as contested allegations and not as findings.

Speak to us

This guide is general information and not legal, tax or investment advice. Programme rules, fees and international arrangements change, sometimes quickly, and this is a period in which they are changing more than usual.

If you are weighing Antigua and Barbuda against the alternatives, or you want a cost estimate that reflects your own family and circumstances rather than a worked example, get in touch and we will give you a straight answer.

Written by Tom Purdy. Figures verified against primary sources on 3 August 2026.