A curated feed of developments across investment migration: programme changes, policy news and notable coverage from industry and mainstream media, with our view on what each means for investors. Updated each weekday. Last updated 12 August 2026.
Grenada Bill Would Add a Residency Requirement, Possibly Retroactively
Grenada’s Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill 2026, taken up by the House of Representatives on 28 July and debated in the Senate on 31 July, would oblige citizens by investment to spend 30 days in the country within the first five calendar years after the certificate of citizenship is granted, countable across everyone named in the application, and would let the minister apply the requirement retroactively to pending applications at his or her discretion.
Our view: The bill is not law yet: commencement waits on an Order the minister must publish in the Gazette, and no such Order has appeared. The clause to watch is the retroactive one, because someone who files today on a no-residency understanding could find a presence obligation attached before a decision lands, which is the kind of mid-process change that has become normal across the Caribbean. Our Caribbean citizenship by investment comparison sets out where each programme currently stands on physical presence.
22 Countries Where Time Spent Abroad Can Cost You a Citizenship
A survey of 22 countries in which prolonged absence is by itself grounds to lose a nationality, whether it was acquired at birth, by naturalisation or by investment, with the loss happening automatically in nine of them and no notice served.
Our view: This matters most to clients who treat a second passport as a permanent asset that needs no maintenance. It is worth checking the retention rules of any nationality already held before adding another, because a presence obligation is far easier to plan around in advance than to remedy once a passport renewal has been refused.
Two US executive orders target birthright citizenship, including paid birth arrangements
Two orders signed on 6 August direct federal agencies to withhold recognition of citizenship from children born on US soil in defined categories where neither parent is a US citizen, among them cases where a parent paid to place the mother, or a surrogate, in the country to give birth; a second order hands the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act to refuse visas, revoke them and impose entry bars for birth tourism. Agencies have 30 days to publish implementation guidance, and unlike the earlier order struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2026, this one spares only children with a US citizen parent rather than also those with a lawful permanent resident parent.
Our view: Neither order touches EB-5 or the Gold Card, so the direct effect on the investment migration routes our clients use is nil, and it is worth saying that plainly before the headline does the work. What matters is narrower and more awkward: the citizenship order names no effective date and no prospective-only limit, so whether it reaches children already born is unresolved on the face of the text, and it sets out no procedure for a family to contest an agency finding that a payment occurred. The change from lawful permanent resident to citizen is the quiet one, because it moves green card families inside the scope of an order their predecessor status kept them out of. Litigation is expected and none had been filed at the time of writing, so treat this as a position to watch through the courts rather than a settled rule, and note the general lesson for anyone assembling a multi-jurisdiction plan around a child’s nationality: a birthright acquired in one country is only as durable as that country’s willingness to keep recognising it.
Turkey revokes 6,134 citizenships granted through its investment programme
Turkey’s Interior Ministry said in a statement published on 4 August that it has cancelled or withdrawn the citizenship of 6,134 people who acquired it through the investment route, made up of 1,413 principal investors plus the spouses and children who took status through them; 1,150 investors were found by land registry and tax inspectors to have completed collusive or irregular property transactions, while 263 were flagged on public order and national security grounds after naturalisation, with no fraud alleged against that second group. Those affected revert to foreigner status and, where the decision requires it, have one year to sell their Turkish property or the Treasury sells it for them.
Our view: The number to sit with is not 6,134 but the ratio behind it, because 1,413 investors became 6,134 people: under Turkish law a cancellation reaches the spouse and children who derived status from the principal, and dependants are not assessed separately on their own conduct. That is the risk families rarely price. Turkey has since routed citizenship valuations through a single state-owned valuer and removed the paper certificate from the applicant’s hands, so the specific method used here is closed, and the conduct is credibly located in the programme’s cheapest, highest-volume years rather than in the file being opened today. Two honest caveats remain. The ministry did not date the cancelled files, which would have been an easy reassurance to give had the answer been comfortable, and there is no public denominator, so what share of the programme this represents is not knowable. The practical lesson generalises well beyond Turkey: where an intermediary arranges the valuation that proves your investment, you are relying on their file rather than your own, which is why we set out how to run due diligence on a fund before you subscribe before capital moves.
Bulgaria bill would require permanent residents to spend six months a year in the country
The Council of Ministers approved a bill on 27 July, registered in the National Assembly on 28 July, that would withdraw Bulgarian permanent residence from any foreign national who spent less than six months and one day in the country during the previous calendar year, replacing a rule that bit only after twelve consecutive months of absence from the European Union as a whole. Investment thresholds are unchanged in substance and simply restated in euro at the fixed conversion rate following Bulgaria’s adoption of the currency on 1 January, with BGN 1 million becoming EUR 511,291.88. The bill sets no commencement date and contains no transitional provision for existing permit holders.
Our view: Bulgaria has been marketed for years on three things together, immediate permanent residence, no obligation to live there, and naturalisation after five years, and this bill would remove the middle one, which is the one doing most of the selling. Be careful about how far that is taken today. It is a draft, it has not been through committee or either reading, text routinely changes on the way through, and advisers telling clients the programme is finished are ahead of the legislature. Two things are worth watching rather than acting on: whether committee stage grandfathers existing holders, since as drafted the measure reaches spouses of Bulgarian citizens and long-settled foreigners as well as investors and that breadth is the likeliest source of opposition, and whether any exemption for investment routes survives, because the new provision as tabled contains none. Anyone already close to five years and eligible to naturalise has a straightforward reason to move now, since losing the permit would reset the qualifying clock. More broadly, the presence requirement is the term that decides whether a residency route fits an actual life rather than a spreadsheet, and it is where European programmes differ most: ours is set out for the lightest of them in our Portugal Golden Visa guide.
US visa bond made permanent, with refundable bonds of up to USD 20,000 for 50 countries
The US State Department has confirmed that its visa bond pilot becomes a permanent programme, requiring B-1 and B-2 applicants who hold passports from 50 listed countries to post a refundable bond of USD 10,000, USD 15,000 or USD 20,000, with USD 15,000 the usual amount and the money returned on timely departure.
Our view: Three of the five Caribbean citizenship-by-investment countries are on the list, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Grenada, as is Vanuatu, while Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia are not. Most investors hold another passport and would travel on that instead, so the direct cost is usually limited, but it is a plain reminder that what a second citizenship is worth is decided by other governments and can be repriced at short notice, which is why we set out what Caribbean passports actually open rather than quoting a headline visa-free count.
Paraguay granted 29,765 residencies in the first half of 2026, up 81 per cent
Paraguay’s migration directorate approved 29,765 residencies between January and June 2026 against 16,456 in the same period of 2025, on 33,243 applications, with Brazilians accounting for 76 per cent of the total.
Our view: This is a high-volume, low-cost regional market rather than a comparable to the programmes our clients use, and most of the growth is Brazilians moving next door, so read it as evidence of where mobility demand is rising rather than as a shortlist candidate. It is still worth watching, because rapid growth in cheap permanent residence is the pattern that has preceded rule tightening in several other countries.
HMRC data shows UK non-dom numbers fell only 1 per cent before abolition
HMRC figures for the final full year of the non-dom regime show the population fell from 83,100 to 81,900, while the group paid GBP 9.7 billion in income, capital gains and employment taxes, up 9 per cent and the highest total in records going back to 2008.
Our view: The predicted exodus has not yet appeared in the official data, because these figures cover the year to April 2025, before the regime was abolished, and the government says reliable post-reform estimates will not be published until next year, so treat both the alarm and the reassurance with caution for now. The practical point for anyone weighing a move is that leaving the UK tax net turns on where you become resident and how your assets are held, not on holding a residence permit elsewhere: we set out what a UAE residence does and does not change in our guide to the UAE Golden Visa and tax.
Italy suspends Schengen free movement with Spain after Ceuta crossings
Italy’s Interior Ministry reinstated document checks at air and sea borders with Spain on 31 July, using Article 25a of the Schengen Borders Code, which allows a member state to reimpose internal controls for one month without prior notification and for no more than three months in total; the checks are described as targeted and selective on third-country nationals arriving from Spain, EU citizens are not affected, and the European Commission rejected the wider Italian call to suspend Spain from the Schengen Area, noting that no mechanism to do so exists. Commission records list eight Schengen states currently operating reintroduced internal controls: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden.
Our view: Schengen mobility is the benefit most often put at the top of the sales sheet for a European golden visa, and this is a reminder that it is a permission rather than a property right: a member state can reimpose checks at a month’s notice, and eight are doing so today. Note who the checks fall on, because it is the group our clients join. A Portuguese or Greek residence card holder is a third-country national, so they are on the side of the counter where documents get inspected, not the side that walks through. That is an argument for choosing a programme on the strength of its residence and naturalisation terms rather than on travel convenience, which is how we set out the trade-offs in our Portugal Golden Visa guide. What to watch is whether the one-month measure is extended towards the three-month ceiling, and whether other states copy it.
When a second citizenship makes travel harder instead of easier
An analysis of two United States rules that cut in opposite directions for holders of more than one nationality. Presidential Proclamation 10998, dated 16 December 2025 and in force from 1 January 2026, places nationals of Antigua and Barbuda and of Dominica under partial entry restrictions covering immigrant visas and the B-1, B-2, F, M and J categories, and names citizenship by investment granted without a residency requirement as the reason; a dual national who travels on a passport from a country the proclamation has not designated is exempt. The 2015 Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act works the other way, removing ESTA eligibility from citizens of visa-waiver countries who also hold Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, North Korean or Cuban nationality, including nationality acquired by descent and never used.
Our view: This is the detail that decides whether a Caribbean passport does what a buyer expects, and it is worth being blunt about it. If the main reason for buying is easier access to the United States, Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica currently do the opposite, and the exemption only rescues people who already hold a third, undesignated nationality, which is precisely the group with the least need for the passport. The second rule matters for a different reason: it follows the person rather than the document, so no purchase can remove it. Anyone whose plan rests on US access should establish which of these two rules applies to them before committing capital, not after. Our guide to Caribbean passport travel access sets out what these programmes do and do not deliver.
Britain’s sterling millionaire count falls 59 per cent in four years
The Adam Smith Institute’s tracker, updated on 28 July, puts the number of British residents holding at least GBP 1 million in individual net worth at 442,000, down from a peak of 1.07 million in 2021 and the lowest count since 2008, with falling real asset values, weak household saving and the emigration of wealthy residents named as the three drivers.
Our view: Read the number carefully before repeating it. The tracker measures net worth in constant 2025 prices, so a large part of that fall is pension pots and high-end London property revaluing downwards rather than people leaving, and emigration is the third factor the institute names, not the first. What the data does support is the direction of travel, and for British clients the honest question is not whether an exodus is under way but whether their own position has changed since the non-dom regime closed in April 2025.
US State Department weighs bonds of up to USD 100,000 on immigrant visas
The Wall Street Journal reported the internal discussions on 15 July and the department confirmed a review the next day; the regulation already on the books at 8 CFR 213.1(b) sets a floor of USD 1,000 and no ceiling, so a six-figure bond would need no fresh rulemaking, although nothing has reached the Federal Register and neither the visa categories nor the countries covered have been settled.
Our view: This runs alongside the DHS public charge rule we carried on 18 July, and the same reading holds: a bond is asked for only where an applicant would otherwise fail the public charge test, which is not the EB-5 or Gold Card profile. Consular guidance has long told officers to use bonds sparingly, so what to watch is whether that guidance is rewritten, not the headline figure.
Saint Lucia says Brussels now wants Caribbean citizenship programmes ended, not fixed
Deputy Prime Minister Ernest Hilaire, who holds Saint Lucia’s citizenship by investment portfolio, told reporters in Castries that his government had delivered the legislation, the value metrics and the regional regulator the European Commission asked for, and that what has changed since is the Commission’s objective rather than the programmes; separately, Dominica’s opposition Freedom Party put citizenship by investment at 56.7% of budgeted recurrent revenue for 2025/2026, leaving non-programme revenue of EC$456.2 million against recurrent spending of EC$679.9 million.
Our view: The Dominica figure is the most useful number published so far, because it explains why a negotiated phase-out is harder than it looks: a government cannot simply agree to remove more than half its recurrent revenue. One caution on the reasoning being used across the region. The Court of Justice ruling against Malta in April 2025 turned on a member state granting EU citizenship, which is a different legal question from whether the EU withdraws visa-free access from a third country, and treating the two as the same thing overstates how settled the Caribbean outcome is. The dates that actually matter are September, when Brussels expects reinforced vetting and the regional regulator becomes operational, and December, when the next visa suspension mechanism report is due.
Jamaica’s investor residency plan edges towards Parliament with terms still undisclosed
Draft amendments that would create a Jamaican economic residency programme for foreign investors are being vetted for submission to the legislation committee, according to the government’s latest Form 18-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, but the minimum investment, the job creation targets, the qualifying assets and the start date all remain unpublished more than four years after the original implementation target.
Our view: There is nothing here an investor can price yet, and the file has sat at roughly the same stage in successive filings since 2023, so this is one to watch rather than one to plan around. Worth noting too that it is permanent residency and not citizenship: naturalisation would still require five years of actual residence in Jamaica, a materially different proposition from the Caribbean citizenship programmes it will inevitably be compared with.
Vanuatu’s citizenship revenue hits a record two years after losing Schengen access
Vanuatu’s citizenship by investment programmes brought in VT11.4 billion, around USD 95.5 million, in the first half of 2026, roughly 39 per cent of government revenue excluding donor funds and a pace that would clear the 2020 annual record of USD 132.6 million, despite the EU removing the country’s visa-free Schengen access in December 2024.
Our view: The read-across being drawn is that demand shifts towards speed when European access disappears, which matters to the five Caribbean states the European Commission has asked to wind their programmes down by June 2028. Two cautions before anyone treats Vanuatu as the template: the IMF has questioned what these receipts actually measure, and a passport bought mainly for mobility is worth less to its holder once the mobility goes, whatever it does for the issuing treasury.
Nevis premier says reform was never going to save Caribbean citizenship programmes
Premier of Nevis Mark Brantley told his monthly press conference on 23 July that Caribbean governments misjudged the European Union, which he believes objects to citizenship by investment in principle rather than in practice, and he pointed to Malta and Vanuatu as the warnings the region failed to read.
Our view: This is the first time a sitting Eastern Caribbean leader has publicly conceded that further reform is unlikely to change Brussels’ position, which matters more than the rhetoric suggests. Applicants considering a Caribbean passport should treat the June 2028 phase-out date in the EU’s letter as the working planning assumption, factor in the interim safeguards due in September 2026, and be clear that visa-free Schengen access is the part of the proposition most exposed to change.
The birthright citizenships children can lose in early adulthood without realising
A cluster of countries, concentrated in Northern Europe and East Asia, treats nationality held from abroad as provisional, so children born with it can lose it automatically in early adulthood unless they register, demonstrate ties to the country, or both before a set birthday.
Our view: Families build multi-passport portfolios so the next generation inherits options, and retention rules are the quiet way those options disappear, usually with no notice from the government concerned and often with no route back. If your children hold a nationality by descent alongside a residency or citizenship you have acquired by investment, the retention conditions belong in the same file as the programme paperwork and should be diarised, not remembered.
China sets 20% personal income tax on offshore trusts, with a 90-day window to settle
The Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration released detailed rules on 24 July confirming that personal income tax of 20% applies to offshore trusts at the establishment, operating and liquidation stages, with retroactive enforcement reaching back three years and taxpayers given 90 days from 24 July 2026 to settle outstanding liabilities on distributions from 2025 and earlier.
Our view: This matters well beyond mainland families with Hong Kong structures. It is the clearest sign yet that offshore holding structures alone no longer deliver the privacy or the deferral they once did, and that the variable clients can still control is personal tax residency rather than where the assets sit. Anyone weighing a residence programme partly for tax reasons should be getting advice on the source-country exit position first and the destination second, because the sequencing is where the expensive mistakes happen. We are not tax advisers and the detail here needs a specialist.
Golden visa cities ranked as pure property: the Gulf leads, European favourites trail
IMI’s Global Property Scoreboard rates seven cities long associated with golden visa real estate on investment fundamentals alone, placing Abu Dhabi first and Dubai second while Lisbon, Madrid and Athens finish near the bottom on yields, costs and demand.
Our view: A useful corrective: the permit and the property are separate purchases, and the cities with the strongest residency stories are not always the strongest property markets. Anyone buying real estate for a residency route should judge the asset on its own merits, especially exit liquidity, rather than the visa attached to it.
Advisers say the easy era of citizenship by descent is over
IMI Daily’s weekly round-up collects adviser commentary from Mansion Global, Forbes and Fortune reporting that ancestry routes to EU passports now come with stricter language requirements, document checks stretching back generations and processing times running to five or six years.
Our view: Families with a European grandparent often assume the ancestry route is the cheap, quick option; increasingly it is neither. Descent is still worth exploring where the paper trail is strong, but anyone who needs certainty on timing should weigh it honestly against residency routes such as the Portugal golden visa before committing years to a queue.
UK academics propose 2 per cent minimum wealth tax on households above GBP 100 million
A report by academics at King’s College London, the Paris School of Economics and Berkeley proposes a minimum annual tax equal to 2 per cent of total wealth on UK households above GBP 100 million, estimating GBP 10.4 billion of revenue in 2026 from fewer than 1,000 households, with liability continuing for up to ten years after leaving the UK.
Our view: A proposal rather than policy, but it arrives amid renewed wealth-tax momentum in Westminster, and the design detail that matters most is the ten-year tail that would follow families after departure. UK families with meaningful exposure should watch the autumn fiscal debate closely; the report itself argues for rapid implementation precisely to pre-empt relocation.
Kenya revives golden visa plan to court foreign investors
Kenya’s investment agency says it is exploring a residency-by-investment route granting permanent residency to foreign investors, reviving a 2019 idea, though no investment threshold, qualifying sectors or draft legislation yet exist.
Our view: This is a direction of travel, not a programme; immigration law sits outside the agency’s remit and nothing has reached Parliament. Investors wanting Kenyan residency today still use the Class G investor permit from USD 100,000, so treat the golden visa as a prospect to monitor.
Indonesia passes financial centre law with 0% tax for golden visa holders in the zone
Indonesia’s parliament passed a law creating an International Financial Center that grants qualifying golden visa holders non-resident tax status and a full personal income tax exemption inside the zone, though the government has not yet fixed where the zone will sit.
Our view: The exemption only holds while the visa is valid and the holder lives in an enclave Indonesia has still to locate, so read it as a statement of intent rather than something to plan around. The golden visa itself grants neither residency nor a citizenship path, which limits its usefulness for families seeking a durable Plan B.
US passport slips to tenth in global mobility ranking
Forbes reports the US passport now sits tenth on the Henley Passport Index with visa-free access to 180 destinations, down from joint first in 2006, behind 36 other countries and twelve destinations short of top-ranked Singapore.
Our view: A soft-power story with a hard edge for American families, and it tracks the surge in US enquiries the wider industry is reporting. For many clients a second passport is now about restoring mobility a single US document no longer guarantees, not chasing exotic travel.
Ethiopia sets USD 10 million threshold for its 10-year golden visa
Ethiopia’s Immigration and Citizenship Service will issue a 10-year golden visa requiring at least USD 10 million invested, or USD 5 million with substantial local job creation, plus a USD 10,000 processing fee, with a full launch planned before the 2026/27 fiscal year ends.
Our view: At USD 10 million this is one of the world’s most expensive residence-by-investment routes and an outlier for Africa, and it grants only a renewable residence card with no announced path to permanent residency or citizenship. One to watch rather than act on until the operational directive fixes the job-creation and revocation terms.
US hands immigration officers wider power to deny green cards
A DHS final rule published on 16 July revives the “public charge” self-sufficiency test from 18 September, restoring officers’ case-by-case discretion to refuse green cards over likely reliance on public assistance.
Our view: Alarming headline, narrow effect for investors: EB-5 and Gold Card applicants were never the group a public charge finding targets. It matters mainly for family members without independent means, so structure the household’s applications with that in mind.
Antigua tables CIP amendments: independent audits and a 30-day residency requirement
Antigua and Barbuda has introduced amendments to its Citizenship by Investment Act that would subject the citizenship unit to annual independent financial audits and raise the post-citizenship residency requirement from five days to 30, aligning the programme with the incoming regional regulator ECCIRA.
Our view: With the EU’s June 2028 deadline hanging over the Caribbean programmes, visible regulatory hardening is their best argument for survival. For applicants the practical change is modest but real: plan for a genuine month on the island after approval, not a token visit.
Dubai issued about 66,000 golden visas in the first half of 2026
Dubai’s GDRFA granted roughly 66,000 golden visas alongside one million new residence permits in the first half of 2026, a pace that would annualise to about 132,000 grants, below the 2023 record but above every earlier year.
Our view: The striking pattern is holders of standard two-year permits trading up to ten-year status, which suggests existing residents increasingly see Dubai as permanent rather than a posting. For new arrivals the golden visa remains the cleanest route to long-term security in the UAE.
New York’s shrinking millionaire share costs it up to USD 12 billion a year
New York’s slice of America’s millionaire households fell from 12.7 per cent in 2010 to 8.7 per cent in 2022, the steepest relative decline of any state, with think-tank estimates putting the forgone income tax at USD 10.7 billion to USD 12 billion a year.
Our view: Hard numbers behind a trend we see in enquiries: American wealth is increasingly mobile, first between states and then across borders. State tax pressure is often the first step in a family’s wider relocation conversation.
US and CARICOM sign biometric data-sharing pact covering Caribbean CBI programmes
The US Department of Homeland Security and CARICOM IMPACS signed a memorandum on 10 July to share biometric data for immigration vetting across the region, the first multilateral arrangement of its kind for DHS, with the five Eastern Caribbean citizenship programmes inside its scope.
Our view: Deeper US vetting cuts both ways: it raises the compliance bar in a way that strengthens the programmes’ case to sceptical partners, and it gives applicants another reason to expect their history to be checked thoroughly. Honest applicants lose nothing; the era of light-touch Caribbean due diligence is clearly over.
Caribbean CBI states send joint response to EU phase-out demand
The five Eastern Caribbean heads of government met in Roseau on 10 July and agreed to send a high-level mission to Brussels, their first collective answer to the EU’s request to wind down the programmes by June 2028.
Our view: Notably, the statement neither refuses the demand nor accepts it; its firmest language concerns the terms of any transition. Existing citizenships are unaffected, and prospective applicants should watch the Brussels talks rather than assume either a shutdown or a reprieve.
End CBI by June 2028 or risk Schengen access, EU writes to Caribbean states
According to Antigua and Barbuda’s government, the European Commission has written to the five Caribbean citizenship-by-investment states asking them to wind down their programmes by June 2028 or risk losing visa-free access to the Schengen area.
Our view: This is the clearest deadline yet in the EU’s long-running pressure campaign. Existing citizenships are not affected, but anyone considering a Caribbean passport primarily for European mobility should weigh timing carefully and take advice on how the programmes may respond.
New Zealand widens Business Investor Work Visa rules
From 6 July, franchise businesses qualify as acceptable investments, purchases can be made through a New Zealand resident entity, and lawfully earned gifted capital is now an acceptable source of funds.
Our view: A clear loosening after very limited uptake in the visa’s first year. New Zealand is quietly becoming more accessible to business migrants while much of Europe moves the other way.
The tax problems of owning a home abroad
IMI Daily analyses the tax pitfalls that come with buying property in residency and citizenship destinations, from local wealth and property taxes to capital gains and succession exposure.
Our view: Choosing a residency route on visa rules alone is a common and expensive mistake. The tax wrapper around the asset matters as much as the permit, and it differs sharply by country; take cross-border tax advice before committing, not after.
DHS unveils long-awaited EB-5 regulations: USD 1.4m tier and two-year capital rule
The US Department of Homeland Security has published new EB-5 rules, including a USD 1.4 million investment tier, a two-year at-risk capital requirement and a new sanctions regime.
Our view: The most consequential EB-5 change in years. US-bound investors should reassess their timing and structuring with qualified US counsel before committing capital under the new framework.
Saudi cabinet approves foreign property ownership zones in Riyadh, Jeddah and the holy cities
Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved designated zones in which foreign nationals may own real estate, including in Riyadh, Jeddah and areas of the holy cities.
Our view: Property liberalisation has historically preceded broader residency openings in the Gulf, as the UAE showed. Investors with GCC exposure should watch how this interacts with Saudi’s Premium Residency.
Portugal golden visa funds draw three times more subscriptions than redemptions
Despite the 2026 nationality law extending the citizenship timeline, Portuguese golden visa investment funds are reporting roughly three new subscriptions for every redemption.
Our view: Demand for the fund route is proving resilient, which matches what we set out in our Portugal Golden Visa guide: the programme’s fundamentals still stand for investors whose horizon is residency first, citizenship second.
UK debates a GBP 5 million investor visa
Reports suggest the UK government is actively debating a new investor visa at around GBP 5 million, with observers putting meaningful odds on it happening.
Our view: A UK re-entry would reshape the European landscape overnight given the depth of demand for London. Nothing to act on yet, but worth tracking closely if the UK is on your shortlist.
Portugal golden visa consortium files Ombudsman complaint for 1,260 clients
A consortium of law firms has lodged a complaint with Portugal’s Ombudsman on behalf of 1,260 golden visa applicants over processing delays and the effect of the nationality law changes.
Our view: Processing friction in Portugal is real and we say so plainly in our guide. Applicants should build realistic timelines into their planning rather than rely on statutory processing periods.
Latvia moves to scrap most golden visa routes; president sends law back
Latvia’s parliament voted to abolish the property, securities and deposit routes from 1 January 2027, adding a EUR 150,000 fund option, before the president returned the law for a second reading in the autumn.
Our view: Latvia has been Europe’s least expensive residency door and that door is now half-closed. Anyone considering it should follow the autumn session; late applications under current rules may still be possible.
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