Golden & investor visas: open, tiered, or closed

How we built this tracker

• Status is the headline. The single most useful fact about a golden visa in 2026 is whether it still exists. We mark each programme open, open · tiered (a single route split into price bands, as Greece did in 2024), or closed, with the date of the latest major change. Many “best golden visa” lists still feature schemes that were abolished years ago.
• Residence vs citizenship. We tag whether a programme grants residence (a permit — most golden visas) or citizenship (a passport — the Caribbean, Türkiye, Egypt, El Salvador). They are very different products, legally and in price.
• The native figure is authoritative. Minimums are shown in the programme’s own currency for the cheapest qualifying route. Where multiple routes exist (funds vs donation vs property) we show the relevant ones. The “≈ USD” used for ordering is a single dated snapshot (1 EUR ≈ 1.14 USD, 1 AED ≈ 0.272, 1 SGD ≈ 0.74, 1 NZD ≈ 0.60; June 2026) — exchange rates move, the law is the figure in its own currency.
• Thresholds drift — and deadlines bite. Several floors are scheduled to rise: Panama’s US$300k real-estate route becomes US$500k after 15 October 2026, and Nauru’s single applicant rose from US$90k to US$115k on 1 July 2026. We re-verify and date these; old articles routinely quote superseded numbers.
• What we exclude. Pure tax-residence or “digital nomad” permits (ranked separately in our nomad-income study), retirement visas, and discretionary or unpublished schemes. We list a programme only where the status and floor can be sourced.