Spain, Italy and Portugal are the three most-searched destinations for people who want to actually live in southern Europe — on a digital-nomad visa, a passive-income visa, or an investor route. Two of those investor routes changed dramatically: Spain abolished its golden visa entirely in 2025, and Portugal removed property from its golden visa back in 2023. On 2026-06-22 we re-verified all three countries’ long-stay residence programs against the official portals, removed Spain’s defunct program, corrected the renewal terms, and added source-backed refusal reasons to every program we reviewed.
Spain’s golden visa is gone — abolished 3 April 2025
Spain’s residence-by-investment scheme — the "golden visa," best known for the €500,000 real-estate route — has been abolished. Organic Law 1/2025, published in Spain’s Official State Gazette (BOE) on 3 January 2025, repealed Articles 63–67 of Law 14/2013 and ended the program effective 3 April 2025. No new applications are accepted; only files lodged before that date, and renewals by existing holders, continue. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez framed it as a housing-affordability measure. Because the program no longer exists for new applicants, we removed its page from the site rather than leave a visa nobody can apply for.
- If you were looking at Spain for residency, the live routes are the Spain Digital Nomad Visa (remote workers) and the Spain Non-Lucrative Visa (self-supporting, no work).
- Both are now correctly marked as renewable: the digital-nomad route can run to five years, and the non-lucrative visa renews in two-year blocks.
Portugal still has a golden visa — but not for property
Portugal’s golden visa, by contrast, is very much open — 2024 was a record year — but the route map changed. Since October 2023 (Law 14/2021, the "Mais Habitação" reform) the real-estate and €1.5 million capital-transfer options are gone. What qualifies now is investment funds (€500,000), scientific research (€500,000), a cultural or heritage donation (€250,000, or €200,000 in low-density areas) and job creation. The investor residence permit is issued for two years and is renewable.
- The Portugal Golden Visa page now records the post-2023 route set and lists the refusal grounds tied to the source-of-funds and qualifying-investment rules.
- Portugal’s non-investor routes — the D7 passive-income visa, the D8 digital-nomad visa and the D2 entrepreneur visa — were all re-verified, marked renewable, and given refusal reasons.
Italy’s digital-nomad and elective-residency visas: renewable, not one-off
Italy’s long-stay visas had been stored as non-extendable, which understates how they work. The digital-nomad / remote-worker visa (in force since April 2024) is a one-year residence permit that renews while you keep the €28,000 income and skilled-work conditions; the elective-residency visa for self-supporting residents renews yearly; and the work (Lavoro Subordinato) and student visas both lead to renewable permits. We flipped all four to renewable and added refusal reasons.
- See the corrected, renewable Italy Digital Nomad Visa and Italy Elective Residency Visa.
How we keep this honest
This post accompanies a data correction. Spain’s golden visa was a worst-class error to leave live — a program that no longer exists — so we deactivated it (the page now returns "not found"). For Italy, Portugal and Spain’s remaining routes, the residence permits had been marked non-extendable; we set the renewable flag where the permit is genuinely renewable, recorded the source and date, and added refusal reasons to every long-stay program reviewed, on 2026-06-22. Our full method is in the Editorial & Data Standards.