I have spent the last decade inside these programmes, and more than €25M has moved through the ones I work on.
Not as a broker. I don’t place people into other operators’ products for a commission. I run my own structures in two of these countries, which is the reason I can tell you how these things behave from the inside rather than from a brochure. What follows is the comparison I would want to read if the capital were mine.
Europe is closing its doors one by one, and the six programmes that remain barely resemble each other. This guide is the operational breakdown of all six: what each one actually is, what it truly costs, and how to tell which one fits you.
Below is the complete map:
- The frame most comparisons get wrong: a Golden Visa as an option, not a purchase
- The six programmes, one by one: Italy, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus, each with routes, taxes, timelines, and an honest verdict
- Which tax regime fits which person, and why a flat tax only pays above a certain income
- The two layers of cost nobody publishes, and the red flags that should stop you before you wire anything
It’s built to do two things: help you identify the programme that fits your situation, and protect you from the ones that don’t.
Read the thesis to understand why this market only moves in one direction. Then find yourself in the profiles, each mapped to a programme and a tax regime. If citizenship without relocating is the goal, you can go straight to the Portugal section. The decision framework at the end applies to everyone.
While I aimed to be complete and exhaustive, I opted for being concise and clear: this means that for implementing your actual plan, you’ll most likely need specific counsel. So please don’t skip that step before taking action.
Table of contents
- 01The thesis: you are shopping a closing marketFree below
- 02What you are actually buying: the option, explained
- 03How I evaluate any programme: three filters, four tests
- 04Italy: the rational default, €250K entry
- 05Greece: bought for the tax regime, not the passport
- 06Portugal: citizenship without relocating, the only one
- 07Hungary, Malta, Cyprus: the hedge, the niche, the durability winner
- 08The edge cases: Turkey, Bulgaria, Latvia, Andorra, São Tomé
- 09The comparison: six programmes on one page, and tax by profile
- 10The two costs every programme carries, and the red flags
- 11The decision framework: five questions, three archetypes
- 12The full webinar, plus the 61-slide deck
The thesis: you are shopping a closing market
In April 2025, Spain terminated its Golden Visa. Two weeks later, the EU’s top court struck down Malta’s passport scheme and bound every member state to the precedent.
Those two moments were not isolated. Over the past four years, eleven of the seventeen major European residency-and-citizenship-by-investment programmes have closed. The UK shut its investor visa after 28 years. Ireland closed with one day’s notice. Portugal eliminated its real estate route and then doubled its citizenship timeline from five years to ten. Greece tripled its threshold to €800,000 in the areas people want most. Italy tripled its flat tax within eighteen months. Six core programmes remain: Italy, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Malta, and Cyprus.
This is a ratchet, not a cycle, and the distinction matters. A cycle would imply conditions loosen again eventually. A ratchet turns one way only. Higher prices, slower clocks, narrower terms than 2022, and not a single one of these moves has been reversed. The set will keep shrinking, and the survivors keep repricing.
There is a second force pointing the same way. In June 2026 the European Parliament approved the EU’s new Return Regulation. Borders are hardening, biometric entry-and-exit tracking is arriving, and the era of running a European life on tourist stamps, topped up creatively, is ending. If you hold a valid residence permit or an EU passport, none of this is aimed at you. But the same political instinct that is closing golden visas is the one tightening the borders. Europe is becoming more selective about who gets to be here, and on what terms.
In that world, a secured right appreciates. Tourist access is rented: surveilled, revocable, granted at the border’s goodwill. Residency is a right you hold. Citizenship you own outright. The further up that ladder you are before the next tightening, the better positioned you are, and history suggests the next tightening is a matter of when, not whether.
One more thing the placement industry will not tell you, because there is no commission on it: a European Golden Visa is an option on European residency, not a tax product and not a relocation contract. You are buying the right, without the obligation, to live, work, bank, and school your kids in Europe, and one day pursue citizenship. You can hold that right for years and never use it. That is the point, not a flaw. And for some readers, the honest answer inside this guide is to do nothing yet, or to check a citizenship-by-descent claim first at a fraction of the cost.
Let me be clear though, the takeaway isn’t that a Golden Visa is for everyone. It isn’t.
For specific profiles, the UK ex-non-dom on a shortening clock, the founder before an exit, the family that wants EU citizenship as the endpoint, the retiree with a foreign pension, the combination of price, optionality, and a closing window makes 2026 an unusually good moment to decide, in either direction. The rest of this guide is about finding out whether you’re one of them, and if so, which of the six doors is yours.
- 11 of 17
- European programmes closed since 2022. Six remain.
- €250K
- Where entry still starts, in Italy, Greece and Hungary
- 6
- Programmes compared: routes, taxes, timelines, verdicts
- 0
- Third-party products brokered. I run my own, so I know how they work.
What you are actually buying
Before comparing a single programme, one distinction that the residency industry constantly blurs, and that costs people real money: the visa never triggers the tax break. Every favourable regime in this guide, Italy’s flat tax, Greece’s €100K election, Cyprus’s non-dom, is a benefit you claim by becoming a tax resident, which is a separate decision with its own requirements. The visa gives you the residence. It does not, by itself, give you the tax treatment.
Keep those two ideas separate and most of the confusion in this market disappears. The sound order of operations is to match the regime to your income profile first, and only then to choose the visa that enables it. Done in reverse, this exercise produces expensive mismatches, and the industry produces them every day.
The second distinction is the one I have already introduced: you are buying an option, and an option is priced on four things together. The upside if you exercise it. The cost of holding it, which is capital locked, returns forgone, and fees. The time horizon. And the risk, including the risk that the programme itself closes before you act.
Members only from here
