Portugal vs Spain Golden Visa 2026: Why Spain Is Gone and What Replaces It

If you came here to choose between the Portuguese and Spanish golden visas, the choice has already been made for you. Spain abolished its golden visa on 3 April 2025. There is no investment route into Spanish residency anymore, at any price. Portugal’s golden visa survives, the EUR 500,000 fund route is open, and for most readers it is now the only investment-migration path into the EU that both programs once offered. So the honest framing is not “which golden visa wins.” It is “Spain is gone, is Portugal the replacement, and if you specifically wanted Spain, what non-investment routes are left.”

The head-to-head, stated plainly

There is no live Spanish golden visa to compare. Spain’s Congress voted to scrap the scheme, and the repeal entered force on 3 April 2025. Since that date no new application can be filed. The government’s stated reason was housing: Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez argued the visa turned homes into a speculative asset in Madrid, Barcelona and the islands. Existing holders keep their permits and can renew under the original conditions, and applications filed before the cutoff are still being processed. But for anyone deciding today, Spain by investment does not exist.

Portugal kept its program and, just as importantly, restructured the rules around the property-driven abuse that sank Spain. Since the 2023 reform, Portugal’s golden visa no longer accepts residential real estate. The headline route is now a EUR 500,000 investment in a qualifying Portuguese venture capital or private equity fund, held for a minimum of five years. So the two countries actually converged on the same diagnosis. Spain killed the program; Portugal killed the property and kept the program.

What Portugal now costs and how long it takes

The fund route is EUR 500,000 in capital, plus government and processing fees, legal fees, and fund management and subscription costs that typically add tens of thousands of euros over the holding period. Budget realistically for total outlay well above the headline number once fund fees compound across five-plus years.

The bigger 2026 change is the citizenship timeline. Portugal passed a revised Nationality Law: Parliament approved it on 1 April 2026, the President signed it on 3 May 2026, and it was published as Lei Organica n.o 1/2026, entering force on 19 May 2026. The required residence period for naturalisation rose from five years to ten years for most nationalities, and seven years for nationals of the EU and the Portuguese-speaking CPLP countries. That is a structural shift. The five-year passport that made Portugal famous is gone for new applicants.

Two cushions matter. First, permanent residency is still available after five years, which gives an independent long-term right to live and work in Portugal and move within the Schengen Area, without keeping the investment going. Second, the residency clock for new applicants now counts from the date AIMA, the immigration agency, physically issues the first residence card. Given AIMA’s well-documented processing backlog, the gap between paying and the clock starting is a real planning risk. Coordinate timing with immigration counsel before wiring funds.

Physical presence stays light: an average of roughly seven days per year in Portugal, among the lowest in Europe, which is the feature that makes the program work for people who do not intend to relocate full time.

The Spanish alternatives, honestly assessed

If you wanted Spain specifically, two non-investment residence permits do most of the work the golden visa used to, with one crucial difference: they require you to actually live there.

The Digital Nomad Visa (DNV), created under the 2023 Startup Act, is for remote workers and freelancers employed by or contracting with non-Spanish companies. The 2026 income threshold is 200 percent of Spain’s minimum wage (SMI). With the 2026 SMI set at EUR 1,221 per month by Royal Decree 126/2026, that is about EUR 2,849 per month, with surcharges for dependents. Its standout feature is tax: DNV holders can elect the Beckham regime, a flat 24 percent on Spanish-source employment income up to EUR 600,000, with most foreign income left outside the Spanish net, for up to six years. Note the rigidity flagged by Spain’s processing unit in 2026: you cannot switch into DNV status from inside Spain on a tourist or non-lucrative footing. You leave and apply at a consulate.

The Non-Lucrative Visa (NLV) is the retiree and passive-income route. It bans all work, Spanish or remote, and requires you to show passive income or savings of roughly EUR 2,400 per month (about EUR 28,800 per year), tied to the IPREM indicator, with more for dependents.

Both routes lead somewhere. Time on either counts one-to-one toward permanent residency after five years and citizenship after ten by naturalisation. And here is Spain’s genuinely unmatched advantage: nationals of Latin American countries, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Andorra, Portugal, and Sephardic Jews of Spanish origin can naturalise after just two years of legal residence. For that population, Spain’s ten-year rule barely applies.

The comparison table

Factor	Portugal Golden Visa (2026)	Spain Golden Visa	Spain DNV	Spain NLV
Status	Open	Abolished 3 Apr 2025	Open	Open
Entry route	EUR 500k fund (5-yr hold)	None (closed)	Remote-work income	Passive income
Minimum financial bar	EUR 500,000 invested	n/a	~EUR 2,849/mo income	~EUR 2,400/mo income
Can you work?	No work required	n/a	Yes, foreign employer	No work allowed
Physical presence	~7 days/year average	n/a	Substantial, tax-resident	Substantial (183+ days)
Permanent residency	After 5 years	n/a	After 5 years	After 5 years
Citizenship	10 yrs (7 EU/CPLP)	n/a	10 yrs (2 for Ibero-American)	10 yrs (2 for Ibero-American)
Tax hook	Coordinate; NHR replaced by IFICI	n/a	Beckham 24% flat, up to 6 yrs	Spanish tax resident
Best for	Passive EU optionality, no relocation	No longer available	Remote workers relocating	Retirees, passive income

Tax, stated carefully

Tax is where these decisions go wrong, so treat the table as a prompt, not advice. Portugal’s old Non-Habitual Resident regime closed to new entrants; a narrower successor, the IFICI incentive, targets specific qualified professions and is not a blanket flat rate. Spain’s Beckham regime is genuinely attractive for high earners but only if you pass the no-prior-Spanish-residence test and apply within six months. Both interact with your home-country tax system and, for Americans, with worldwide US filing. Model your actual numbers with a cross-border tax adviser before committing.

Who each option actually suits

Choose Portugal’s golden visa if you want EU residency and an eventual passport without uprooting your life, you can deploy EUR 500,000 into a fund and leave it for five-plus years, and you accept that citizenship is now a ten-year horizon. The light presence requirement is the whole point. You are buying optionality and a Schengen base, not a place to live tomorrow.

Choose Spain’s DNV if you genuinely want to live in Spain, earn remote income from outside it, and would benefit from the Beckham flat tax. You are trading capital for relocation and a real tax residency.

Choose Spain’s NLV if you are retired or live on passive income, want Spain as a home, and do not need to work.

And if you hold a Latin American, Filipino, or related nationality, Spain quietly becomes the strongest citizenship play on this page, because two years of residence beats Portugal’s seven or ten by a wide margin. That single fact reorders the entire comparison for millions of people.

The blunt summary: Spain by investment is over. Portugal by investment is the surviving route, slower to a passport than it was but still the cleanest low-presence path to EU residency. The Spanish dream is still reachable, just on foot rather than by wire transfer, and for the Ibero-American world it is reachable faster than anywhere else in Europe.