Golden visa alternatives after Spain and Portugal closed their property routes

The most important points in 60 seconds

• Spain's golden visa ended on 3 April 2025. The twenty-first final provision of Organic Law 1/2025 stripped articles 63 to 67 of Law 14/2013 of their content, and with them every investment route: EUR 500,000 in property, EUR 2 million in government debt and EUR 1 million in shares, funds or deposits.
• Permits granted before that date remain valid and are renewed under the rules they were granted under. What no longer exists is the way in.
• Portugal closed its property route earlier: Law 56/2023, in force since October 2023, removed real estate purchase and passive capital transfer from the ARI programme. Non-real-estate investment funds, culture, research and job creation remain.
• In 2026, European property-linked residency runs through Greece, at EUR 800,000 in the highest-demand zones, EUR 400,000 elsewhere and EUR 250,000 only for conversions and listed buildings, or through Cyprus, with permanent residency from EUR 300,000 plus VAT in new-build property.
• Outside Europe, the UAE Golden Visa grants ten years of residency tied to AED 2 million in property value, with no practical minimum-stay requirement.
• Thailand offers no residency through property purchase. LTR, DTV and Privilege are long-stay routes, and they should be treated as exactly that.
• None of these routes is citizenship, and none creates tax residency by itself. That distinction decides more than the threshold does.

What exactly ended in Spain

Precision matters here, because much of what circulates about the Spanish closure is shorthand. The Spanish golden visa was not trimmed or repriced: it was repealed in full. The twenty-first final provision of Organic Law 1/2025 of 2 January, a statute on the efficiency of the public justice service, stripped articles 63 to 67 of Law 14/2013 on support for entrepreneurs and their internationalisation of their content. Those five articles were the entire residency-by-investment framework. The repeal took effect on 3 April 2025.

With them, every investment route disappeared, not only the property one: the home purchase from EUR 500,000, which accounted for the overwhelming majority of applications, but also the EUR 2 million in Spanish government debt, the EUR 1 million in shares, fund units or bank deposits, and business projects of general interest. Anyone reading that a financial investment route remains open in Spain is reading outdated material.

The closure is not retroactive. Visas and permits granted before 3 April 2025 remain valid for the period they were issued for, and renewals are decided under the rules the original permit was granted under. Applications filed before that date were processed under the old framework. For existing holders the position is stable; what has closed is the door for new applicants.

What Spain still offers without buying property

The end of the investment route does not mean Spain has closed the door on residency. Several routes remain open that do not depend on buying anything, and for certain profiles they are objectively better than the old golden visa was. What none of them does is turn a property into a permit.

• The remote-work visa, widely known as the digital nomad route, created by Law 28/2022 on the startup ecosystem, for people working remotely for employers or clients outside Spain with documented sufficient income.
• Non-lucrative residency, for those who can live on documented passive income or savings without working in Spain. It requires genuine presence in the country and makes the holder a tax resident quickly, which the golden visa never did.
• The entrepreneur visa under Law 14/2013 itself, whose entrepreneurship articles were not repealed, for founders launching an innovative project of economic interest in Spain.
• The ordinary work, study and family reunification routes, which the reform did not touch.

The structural difference matters: the Spanish golden visa allowed holders to keep residency without living in Spain. The routes that remain require, to varying degrees, real presence. Anyone who wanted precisely that optionality, a European permit without an obligation to relocate, will no longer find it in Spain, and that is why the conversation moves to Greece and Cyprus.

Why Portugal is not the fallback

The natural reflex after the Spanish closure is to look at Portugal. That road closed before the Spanish one did. Law 56/2023, the package known as Mais Habitacao, in force since 7 October 2023, removed real estate acquisition in all its variants, including the rehabilitation route, and passive capital transfers from the ARI programme.

The Portuguese programme still exists, but redirected towards productive investment: stakes in investment funds that may not hold real estate exposure, with a common minimum of EUR 500,000, support for scientific research, cultural sponsorship and job creation. For a buyer who wants the underlying asset to be a tangible property, Portugal is no longer an answer, and anyone still seeing marketing material promising otherwise should check the date on that material.

The 2026 map: where property still buys residency

With Spain and Portugal gone, the real map for a buyer who wants residency tied to a property in 2026 comes down to a small number of serious options. The table summarises the four that come up again and again in client conversations. Figures exclude transaction costs, professional fees and taxes, and the reasoning behind each row follows below.

Greece: Schengen residency from EUR 400,000

Greece is today the European route that most closely resembles what the Spanish golden visa was: a Schengen residence permit tied to a property purchase, with no minimum stay to keep it. The difference is the entry price and the selectivity. Since the reform in force from 1 September 2024, Law 5100/2024, the programme operates by zone: EUR 800,000 in Zone A, covering the Attica region with Athens, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and islands with more than 3,100 residents, and EUR 400,000 in Zone B, the rest of the country. Under the standard routes the investment must sit in a single qualifying property of at least 120 square metres; several smaller properties cannot be combined.

A third tier survives, and it is the one that generates the most confusion: EUR 250,000, in any zone and with no size minimum, but only for two specific cases, the conversion of a commercial property to residential use legally completed before the application, and the restoration of listed buildings. It is not a general threshold, the pipeline of qualifying projects is narrow, and the transaction requires serious technical and legal verification. Rental also needs honest modelling: property acquired under the current routes is restricted from short-term letting, so returns are calculated on long-term tenancies.

The permit renews every five years as long as the investment is maintained, and family coverage is among the broadest in Europe: spouse, dependent children and the parents of both spouses. For the buyer who was looking at Spain for the EUR 500,000 threshold and Schengen mobility, Greek Zone B at EUR 400,000 is the most direct comparison left. Market detail is on our Greece page, and the full comparison with Cyprus is in our analysis of the Greek Golden Visa versus Cyprus permanent residency.

Cyprus: permanent residency from EUR 300,000

Cyprus plays a different game. The Category 6.2 fast track does not grant a renewable permit but permanent residency from day one, at a threshold that did not rise when everyone else's did: EUR 300,000 plus VAT in new-build residential property bought as a first sale from a developer, with up to two units allowed to reach the threshold. Resale property does not qualify under the standard route, and VAT, normally 19 percent, can be reduced to 5 percent on a single home used as the holder's primary residence, subject to conditions.

In exchange for that low threshold, Cyprus asks for what Spain never did: documented annual income from outside Cyprus of EUR 50,000 for the main applicant, plus EUR 15,000 for a spouse and EUR 10,000 per minor child, clean criminal record certificates, source-of-funds documentation and at least one visit every two years. The May 2023 reform removed parents and parents-in-law as dependants; the spouse and children up to 25 who are financially dependent students remain eligible.

The central limitation is geographic: Cyprus is an EU member but not part of the Schengen area. Internal border controls have not been lifted and there is no confirmed date to plan around, so a Cypriot permit does not replace the mobility the Spanish permit gave. Anyone comparing the two is comparing permanence and predictability against mobility. More on the market on our Cyprus page.

UAE: the Golden Visa from AED 2 million

Outside Europe, the most established property route is the UAE Golden Visa: ten years of renewable residency tied to AED 2 million in property value, subject to current authority practice and documentation. For a buyer coming from the Spanish programme, the proposition differs from the European ones on three points. First, there is no practical minimum-stay requirement, so the permit works as a base and as optionality without forcing relocation. Second, the tax environment: there is no personal income tax, and corporate tax applies at 9 percent on taxable profit above AED 375,000. Third, there is no Schengen mobility: UAE residency does not open Europe, and travel mobility continues to depend on the passport.

Family typically enters with spouse and children, and parents can be sponsored with additional documentation depending on the emirate. The warning we repeat every time: a UAE visa by itself does not change where you pay tax. Tax residency depends on days of presence, centre of vital interests and the treaty with your home country, and it should be calculated before the purchase. Market context, including the 2026 supply question, is on our UAE page.

Thailand: long stay, not residency

Thailand appears on almost every list of alternatives, and it belongs there only with an honest framing: there is no Thai residency tied to a property purchase comparable to the routes above. What exists are long-stay visas. The LTR, administered by the Board of Investment, requires in its wealth category USD 1 million in global assets with USD 500,000 invested in Thailand, and grants ten years. The DTV serves remote professionals and founders with a long-stay, multiple-entry framework. Privilege works as a paid membership buying convenience and predictable processing.

None of these routes turns a Bangkok apartment into a residence permit, and foreign property purchase in Thailand has its own ownership rules that need to be understood before signing. The tax variable has also changed: foreign income remitted to Thailand can be taxable under the current interpretation, and stays from around 180 days trigger tax residency. Thailand can be an excellent lifestyle base within a portfolio of residencies. As a functional replacement for the Spanish golden visa, it is not one.

How to choose a route after Spain

The useful question is not which programme is best, but what function Spain served in your plan and which route serves that function today. In practice, the cases sort themselves almost on their own.

• If what you wanted was Schengen mobility without an obligation to reside, the serious comparison is Greece, and the real decision is between Zone B at EUR 400,000 and the narrow conversion segment at EUR 250,000.
• If what you wanted was a stable long-term status at the lowest defensible threshold, Cyprus at EUR 300,000 plus VAT is the route, accepting that there is no Schengen access and that the income and file requirements are real.
• If what you wanted was a wealth base with rental yield in an economy without personal income tax, the UAE Golden Visa at AED 2 million is the candidate, with the 2026 supply question examined district by district.
• If what you wanted was quality of life in Asia, Thailand enters the conversation as long stay, not residency, and with remittance taxation planned conservatively.

Two warnings close the analysis. First: these programmes change by reform, and the direction of change in Europe is restrictive. Spain closed in 2025, Portugal closed its property route in 2023 and Greece doubled its thresholds in 2024. A buyer whose decision is mature gains little by waiting for the framework to improve. Second: none of these routes is a shortcut to citizenship or an automatic change of tax residency, and any decision of this size should pass through licensed legal and tax advice in the specific jurisdiction before capital moves. LION & LAND helps compare these routes case by case and coordinates next steps with selected specialists where needed.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and data references

• Spanish Organic Law 1/2025 of 2 January, twenty-first final provision: repeal of articles 63 to 67 of Law 14/2013 with effect from 3 April 2025, covering the EUR 500,000 property route, EUR 2 million in government debt and EUR 1 million in shares, funds or deposits; transitional rules for existing permits and prior applications
• Portuguese Law 56/2023, the Mais Habitacao package, in force since 7 October 2023: removal of real estate acquisition and passive capital transfer from the ARI programme; retention of funds without real estate exposure, research, culture and job creation
• Greek Law 5100/2024, amending article 100 of the Migration Code: thresholds of EUR 800,000 in Zone A, EUR 400,000 in Zone B and EUR 250,000 limited to conversions and restorations of listed buildings, with the 120-square-metre minimum on the standard routes
• Cyprus Aliens and Immigration Regulations, Regulation 6(2): the EUR 300,000 plus VAT minimum, foreign income requirements of EUR 50,000, EUR 15,000 and EUR 10,000, and the May 2023 reform of eligible dependants
• Current UAE authority practice on the AED 2,000,000 property-linked Golden Visa and Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022: 9 percent corporate tax above AED 375,000 and no personal income tax
• Thailand Board of Investment, Long-Term Resident visa conditions: USD 1 million in global assets with USD 500,000 invested in Thailand for the wealth category

Thresholds and eligibility for all of these programmes are set by law and change by reform, as the Spanish and Portuguese closures and the 2024 Greek reform demonstrate. Every figure should be confirmed against the current text of the law and with a licensed lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction before capital is committed. This page sets out the rules; it is not legal, tax or immigration advice.