Spain Golden Visa in 2026: It's Gone. What Works Instead

You bought the apartment, you were three months from filing, and then the route closed. Or you hold the permit already and nobody can tell you whether it renews. The Spain golden visa is the most searched dead immigration programme in Europe, and the guides answering that search are still quoting a €500,000 property threshold that has had no legal basis since 3 April 2025 — while the surviving Spanish routes ask for between €28,800 and €34,188 a year in provable income and, unlike the visa they replaced, expect you to actually live there. Get that second part wrong and you have not swapped one residence permit for another; you have swapped a permit with no presence requirement for one that makes you Spanish tax resident.

We read this one out of the Boletín Oficial del Estado rather than the alternatives lists, because the consolidated texts settle in one line what the law-firm posts hedge over: which articles were voided, what the two transitional provisions actually promise, and what the 2026 euro figures are. Every claim below carries its article number.

Key takeaways

• Five articles died, not one tier. Organic Law 1/2025 left articles 63, 64, 65, 66 and 67 of Law 14/2013 without content with effect from 3 April 2025 — the visa, the evidencing rules, its effects, the authorisation and its duration.
• Existing holders have a written transitional rule, and renewals are decided under the rules in force when the initial authorisation was granted — but its heading names only the real-estate route.
• The cheapest surviving route is the non-lucrative visa at 400% of IPREM — €2,400 a month, around €28,800 a year — against €34,188 a year for the digital nomad route at 200% of SMI.
• The gap between those two has widened every year because IPREM has been frozen at €600 a month since 2023 while the SMI has risen 13.1%.
• The real loss is the presence rule. Non-lucrative renewal needs more than 183 days in Spain per calendar year — the same number that makes you tax resident under article 9 of the IRPF Law.

The law that ended the Spain golden visa — and exactly what it voided

The instrument is not an immigration law at all. It is Ley Orgánica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, de medidas en materia de eficiencia del Servicio Público de Justicia, a courts-efficiency statute published in the BOE of 3 January 2025. Its disposición final vigesimoprimera amends Law 14/2013 on support for entrepreneurs, and paragraph one of that provision reads, in full: «Se dejan sin contenido los artículos 63, 64, 65, 66 y 67.»

The law's entry-into-force provision sets the general rule at three months after publication, which lands the repeal on 3 April 2025 — and the BOE's consolidated text of Law 14/2013 confirms it article by article, each one annotated «Se deja sin contenido, con efectos de 3 de abril de 2025, por la disposición final 21.1».

Most English-language coverage reduced this to "Spain scrapped the €500,000 property golden visa". That undersells it. Here is what each of the five articles did:

Read the first two rows together and the "property route only" framing collapses. Article 63 was where the thresholds lived and article 64 was the evidencing machinery; with both void there is no surviving tier to qualify under and no mechanism to prove one. The public-debt, shares, bank-deposit and business-project options went with the apartments. Which also means there is no partial reopening to wait for — a new Spanish investor route would need fresh primary legislation, and none has been enacted.

If you already hold one, or applied before the cut-off

This is where the repeal is better drafted than its critics allow, because the same disposición final inserted two brand-new transitional provisions into Law 14/2013 itself rather than leaving holders to administrative practice.

The first protects the queue. New disposición transitoria primera says that investors or their family members who had filed the corresponding application before the transitional provision entered into force «podrán recibir el visado o autorización correspondiente conforme a la normativa vigente en la fecha de presentación de la solicitud» — under the rules in force on the filing date, not the decision date.

The second protects holders. New disposición transitoria segunda says visas and authorisations valid at that date keep their validity for the period for which they were issued, and that renewal applications «se tramitarán y resolverán conforme a la normativa vigente en la fecha de concesión de la autorización inicial» — decided under the rules in force when the initial authorisation was granted.

That heading-versus-body mismatch deserves flagging. A heading in Spanish legislative drafting is a rúbrica, not an operative provision, and the operative sentence plainly covers investor visas and authorisations without qualifying the tier, so we think the body governs. But "we think" is not what you want underneath a five-year residence plan: if your permit came from the shares or public-debt route, put the question to Spanish immigration counsel and keep the answer on paper.

The feature nobody replaced: it barely asked you to be in Spain

Strip away the price and the golden visa's actual product was a presence exemption. It let a non-EU national hold Spanish — and therefore Schengen — residence while living somewhere else entirely. That is the thing being searched for when people search for a replacement, and it is the thing none of the surviving routes sells.

Royal Decree 1155/2024, the new Reglamento de Extranjería in force since 20 May 2025, makes this explicit for the non-lucrative permit. Article 64.2.f conditions renewal on «haber residido de forma real y efectiva en España durante más de ciento ochenta y tres días durante el año natural» — more than 183 days of real and effective residence per calendar year.

There is a second, quieter trap. Article 176.a of the same Reglamento sets the long-term residence test at five years of continuous legal residence, with continuity unaffected by absences of up to six continuous months provided they total no more than ten months across the five years. A golden visa holder who flew in for a week each year accumulated legal residence and never once came close to that continuity test. The permit was renewable indefinitely and structurally never converted into permanent residence. If your plan was a passport, the route you are mourning was not going to get you there — see our second residency breakdown for routes that do, and the Schengen 90/180 rule for what visa-free travel still allows without any permit at all.

Spain's four surviving routes, with the 2026 numbers

Four routes remain realistic for the audience the golden visa served. Two sit in the Reglamento, two survive in the unrepealed parts of Law 14/2013.

Two things to notice. The entrepreneur route under article 69 is the only one that hands you three years up front and is filed electronically with the Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos; it is also the only one with no published income threshold, because what it tests is the project. And the teleworking route's qualification gate is softer than its reputation: article 74 bis accepts graduates or postgraduates of recognised universities, vocational training or business schools or a minimum of three years' professional experience, while article 74 ter wants the foreign company to have been genuinely trading for at least a year and the working relationship to be at least three months old. Our Spain digital nomad visa page works through the filing itself, and the non-lucrative visa pillar covers the retiree and passive-income case in depth.

Why the digital nomad visa now asks for more income than the non-lucrative visa

Here is the figure nobody comparing these two routes has noticed, and it is a drafting accident rather than a policy choice.

The non-lucrative test is pegged to IPREM, the public multi-purpose income indicator set in the annual state budget. Spain has not passed a new Presupuestos Generales del Estado since Law 31/2022, whose disposición adicional nonagésima fixed IPREM at €20 a day, €600 a month and €7,200 a year for 2023. With that budget rolled over, the 2026 figure is still €600 a month — a fourth frozen year.

The teleworking test is pegged to SMI, the statutory minimum wage, which is reset by royal decree every February. Royal Decree 126/2026 of 18 February put it at €40.70 a day or €1,221 a month, with an annual computation floor of €17,094. Four consecutive raises against four frozen years:

Annual columns are our arithmetic on the monthly and annual figures in the cited instruments; the regulations state the non-lucrative test monthly and the teleworking test against annual SMI.

The teleworking route has asked for more than the non-lucrative route since the day it opened, and the gap has nearly quadrupled — €1,440 in 2023 to €5,388 in 2026 — purely because the SMI rose 13.1% while IPREM did not move. In monthly terms you are comparing €2,400 against roughly €2,849, with €1,068 for a first family member on the teleworking side against €600 per dependant on the non-lucrative side. The cheaper permit is the one that forbids you to work.

The 183-day problem that follows every surviving route

The 183 days in article 64.2.f are not a coincidence. The Agencia Tributaria's own IRPF manual, citing article 9 of the Personal Income Tax Law, states that you are habitually resident in Spanish territory where you spend more than 183 days in the calendar year — and that sporadic absences are counted in unless you can evidence tax residence in another country.

So the non-lucrative permit's renewal condition and Spain's tax residence test are the same threshold: satisfying the first by design puts you over the second. Spain also treats the main centre of your economic interests as an independent route into residence, so a light day count is not automatic shelter either.

For somebody who held a golden visa precisely because it decoupled Spanish residence from Spanish tax residence, this is the substance of the change — more than the price. Our tax resident nowhere pillar sets out why that decoupling is rarer than the marketing suggests.

If what you wanted was an EU golden visa rather than Spain

If the attraction was Spain itself, the four routes above are the field. If the attraction was EU residence through investment, the programme closed but the category did not. Four countries still run one, and we maintain a page on each because the tiers move:

Treat each headline figure as where the diligence starts. Greece reset its thresholds by statute in 2024, and the political pressure on property-linked routes has not eased anywhere in the EU — Spain is the cautionary tale, not the exception. The dedicated pages carry the current tiers and, more usefully, the presence requirements.

What I would do in each of the three common situations

You hold a Spanish investor permit. Diarise the renewal and request written confirmation that disposición transitoria segunda covers your tier, particularly if it was not the property route. Then ask the harder question: given article 176.a's continuity test, will your day count ever convert five years of permits into permanent residence? If not, the permit is a travel document with an expiry date.

You were about to apply. There is nothing to apply for. Compare the teleworking route against the entrepreneur route on the figures above: if your income is remote and over €34,188, the former is faster; if you are building something in Spain, article 69's three-year grant beats the non-lucrative permit's one year and lets you work.

You wanted EU residence, Spain incidentally. Start from presence requirements and the route to permanence, then compare cost. That ordering is the whole lesson of the Spanish repeal.

Related reading

• Spain's digital nomad visa — the teleworking route in detail, from the UGE filing to the tax election.
• Non-lucrative visa Spain — the 400% IPREM route, who it fits, and the work prohibition.
• Countries with a golden visa — the full residence-by-investment field after the 2023–2025 closures.
• Second residency — ranked on cost, speed and physical-presence requirements.
• Tax resident nowhere — why decoupling residence from tax residence is harder than it reads.
• Easiest EU citizenship — where five years of permits actually lead to a passport.
• Digital nomad visas — the comparable routes across Europe and beyond.

FAQ

Is the Spain golden visa still available in 2026?

No. Disposición final vigesimoprimera of Organic Law 1/2025 of 2 January left articles 63 to 67 of Law 14/2013 without content, and the law entered into force three months after its publication in the BOE of 3 January 2025 — so with effect from 3 April 2025. The BOE's consolidated text of Law 14/2013 still shows all five of those articles as «(Sin contenido)». No replacement investor route has been enacted since.

Was it only the €500,000 property route that closed?

No, and this is the detail most guides get wrong. The repeal voided article 63 (the investor residence visa and its investment thresholds), 64 (how the investment is evidenced), 65 (the effects of the visa), 66 (the investor residence authorisation) and 67 (its duration). With 63 and 64 both void there is no surviving threshold and no surviving evidencing mechanism, so the public-debt, shares, bank-deposit and business-project tiers went the same way as the property one.

Can I still renew a Spanish golden visa I already hold?

The transitional provision says yes on its own terms. Organic Law 1/2025 inserted a new disposición transitoria segunda into Law 14/2013: visas and authorisations valid at the date the provision entered into force keep that validity for the period for which they were issued, and where renewal applications are filed they are processed and resolved under the rules in force on the date the initial authorisation was granted. Its heading, oddly, names only investors «por adquisición de bienes inmuebles» while its body refers to investor visas and authorisations generally — so if you hold a non-property tier, get the renewal confirmed in writing before you plan around it.

What happened to applications filed before 3 April 2025?

They were protected. The same amendment inserted a disposición transitoria primera into Law 14/2013 saying that investors or their family members who had filed the corresponding application before the transitional provision entered into force could receive the visa or authorisation under the rules in force on the date of filing. That is a rule about the filing date, not the decision date.

What is the cheapest Spanish residence route in 2026?

On income alone, the non-lucrative visa. Article 62 of the new Reglamento de Extranjería (Royal Decree 1155/2024) sets it at 400% of the monthly IPREM for the applicant plus 100% per dependent family member. With IPREM still at €600 a month, that is €2,400 a month for one person — about €28,800 over twelve months on our arithmetic — against €34,188 a year for the digital nomad route. But the non-lucrative visa bars all work, and its renewal requires more than 183 days a year in Spain.

Do the surviving routes make me a Spanish tax resident?

They point that way far more than the golden visa did. Article 64.2.f of Royal Decree 1155/2024 makes renewal of a non-lucrative permit conditional on having resided in Spain «de forma real y efectiva» for more than 183 days in the calendar year, and the Agencia Tributaria's own manual states that under article 9 of the IRPF Law more than 183 days in the calendar year makes you tax resident, counting sporadic absences. The two thresholds are the same number. Take Spanish tax advice before you file, not after.

Which EU golden visas are still open to investors Spain turned away?

Portugal, Greece, Italy and Hungary all still run residence-by-investment routes, at different entry points and on different terms, and we track the current tiers on our dedicated pages for each. Treat every headline figure as the start of the diligence rather than the end of it: Greece reset its thresholds by law in 2024 and the political pressure on property-based routes across the EU has not stopped.

Is this legal or tax advice?

No. Every rule above is read from the BOE's consolidated texts of Organic Law 1/2025, Law 14/2013, Royal Decree 1155/2024, Law 31/2022 and Royal Decree 126/2026, from an official Spanish consulate requirements sheet, and from the Agencia Tributaria's IRPF manual, with the article number next to each claim. What those texts cannot tell you is how your own permit, filing date and day count land. Spanish immigration and tax counsel decide that, not an editorial page.

Sources — Spanish primary law

• BOE — Ley Orgánica 1/2025, de 2 de enero (consolidated) — disposición final vigesimoprimera, voiding articles 63–67 of Law 14/2013 and inserting the two transitional provisions; the entry-into-force provision setting the general rule at three months after publication.
• BOE — Ley 14/2013, de 27 de septiembre (consolidated) — articles 63–67 shown as «(Sin contenido)» with effect from 3 April 2025; the surviving articles 69 (entrepreneurs), 71 (highly qualified professionals) and 74 bis–74 ter (international teleworking), and the provision pegging economic thresholds to the SMI.
• BOE — Real Decreto 1155/2024, de 19 de noviembre (consolidated) — the new Reglamento de Extranjería, in force 20 May 2025: article 61 (non-lucrative definition, health insurance, one-year initial permit), 62 (400% / 100% of IPREM), 64 (the 183-day renewal condition, two-year renewal, three-month decision) and 176.a (five-year continuity, six-month and ten-month absence limits).
• BOE — Ley 31/2022, de 23 de diciembre (consolidated) — disposición adicional nonagésima, setting IPREM at €20 daily, €600 monthly and €7,200 annually, the figures still in force under the rolled-over budget.
• BOE — Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero — SMI for 2026 at €40.70 a day or €1,221 a month, with an annual computation floor of €17,094, effective 1 January 2026.
• BOE — Real Decreto 87/2025, de 11 de febrero — SMI for 2025 at €39.47 a day or €1,184 a month, annual floor €16,576.
• BOE — Real Decreto 145/2024, de 6 de febrero — SMI for 2024 at €37.80 a day or €1,134 a month, annual floor €15,876.

Official guidance and tax practice

• Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores — Requisitos visado de residencia de teletrabajo de carácter internacional (PDF) — the official consulate requirements sheet stating 200% of SMI for the applicant, 75% for the first family member and 25% for each subsequent one, and the 2023 annual SMI of €15,120.
• Agencia Tributaria — Residencia habitual en territorio español — article 9 of the IRPF Law: more than 183 days in the calendar year, sporadic absences counted unless tax residence elsewhere is evidenced.

Articles, dates and figures are as read from the consolidated BOE texts and the official sources above on 23 October 2026. Consolidated texts are updated as laws change, and the 2026 IPREM figure depends on no new Presupuestos Generales del Estado being approved — check both before you file. Whether disposición transitoria segunda covers a non-property investor tier is a question of statutory interpretation we have flagged rather than resolved, and whether 183 days in Spain is the right answer for you is a tax question, not an immigration one. Both sit with Spanish counsel. This is editorial research, not legal or tax advice.