What Happened to Spain’s Golden Visa?
Update, August 2026: Spain’s Golden Visa – the residency-by-investment route that let non-EU nationals qualify for Spanish residency by buying property worth €500,000 or more – was permanently abolished on 3rd April 2025, under Ley Orgánica 1/2025. If you’ve read older articles (including earlier versions of this one) about “applying for a Golden Visa through a property purchase in Tenerife,” that route no longer exists. We’ve rewritten this page to reflect the current position and point you towards the residency options that are actually available today.
Despite a number of internet commenters misinforming readers that Tenerife and the Canary Islands are part of Africa, they are in fact 100% Spanish – so everything below about Spanish residency law applies here just as it does on the mainland.
Why the property route was scrapped
The Spanish government, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, first announced its intention to end the Golden Visa in April 2024, citing the impact of investor demand on housing affordability – around 94% of Golden Visas issued were linked to real estate, concentrated heavily in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. It took a year for the law to actually pass, but it did: the real estate investment route, along with the bond, corporate and bank deposit routes, closed to new applicants on 3rd April 2025.
If you already held a Golden Visa, or had a complete application submitted before that deadline, your rights and renewal options were protected – this wasn’t retroactive. But for anyone starting from scratch today, the property-investment path to Spanish residency is gone.
So how can you actually get residency in Spain now?
Buying a property in Tenerife still doesn’t require any visa at all if you’re after a holiday home – EU and non-EU buyers alike can purchase property freely (see our guide on buying without living in the EU). Residency only becomes relevant if you want to live here full-time, or for more than 90 days in any 180-day period. With the Golden Visa gone, the two routes most of our clients now look at are:
- The Non-Lucrative Visa (NLV): for people who can support themselves without working in Spain – retirees, or anyone living off pensions, investments or overseas rental income. You’ll need to show stable income of roughly €28,800 a year for the main applicant (plus around €7,200 for each dependant), private health insurance, and proof of accommodation – owning or renting a property here covers that last part. You can’t take local employment on an NLV. It’s granted for one year initially, renewable, with a path to permanent residency after five years and citizenship after ten.
- The Digital Nomad Visa: for remote workers and freelancers who work for companies or clients based outside Spain. It has its own income requirements and paperwork, but doesn’t require any property purchase or minimum investment.
Neither of these ties residency to buying property the way the Golden Visa did. That’s a genuinely different decision now: buying in Tenerife is about the property itself – as a home, a holiday base or an investment – not a shortcut to a Spanish visa. If residency is part of your plan, we’d always recommend speaking to a qualified Spanish immigration lawyer before you commit to anything, since eligibility and paperwork requirements do shift. We’re happy to point you towards lawyers we trust who handle this day in, day out.
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What about other countries?
Spain isn’t alone in stepping back from investment-based residency. Portugal closed its own real estate route at the end of 2023, and Ireland’s programme now requires a €2 million investment into a qualifying fund rather than a direct property purchase – out of reach for most buyers. The broader trend across Europe has been away from linking residency directly to property investment, largely for the same housing-affordability reasons Spain cited.
Final thoughts
If you came to this page hoping to buy your way to Spanish residency, the honest answer is that route closed in April 2025. The good news is that buying in Tenerife was never really about the visa for most of our clients anyway – it’s about the property, the lifestyle and the investment. If residency genuinely matters to you, the Non-Lucrative and Digital Nomad visas are worth exploring properly with a qualified immigration lawyer. Get in touch and we’ll point you in the right direction.
