Is the Portugal Golden Visa Still Worth It?

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Disclaimer: The information in this video should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Entrepreneur Expat can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.

Transcript

0:38

Do you want EU residency, global travel freedom and potentially European citizenship, but you don't necessarily want to move somewhere full time just yet, while the Portugal golden Visa may be just your ticket. But unfortunately there have been some major changes recently. And I'm about to tell you about some of those changes in this video to help you make up your decision as to which country makes the most sense for you to move abroad. Hi, I'm Justin. And if you haven't been. Following this channel for a while on Entrepreneur Expat, we talk about everything related to moving abroad, establishing global citizenships, and living the life of your dreams in a country that might not be the one that you were born in. If that's something you're interested in, make sure you click that subscribe button and. Don't miss out on any of the cool content we're coming out with every single week about all the popular countries for expats around the world, especially Mexico, where my wife Amanda and I currently live. And if you're interested in diving in even further and learning more about how to move abroad, you're definitely gonna want to check out our moving abroad checklist, where we go through the most important things that you wanna make sure to bear in mind when you're actually making that leap. And if you're ready to take. Even more steps and you're like, Hey, I've been watching you guys for a while. I'd like to get some one-on-one help. You can actually go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult, and you can request a consult with myself, Amanda, or our team, where we'll talk you through your individual requirements and the process that's going to be the easiest for you, as well as maybe some of the countries that would be easiest for you to become an expat in. So with all that said, let's jump right into it, which is. We get asked all the time. By our high net worth investor clients, you know, what are some of the best visas to get? And in fact, we even had one client recently who was considering this program, but they kind of pulled the rug right out underneath from him because he didn't quite move in time and all of these new changes happened. And he ended up actually just saying, you know what? Mexico's a little bit of the more straightforward visas. They don't have the same types of requirements. So we ended up saying, you know what, maybe you should just look into Mexico. It might make more sense for you, but based on your unique requirements, your, your income, your net worth, different sorts of things like that, uh, those are gonna really determine what country and what type of visa really is the best fit for you. But no matter what, this is not getting easier. Right. As time goes on, it's getting more and more complicated, whether you're in here in Mexico like we are, whether you're looking at countries like Portugal, whether you're looking at countries like Spain or perhaps, uh, even. Southeast Asia, for example. I mean, Malaysia, Singapore. So many countries in Southeast Asia, for example, have gotten more and more difficult to immigrate to because of all these restrictions, uh, that they're putting on people. Because those countries, frankly, they're getting their shit together. Right. The US seems to be going a little like this, and a lot of other countries in the world are going a little bit like this, uh, in terms of just increasing their quality of life and becoming better places to live. So the requirements are getting harder and harder. So the key is, regardless of. Where you wanna move to or what your financial or net worth situation is, the time to act is now. So again, you can go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult. Obviously you can watch our free videos and free content as well if you're not quite ready to make that leap. We do work with very select, high net worth individuals through our consulting programs and relocation assistance programs. If maybe that's not you or that's not you yet. Definitely still check out some of our free content as well as some of our guides, because we also have resources on making money online and things like that to actually help get your income up to the level where you can qualify for some of these visas Now, what specifically is this Portugal Golden Visa from the beginning? Well, the Portugal Golden Visa was launched in 2012 to help. Ease the burden of, of that huge economic impact that happened in 2008, uh, with that, that global financial crisis all around the world. They wanted to bring investors into the country, and they've been very successful in doing that. Up until this point, over seven and a half billion dollars have been raised through the Portugal Golden Visa program. And the cool thing is it also allows these non-EU residents. To get EU residents and then a path to citizenship in five years by spending a very minimal amount of time in the country. In order for you to keep this golden visa, you only have to be in Portugal for seven days a year, which is really cool. And of course, one of the things that this Visa gives you is Visa free access to 29 countries in the Sheen territory, so you can travel all around the sheen part of Europe completely visa free without having to get like any other entrance permits or anything like that. That's obviously. One of the top benefits. You don't have to spend very much time in the country to keep that visa. So if you're just doing it, let's say, as a path to, to a citizenship, not only do you not have to be there, you can just kind of wait out those five years and then get your, your European, uh, citizenship in Portugal. But you're also not considered a resident, a tax resident in Portugal unless you spend over 183 days per year in the country. And then after those five years, once you have that Portuguese citizenship, not only will you have Visa free access to all the countries in the Shein territories, but you'll also have Visa free access to 191 countries with that Portuguese passport all over the world, which is also really cool in terms of travel freedom. So those are some of the basic benefits and reasons to get the Portuguese golden visa. Now, what are the changes that just happened in the last two years specifically? Right now, we're in about the middle of 2025, and they recently introduced changes. The biggest changes here were that. They no longer count real estate transactions and capital transfers. So that means if you were just planning on funding a business or you were buying a piece of property that was worth around 500,000 euros, you used to be able to get credit for that, to go towards that Portuguese golden visa. Unfortunately, now they're making it much stricter and those sorts of things are no longer counting. There's a whole bunch of different alternative routes, but for the most part, they. Involve not necessarily handing your money to the government, but putting it in investments where it is tied up, and it's not the same as a real estate purchase where you're getting the full benefit of also owning a property. Now, one of the reasons that we've heard for this, of course, is there have been in certain towns and cities. A lot of residents have been complaining that, hey, they're being displaced, or property values are going up because of all the people coming in on the Golden Visa program. So that was one of the things for sure that Portugal wanted to curtail. So here are some of the other pathways that you can use to be able to qualify. Still for the Visa, you could invest 500,000 in what's called. An alternative investment fund. So that's a qualifying investment that the Portuguese government says, uh, you can invest your money in. So 500,000 euros and a qualifying fund that is not real estate based. And you can actually choose between low, medium and a high risk, depending on your risk profile. But you do have to keep that in that investment fund for a certain period of time. You could also create 10 or more full-time jobs in Portugal as a, as a business owner. But it's not just, Hey, we'll open like a shell company there. You have to actually create. Full-time jobs, you're creating real employment in the country. You can donate 500,000 or invest 500,000 euros to accredited institutions. You can create a business, but you need to actually put in 500,000 euros into that business and also hire five permanent staff. So the difference is job creation. You, you have to create at least 10 or more full-time jobs in Portugal or in a business. You need to invest that 500,000 Euros into that business in Portugal, and then also hire those five permanent staff. So depending on the type of business or the inve, uh. Or the investment profile of that company, the financial profile, one of those options might make more sense for you. You can also donate 250,000 euros, or in some cases 200,000 euros to cultural production. So these are like philanthropic, uh, types of cultural funds that you can donate to. But you can no longer do the one and a half million Euros capital transfer where you're just moving money from the US or Canada or wherever your home country is, to Portuguese bank accounts. And you can no longer qualify with real estate purchases or real estate funds as well, because they're trying to protect those, for the most part, for people, uh, that are native Portuguese. In terms of the process for applying and getting approved for this visa, it is relatively straightforward. You need a criminal background check. You need your passports, proof of actual investment in Portugal, and there's approximately a six month period of time from when you apply to when you actually have that Visa issued, you wanna renew this every single year. So their annual renewals for five years After those five years are up, there's a few things you need to know. So first of all, those five years, fortunately because the Portuguese process for citizenship and residency and everything else is very slow. Um, the. Five years starts at the time of the application date, which means let's say that you apply for this Portuguese golden visa now, and maybe they take four or five or six months or more to process that visa. The good news is the citizenship will actually start at the day that you applied. So that's kind of a nice little perk, especially when you're dealing with certain European. Bureaucracies, which may not be the most efficient, uh, in terms of time and things like that, you do need to ha demonstrate a, uh, level of Portuguese that's at the A two level. So perhaps you're taking a, a test or a certified course to demonstrate that you have met that language requirement. You've gotta have a clean, cri criminal record, and of course, no outstanding taxes to the Portuguese government. It's really pretty straightforward with those things. In five years of your application date, you should be able to get Portuguese citizenship for you and the rest of your family as well. So some of the eligibility requirements are you've gotta have all the documents legalized and translated in some cases of parcelled, you've gotta have that qualifying investment. You must have a clean criminal record in your country of origin, and you must be a non-EU national, although if you were already. An EU national, I don't really see a reason why you would need Portuguese citizenship in the first place. So those are the new requirements along with all the changes and things that they have put in place to perhaps make this more difficult for some people, but still accessible for others depending on what you would like to do, your lifestyle, uh, as well as, hey, you know, maybe living in Europe is really important and unfortunately for people, uh, that might not quite meet those requirements. The requirements in the EU typically tend to be higher, let's say, than in Latin America. So let us know in the comments. Do you think that these changes will, let's say, prevent you or someone you know from applying for that Portuguese golden visa? Are you interested in applying for this for another country perhaps? And also, if you're looking to get started on this today, we have immigration consultants and lawyers all over the world, including Portugal in our extensive network. So you can go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult, book a call with our team there, and maybe it's Portugal, you end up going to, maybe it's Mexico, where we are. Of course we're a little biased. Um, maybe it's Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica. There's so many other countries in the world. Maybe it's somewhere in Southeast Asia. So we're gonna help to guide you in that free consultation. Thanks so much for watching, and as always, stay tuned for the next video. We're pumping out exciting content about being an expat all over the world every single day. And, uh, follow us on Instagram as well if you're not already. Definitely reach out to us if you're interested in moving forward with one of these residencies, and we'll see you again very soon. Bye for now.