Golden visas are getting harder to buy. Digital nomad visas are getting easier.

2026 has brought a wave of tightening across residency-by-investment programs, even as digital nomad visas expand as the preferred alternative route for globally mobile professionals and their families.

Residency-by-investment programs — "golden visas" — have had a rough year in the countries that popularized them. Greece, Portugal, and Spain have all made changes in 2026 that raise thresholds, narrow eligible investment categories, or otherwise make the traditional buy-a-property-get-a-visa route less straightforward than it was even two years ago, part of a broader pattern industry commentators are calling a global tightening of residency-by-investment rules. The reasons vary by country — housing affordability pressure in some cases, EU-level scrutiny in others — but the direction is consistent: these programs are getting more selective, not less.

At the same time, the alternative route for internationally mobile people — the digital nomad visa — is expanding and maturing. What started a few years ago as a pandemic-era experiment aimed mostly at remote-working individuals has turned into a more established category, with clearer income thresholds, tax guidance, and multi-year renewal paths in countries that see it as a way to attract long-term skilled residents without the political sensitivity attached to investment-based residency.

For a client thinking through where a family or a business's key people should be based, the calculus has shifted. A golden visa used to be the default answer for someone who wanted residency options without relocating operations; today it's frequently the slower, costlier, and more scrutinized path, while a digital nomad visa — for someone whose income doesn't depend on being physically present in a specific office — is often faster to obtain and easier to maintain, provided the underlying income and tax position is structured correctly from the start.

Neither route is universally better; they solve different problems. Golden visas still make sense for people specifically pursuing a path to citizenship or making a genuine long-term investment in a market they want exposure to anyway. Digital nomad visas make more sense for anyone whose primary goal is legal residency and mobility rather than an investment outcome. The mistake we're seeing more of this year is applicants defaulting to the golden-visa route out of habit, without checking whether the newer, lighter-weight option actually fits what they're trying to achieve.