Citizenship by investment in 2026: eight programmes are open, and every one of them has lost a destination

We track 25 citizenship-by-investment programmes. Eight are open, two have been reformed, two are paused, nine are closed, and four exist only as proposals.

Start with the closures, because they define the category. Every European citizenship-by-investment programme is now shut. Cyprus ended its scheme in 2020 after a broadcast sting. Bulgaria repealed Articles 12a and 14a of its Citizenship Act by a unanimous 218–0 vote on 24 March 2022. Montenegro's programme concluded on 31 December 2022. Moldova's was terminated in 2020 as one of eight EU conditions attached to a macro-financial assistance tranche. Malta's route closed following the European Court of Justice ruling against it.

So the product that made this industry — an EU passport for money — no longer exists at any price. What remains sells travel, and the travel is contracting.

The finding that matters more than the price

Every open programme we track has lost significant visa-free access in the last three years. Not one has gained any.

• Vanuatu. The Schengen claim is false and has been for years: partial suspension came on 3 March 2022 and the permanent visa requirement followed. The United Kingdom removed visa-free access in July 2023, citing the scheme directly. Ireland has done the same.
• Dominica. The UK withdrew visa-free access in 2023. The United States suspended immigrant visas plus B-1, B-2, F, M and J visas from 1 January 2026, expressly over the programme.
• Antigua and Barbuda. A US proclamation in December 2025 suspended immigrant visas and the same non-immigrant categories.
• Saint Lucia. The UK imposed a full visit and transit visa requirement from 5 March 2026.
• Nauru. Since 9 December 2025, Nauru nationals need a UK visit visa and are no longer eligible for the Electronic Travel Authorisation. There is no Schengen access and there never was — Nauru sits in Annex I of the EU visa regulation.

That is not a run of bad luck. It is a policy response, and the EU has now written it down.

The rule the industry has not priced in

Regulation (EU) 2025/2441, adopted on 26 November 2025 and in force from late December 2025, inserts Article 8a(1)(e) into the visa suspension mechanism. The Eighth Visa Suspension Mechanism report of 19 December 2025 states the position plainly: operating an investor citizenship scheme is, on its own, sufficient grounds to suspend a country's visa-free access to the European Union.

Read that again in the context of what you would be buying. The visa-free access is the product. The regulation makes the existence of the programme a reason to remove it. Any passport bought today for European mobility carries a policy risk that is written into European law, is not hypothetical, and has already been exercised against Vanuatu.

This is the single most important fact in the category, and it appears in almost no marketing material.

The E-2 trap

The second most important fact concerns the United States, and it catches a large share of buyers who chose their programme specifically for it.

Section 5502 of Public Law 117-263 — the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act, signed 23 December 2022 and effective 27 December 2022 — amended the Immigration and Nationality Act so that anyone who acquired treaty-country nationality by investment must have been domiciled in that country for at least three years before qualifying for an E-2 visa.

That closes the classic route: buy a Grenadian or Turkish passport, use it to file an E-2, live in the United States. It no longer works unless you actually live in Grenada or Türkiye for three years first.

Two exceptions genuinely survive. Anyone who obtained citizenship by investment before 27 December 2022 is not caught. Anyone previously granted E-visa status is exempt. Outside those, an adviser still selling the E-2 as the point of a Caribbean or Turkish passport is working from law that changed nearly four years ago. The same applies to Egypt, which is a genuine treaty country but subject to the identical bar.

And it bears saying: the E-2 is not a green card. It is a non-immigrant visa requiring non-immigrant intent.

What is actually open, and what it costs

Entry thresholds, lowest first. Each is a floor — government fees, due-diligence charges and per-dependant costs sit on top and can add 30% or more.

The five Caribbean programmes now cluster within USD 50,000 of each other. That is not a market finding a price — it is the result of a regional minimum agreed under external pressure. Choosing between them on cost alone is choosing on a difference that policy set, not on anything about the product.

Paused, and proposed but not law

North Macedonia's EUR 200,000 fund route exists in legislation and has produced no passports. The European Commission has reported that the country received five applications and processed none. Samoa's Act has sat on the books since 2015 and, by a minister's own admission in June 2023, had never once been used.

Four more are proposals only: Botswana at a reported USD 75,000, Tonga at USD 190,000, Cabo Verde at EUR 200,000 and Argentina at USD 500,000. None is law. Tonga's parliament has rejected its proposal twice, and Botswana's minister told parliament he was not in a position to state the amount.

If someone is taking deposits against any of these, they are selling a bill, not a programme.

The costs nobody quotes

Processing time. Saint Lucia's published target is 90 days. The actual average is around 18 months, with cases running to 26. The unit is under-resourced against a 424% surge in applications. Budget on the observed number, not the published one.

Revocation. Dominica's Citizenship by Investment Unit has revoked 68 passports since 2024 for fraud. Your citizenship is as durable as the unit's willingness to defend it, and units under external pressure defend files by cancelling them.

Due diligence. It is a real examination, it is not refundable if you fail, and the failure rate is not published anywhere by anyone.

The currency. Egypt's USD 500,000 deposit route refunds after three years — in Egyptian pounds, without interest. That is a currency bet dressed as a deposit, and the pound has moved a long way against the dollar.

When citizenship by investment is the right answer

It is right when you need a second travel document quickly, your existing passport is genuinely constraining, and you can accept that the destination list will keep shrinking. For a holder of a weak passport who needs to move now, USD 200,000 and four months is a real solution to a real problem, and no amount of policy risk changes that.

It is wrong as an EU access play, because the EU has legislated against exactly that. It is wrong as a US immigration play, because the NDAA closed it. And it is usually wrong as a tax play, because citizenship is not tax residence — the two are unrelated in every jurisdiction on that table except the United States and Eritrea.

The routes people overlook

Before spending USD 200,000, it is worth checking whether you already qualify for something better and free.

We track 21 citizenship-by-descent routes. Several reach a great-grandparent, carry no residence requirement, no language test and no renunciation, and deliver an EU passport rather than a Caribbean one. Ireland, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Croatia and Bulgaria all have live ancestry routes, and most advisers never ask about the family tree before quoting a programme.

We also track 34 naturalisation routes where genuine residence delivers a stronger passport than any purchase. Paraguay is three years from permanent residency. Argentina is two. Both cost a fraction of a Caribbean contribution and both end somewhere better.

And if the objective is tax rather than mobility, the answer is usually a residence and tax-regime combination rather than a citizenship at all.

What to do next

If residence rather than citizenship would solve the problem, the golden visa map for 2026 covers what survived the closures.

Compare the open programmes side by side in compare, or read the individual programme pages linked above — each carries its conditions, its watch-outs and the date we last verified it.

If you want the honest version for your own case, tell us what the passport is for. We will tell you which of these eight can do it, whether a descent or naturalisation route gets you somewhere better for less, and when the answer is that you should not buy one at all. We take no commission from any government, agent or developer, which is why we can say that last part.

Figures and access lists move constantly in this category — several of the restrictions above landed in the last eight months. Everything here is current to our review in August 2026, and each programme page carries its own verification date.