Cabo Verde · Residency by investment
Green Card (Estatuto de titular de segunda residência)
In force since 31 December 2021 under Lei n.º 30/IX/2018, Decreto Regulamentar n.º 1/2020 and Portarias 61/2021 and 62/2021, this measure grants permanent residence directly, skipping the normal five-year ladder. Its headline tax benefit may no longer exist. The benefits were tied to IUP (1.5%), which was repealed on 1 January 2026 and replaced by IPI (0.1%) and ITI (1%). Whether the original Lei 30/IX/2018 benefits carried over remains unverified.
This is a codified route to immediate permanent residence for EUR 80,000, covering the whole family, with no evident presence requirement and a path to naturalisation five years later with no language test. It may be the most under-marketed instrument in the region, precisely because no agency earns a large fee on it.
Qualifying routes
8,821,200 CVE. This steers buyers toward Brava, Maio and São Nicolau, markets that are thin and illiquid.
13,231,800 CVE. This includes Sal, Boa Vista and Praia.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €80k
- Total landed cost
- EUR 80,000-120,000 of property, paid with funds transferred from abroad. The Green Card fee schedule is not published, so any total for a family of four rests on an unverified fee assumption.
- Route type
- Residency by investment
- Physical presence
- No physical presence requirement was found, though this reflects an absence of evidence rather than confirmed verification.
- Family
- Family members are expressly covered as a group
- Permanent residency
- This is permanent residence, granted directly and skipping the normal 5-year ladder. That is what makes it genuinely unusual.
- Citizenship
- Naturalisation is available after 5 years' legal residence under Article 13 of Lei n.º 33/X/2023, with no language requirement. Marriage reduces this to 4 years. Whether time spent on the Green Card counts toward the 5-year clock is critical and remains unresolved.
- Language test
- There is no language requirement for naturalisation. The requirement applies only at the stage of ordinary permanent residence, not naturalisation.
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- Property built or under construction, for residence.EUR 80,000 or EUR 120,000, depending on the municipality's GDP per capita.Purchase funds transferred from abroad.Clean record.
- Do not become a tax resident here. Cabo Verde taxes residents on a worldwide basis. It also has CFC rules, triggered by a holding of 25%+ in a clearly more favourable regime, and only three tax treaties. The idea of a low-tax island base falls apart for anyone who actually moves here. Treat this as a second residence, not a tax plan.
- The headline tax benefit may no longer exist. The Green Card benefits were tied to IUP at 1.5%, which was repealed on 1 January 2026 and replaced by IPI (0.1%) and ITI (1%). Whether the statutory benefits carried over is unverified. As things stand, the statute's headline benefit points to a tax that no longer exists.
- Citizenship by investment is on the books but not operational, and the EUR 200,000 figure now circulating has no legal basis. Lei n.º 33/X/2023 art. 14 creates nationality by investment, but every amount involved is to be fixed by law, and that has never happened. The preamble to the amending Lei 37/X/2024 admits that without the implementing regulation, the nationality law would be inapplicable, and Decreto-Lei n.º 29/2024 expressly excluded investment cases. Anyone selling Cabo Verde citizenship by investment is selling a statute that its own legislature has declared inapplicable.
- A Cabo Verde passport does not give you Schengen access. The EU relationship amounts to a Mobility Partnership plus short-stay visa facilitation, meaning cheaper and simpler Schengen visa procedures, not visa-free travel. CPLP mobility works the same way: facilitated procedures, not free movement. Any agency suggesting otherwise is misrepresenting the facts.
- The EUR 80,000 tier steers you to Brava, Maio and São Nicolau. These are genuinely thin and illiquid property markets, and exit may be difficult at any price.
- Whether Green Card time counts toward the 5-year naturalisation clock is unresolved. That is critical to any long-term plan.
- The government's own AAI portal still cites the repealed Lei 80/III/90. Agency claims of a 10-year naturalisation period are wrong. The statute says 5.
- Cabo Verde is not a durable CRS holdout. It has committed to first exchanges by 2027.