Hungary · Residency by investment
Hungarian Investment Immigration Programme (Residency Bond Programme)
The programme ran from 2013. Bond sales were suspended from 31 March 2017 and the programme was wound down. The government said Hungary no longer had an economic need for it. Reporting at the time documented corruption and opacity around the scheme. It was replaced in July 2024 by the Guest Investor Programme.
This is the single most instructive cautionary tale in European investment migration. It is also the direct reason the current programme is structured as a temporary permit rather than permanent residence. Anyone assessing Hungary's political risk over a ten-year horizon should study what happened here.
Qualifying routes
The initial price dated from 2013 and was later raised to EUR 300,000. The bonds were sold exclusively through eight designated intermediaries, seven of them registered offshore.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €300k
- Total landed cost
- EUR 250-300k bond plus roughly EUR 45-60k in non-refundable intermediary fees. The fees, not the bond, were the real point of the programme.
- Route type
- Residency by investment
- Timeline
- 1–3 months (The programme was notoriously fast. One sanctioned applicant was reported approved in ten days.)
- Physical presence
- In practice, none was required.
- Family
- SpouseMinor childrenDependent parents
- Permanent residency
- Permanent residence was granted under this programme. The current programme, by contrast, grants only a temporary ten-year permit.
- Citizenship
- Citizenship required 8 years of physical residence. Almost no bondholders pursued it.
- Language test
- Constitutional knowledge exam in Hungarian.
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- The programme has been closed to new applicants since 2017. Any advisor still marketing Hungarian residency bonds is selling something that no longer exists.
- Existing permits were reviewed retroactively, and Hungary revoked a number of them. That history shows Hungarian investor status is not immune to later withdrawal.