Panama

The real estate threshold for the Qualified Investor permanent residency is USD 300,000 until 15 October 2026. After that, Executive Decree 193 of 15 October 2024 raises it to USD 500,000. There is no separate programme actually called the Golden Visa. That name is simply a marketing label for the Qualified Investor route. Worth knowing: this increase has already been postponed twice. Decree 722 of 2020 first set it for 2022, then Decree 193 pushed it to 2026. Another extension is plausible, but you cannot plan around one. As of mid-2026, this is the single most time-sensitive deadline in Latin American residency planning.

No. The Qualified Investor and Pensionado permanent residencies have no annual stay requirement. You simply need to enter Panama at least once every two years to keep the status alive. That makes it useful as an insurance policy for a family that does not want to relocate. The catch is that this near-zero presence buys residency, not naturalisation. Panamanian citizenship after five years requires genuine presence and is applied slowly and discretionarily.

Not cleanly. Panama's constitution does not generally recognise dual nationality, so naturalising requires formally renouncing your prior nationality before Panamanian authorities. Whether your home country treats that renunciation as legally effective is a separate question. But you should not assume Panama is a simple add-on passport. For most families, the value here is the fast, tax-efficient permanent residency, not the citizenship.

No. Panama runs a genuinely territorial system. Foreign-source income is not taxed at all, and there is no remittance trap and no non-dom clock. There is no wealth tax and no inheritance tax. The one recent change is Law 526 of 28 May 2026, which adds economic-substance and 15% reporting rules for Panamanian entities inside multinational groups earning foreign passive income from fiscal year 2027. Individuals' foreign income appears unaffected, but the direction of travel is one-way.

No, and it is being mis-sold as one. Law 493 of 2025 authorises a special passport for qualified investors, but this is a travel document, not nationality. It does not confer Panamanian citizenship, does not replace your own passport, and expires when your residence permit does. Its implementing regulations were still pending as of mid-2026. Treat any pitch describing it as a Panama second passport with suspicion.

No. Executive Decrees 197 and 226 of 2021 (effective 7 August 2021) killed the old version, which gave near-instant permanent residency on a Panamanian company and a small bank balance. Since then it requires a real economic tie, USD 200,000 in property or a three-year bank deposit, plus a two-year provisional stage before permanent residency. It is restricted to roughly 49–50 listed countries, and that list is set by decree and can change. The 2021 reform is the cautionary tale for the whole region. An established programme was rewritten overnight, with nobody grandfathered.

Usually not. The Pensionado programme requires a pension of at least USD 1,000/month, guaranteed for life, paid by a foreign government, an international organisation, or a legally established private company. Income from your own bank accounts, foundations, trusts or investment portfolios does not qualify. That happens to be exactly the kind of income wealthy applicants tend to have, so the application gets refused. This is one of the world's cheapest permanent residencies, and the statutory Law 6 discounts are real money. But it is built for people with a defined-benefit pension, not a portfolio.

Yes. Panama remained on the EU's Annex I list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions at the February 2026 review, with the next review due in October 2026. That is a live banking problem. EU counterparties apply enhanced due diligence, and some refuse Panamanian structures outright. EU payers may also impose withholding surcharges. Panama is also a CRS participant and exchanges account information, so territorial taxation is not the same thing as opacity. The reputational overhang from the Panama Papers still makes opening accounts elsewhere measurably harder than it would be for, say, a Uruguayan resident.

The immigration outcome is real, but the investment frequently is not. The reforestation route is the cheapest asset-backed path to permanent residency, commonly USD 100,000 for the two-year tier or USD 350,000 for the direct permanent tier as reported in 2026. It is also the most heavily mis-sold programme in Panama. Promoters bundle the visa with an overpriced teak plantation, so the residency effectively pays for itself out of your own capital. The investment must be held five years, yet teak takes 20–25 years to mature. That leaves you illiquid far beyond the immigration horizon. Verify the project's Ministry of Environment registration and land title in the Public Registry yourself. Do not rely on the promoter's lawyer to do it for you.