Samoa

Not in practice. The Citizenship Investment Act 2015 is still on the books, so the programme is technically live, but it has essentially never been used. A minister noted in June 2023 that it had never been used even once, eight years after being assented into law. We describe it as paused rather than open, because calling it an available route would be misleading. A decade of the Act producing effectively no approvals is not a backlog. It is the absence of a programme. Anyone currently marketing a Samoan passport as something you can buy is selling a route that does not exist.

For exactly one reason: Samoa never sold citizenship at volume. The Samoan passport is worth 129 visa-free destinations (Henley June 2026 rank 39) and still carries EU visa-free access, 42 more destinations than Vanuatu's. That is precisely because its CBI law was never used at scale. Vanuatu monetised its EU waiver and permanently lost it. Samoa is the region's counterfactual. Its passport strength is a direct consequence of the programme's disuse.

Very likely not, and this is the central paradox for anyone attracted to it. If Samoa scales the programme, the EU's June 2025 visa-suspension mechanism becomes a live threat. That mechanism explicitly targets CBI schemes without genuine ties, and Vanuatu is the precedent from only 18 months earlier. Scaling the programme is precisely what would destroy the passport value that makes it attractive. Any family drawn by the current strength should price in that risk in full.

Cabinet approved reform recommendations in May 2024 and, per October 2025 reporting, approved adding government bonds and a national development fund as qualifying options. Reports also indicate consideration of halving the investment threshold and banning applicants with foreign government ties. None of this is confirmed as enacted. The reform has been described as under review since at least June 2023, with repeated Cabinet approvals but no legislation, so announced timelines deserve scepticism.

Nominally SAT 4,000,000, or roughly USD 1.4–1.5m depending on the exchange rate. One important caveat. The threshold is denominated in Samoan tala, not US dollars, and different sources report the USD figure inconsistently, so the tala figure should be verified against the Act itself. Because the programme has no meaningful application history, no reliable all-in cost exists yet. Any USD headline you see should be checked against the underlying tala amount.

Samoa permits dual citizenship. On tax, Samoa is not territorial. Residents are taxed on worldwide income, with a top marginal rate of 27%. There is no capital gains, wealth or inheritance tax, though. That said, these rates should be confirmed with the Samoa Ministry for Revenue before you rely on them, since published detail is thin. For nearly all prospective buyers this is academic anyway, since there is currently no functioning process to become a Samoan citizen in the first place.

Nobody, on a transactional basis. There is no functioning process to apply to. It is worth monitoring only if the reform is actually enacted, and even then only with the EU-waiver risk fully priced in. Anyone approached by an agent offering to sell a Samoan passport today should treat it as a red flag, because the deliverable does not exist. Reported proposals to bar applicants with foreign government ties would also narrow eligibility materially if enacted.