Samoa · Citizenship by investment
Citizenship Investment Programme (Citizenship Investment Act 2015)
Our characterisation, stated openly: the Act remains in force, 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 once, eight years after being assented to. We label it paused rather than open, because treating it as an available route would mislead. 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 threshold and banning applicants with foreign government ties. None of this is confirmed as enacted.
Samoa is the region's counterfactual. Its passport opens 129 destinations and still carries EU visa-free access, 42 more destinations than Vanuatu's, for exactly one reason: it never sold citizenship at volume. Vanuatu monetized its waiver and lost it. If Samoa reforms and scales this programme, the Samoan passport's value would very likely fall the same way. Any family drawn in by the passport's current strength should understand that scaling the programme is what would destroy the thing they came for.
Qualifying routes
SAT 4,000,000, or roughly USD 1.4-1.5m depending on the exchange rate. Note that the amount is denominated in Samoan tala (SAT), not USD. The currency code shown here is a schema limitation, so the figure should be read as SAT 4,000,000.
This is a Cabinet-approved recommendation reported in October 2025. It has not been confirmed as enacted, and no threshold has been published.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $4M
- Total landed cost
- Nominally SAT 4,000,000, or roughly USD 1.4-1.5m, under the 2015 Act. Because the programme has no meaningful application history, there is no reliable all-in cost to point to.
- Route type
- Citizenship by investment
- Physical presence
- Not meaningfully established in practice.
- Family
- Not meaningfully established in practice
- Permanent residency
- Not applicable. The Act contemplates citizenship, not permanent residency.
- Citizenship
- Nominally direct under the Act. In practice, it remains untested.
- Language test
- None published.
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- a qualifying investment under the Citizenship Investment Act 2015, including a contribution to a government development fund for national developmentrequirements beyond what the Act itself sets out remain untested in practice
- It does not function. A decade of the Act producing effectively no approvals is not a backlog. It is the absence of a programme.
- The passport's strength is a direct consequence of the programme's disuse. Scale it up, and the EU's June 2025 visa suspension mechanism, which explicitly targets CBI without genuine ties, becomes a live threat. Vanuatu is the precedent, and it is only 18 months old.
- The reform has been under review since at least June 2023, with Cabinet approvals in May 2024 and further reports in October 2025. It is still not enacted. Treat any announced timeline with scepticism.
- Anyone currently marketing a Samoan passport as something you can buy is selling a route that does not exist.
- The threshold is set in Samoan tala, and sources report the USD equivalent inconsistently. Check the tala figure against the Act itself.
- Reported proposals to bar applicants with ties to foreign governments would, if enacted, narrow eligibility significantly.