Colombia’s investor visa thresholds rose 23% in pesos

Colombia writes the price of residence in minimum wages. Every threshold in the investor and retirement routes examined here is expressed as a multiple of the salario mínimo mensual legal vigente, the statutory monthly minimum wage, and not as a sum of money. So when the wage for 2026 was fixed 23% above the 2025 figure, each of those thresholds rose by 23% in pesos without a word of the visa rules being amended. The wage now in force is itself provisional, fixed by a decree issued on the order of a court and expressed to run only until judgment.

What the instrument actually says

Visas are governed by Resolución 5477 de 2022, in force since 21 October 2022 and amended four times, most recently in 2024. Each threshold is a number of minimum wages.

• Investor visa, direct investment (article 79). Registered foreign direct investment of more than 650 minimum wages.
• Investor visa, real estate (article 79). Property held solely in the applicant’s name worth at least 350 minimum wages.
• Partner or owner visa (article 75). Paid-in company capital of not less than 100 minimum wages.
• Retirement visa (article 77). A certified lifetime monthly pension of not less than 3 minimum wages.
• Digital nomad visa (article 46). Income of at least 3 minimum wages a month, over the preceding three months.

At the 2026 wage of 1,750,905 pesos, the investment route requires more than 1,138,088,250 pesos, the property route at least 612,816,750, and the company route at least 175,090,500. A year earlier, against a wage of 1,423,500 pesos, the same three clauses came to 925,275,000, 498,225,000 and 142,350,000. The wording matters in the first case: article 79 says superior a, so the peso figure is a floor the investment must exceed rather than a sum that qualifies.

Two effects of similar size, compounding

The wage rise was 23%, a nominal increase of 327,405 pesos. For an applicant who earns and holds dollars, that is about half of what happened over the past year. The currency moved too. Around 19 September 2025 the representative market rate was 3,892.45 pesos to the dollar; for 19 to 21 September 2026 it is 3,192.92, so a dollar buys about 18% fewer pesos.

On that twelve-month basis the direct-investment floor moved from about 237,700 dollars to about 356,400, a rise of roughly half. The two contributions are close in size — the wage a factor of 1.23, the exchange rate 1.22, compounding to 1.50 — and neither dominates. Both dollar figures are indicative, taken at the rates for their own dates; the peso amounts are what the resolution imposes.

What the applicant has to produce

Showing money is not enough. For the investment route, article 79 requires a communication from the Departamento de Cambios Internacionales del Banco de la República certifying that the direct foreign investment is registered in the applicant’s name. The property route requires that same certificate, together with a Certificado de Tradición y Libertad showing that the applicant is the sole owner, and the property must meet the value threshold. A purchase on its own does not meet the documented requirements.

Three conditions travel with the threshold. It is measured at the date the application is filed, so an applicant who files after a wage rise is measured against the new figure. On a second and subsequent application the holder must show the investment or property was maintained throughout the previous visa’s validity. And investor and partner-or-owner visa holders must notify the visa authority of any change in the circumstances that produced the visa.

The nomad visa is not on the accumulation list

The digital nomad visa asks for about 1,645 dollars a month at current rates, runs for up to two years, and bars paid work for any person or entity domiciled in Colombia. It is a Visitor visa, and that placement matters more than the sum.

Permanent residence by accumulated time, under article 90 as amended in 2023, is built on time held as a Migrant visa holder. The table of qualifying periods lists Migrant categories and the Resident-beneficiary entry. Investor, partner-or-owner and retirement visas each accumulate over five years; a spouse of a Colombian reaches it in three, and a parent of a Colombian, a Mercosur migrant or an Andean migrant in two. The nomad visa does not appear in that table. Whether any other provision would let that time count is not something this review established.

The clock to citizenship starts later than most people count

Nationality is no longer governed by the 1993 act: Ley 2332 de 2023 repealed it. Article 9 requires the applicant to hold, or be a beneficiary of, a Resident visa both when the application is made and throughout the process; to show five continuous years of domicile immediately before it; and — the operative sentence — it counts that domicile from the date the Resident visa was issued.

The five years on an investor visa and the five years of domicile therefore run one after the other. For an investor relying on the five-year accumulation route and subject to the ordinary five-year domicile requirement, the qualifying periods total ten years, and any interval before the Resident visa is issued is added to that. The sum assumes the qualification is never interrupted, and eligibility is not approval. The domicile period falls to two years where the applicant is married to or the permanent partner of a Colombian, has Colombian children, or where reciprocity is established.

Status is easier to lose than to hold by default. A Resident visa lapses automatically after two consecutive years of absence, carries a separate transfer requirement every five years, and grants an open work permit in every case except pensioners. An absence of a year or more before a naturalisation application interrupts the domicile period altogether.

What is unresolved

The wage itself is contested. The government fixed the 2026 figure by Decreto 1469 de 2025. The Consejo de Estado provisionally suspended that decree on 12 February 2026, deferred the effects of the suspension until a replacement was published, and ordered the replacement within eight calendar days. Decreto 0159 de 2026, of 19 February, fixes the same 1,750,905 pesos, says in terms that it does so transitorily, and provides that it governs only until judgment is given in the pending nullity proceeding. Because the effects were deferred, no gap opened between the two decrees.

A provisional suspension decides nothing about the merits. As at 19 September 2026, the ministry’s consolidated text of Decreto 0159 records no later amendment and no note that judgment has been given; this account does not extend beyond that check. The consequence for an applicant is narrower than it sounds: the multiples are not in dispute and the peso figure has not changed. What carries a stated end point is the decree supplying that figure.

Any further change in the statutory minimum wage would move every one of these thresholds again, without the visa rules being touched. Over the past twelve months the direct-investment floor rose by roughly 120,000 dollars in equivalent terms while the rule behind it stayed as it was. A dollar budget has to carry the peso threshold in force on the filing date, and the rate on the day the money is converted.