Three residence tests state a ratio, not a sum

Three countries state the money a foreign applicant must show as a multiple of a national index rather than as a sum. The figure that multiple applies to is set by a different instrument — labour law in two of the three, a budget law in the third. What that figure is for 2026 has a separate answer in each country, and in one of the three this article could not reach it.

Where the number actually lives

Spain’s Reglamento de Extranjería sets the means-of-subsistence test for non-lucrative residence at 400% of the IPREM a month, and 100% of the IPREM for each dependent family member, stated as minimums measured at the moment of application or renewal. The same regulation uses the index at other rates: 100% for a short stay, 75% for a first family member, 50% for each further one, 150% for a two-person family reunification household.

Read that regulation end to end and you still do not know what to prove. It carries no euro figure at all.

Portugal: a decree-law dated 29 December 2025

Portugal’s subsistence test takes the guaranteed minimum monthly wage as its reference. For 2026 that is €920, set by Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025 of 29 December 2025, three days before the year it governs.

It is counted net of social security contributions and scaled by household: 100% for the first adult, 50% for each further adult, and 30% for each child under 18 and each dependent adult child.

Colombia: a figure the decree calls transitory

Colombia’s visa resolution states its thresholds in monthly minimum wages: 650 for direct foreign investment, 350 for real estate, 100 for a company stake, and three for the retirement visa.

The wage for 2026 is 1,750,905 pesos, a rise of 23% on 2025. The decree fixing it says it applies transitorily, and article 2 ties its life to judgment in a named annulment proceeding before the Consejo de Estado.

As the consolidated text read on 20 September 2026, no annotation records a judgment. Whether one has been given was not established here, and a consolidation can lag.

Spain: two facts, and the gap between them

The ninetieth additional provision of Ley 31/2022 set the IPREM at 20 euros a day, 600 euros a month and 7,200 euros a year, and the law calls that figure the IPREM for 2023.

Separately, the Ministry of Finance publishes a page headed “Prórroga del Presupuesto para 2026”. It cites article 134.4 of the Constitution — if a budget law is not approved before the first day of the financial year, the previous year’s budget is automatically extended — and directs readers to the 2023 budget for the rest of the documentation.

Those are two recorded facts. This article does not join them into a finding about what an applicant must show in 2026, because the join would assert something neither source states. Four hundred per cent of the 2023 figure would be 2,400 euros a month, with a further 600 for each dependant; that is arithmetic on a figure the law labels 2023, not a statement of the current requirement.

What indexation does and does not do

An indexed threshold does not move by itself. In the three cases read here, the figure behind the index is set by an instrument outside immigration law, on that instrument’s own timetable.

That is visible in the three instruments read for this article. Portugal’s decree-law is dated three days before the year it governs. Colombia’s decree carries its own termination condition, written into article 2. Spain’s IPREM figure sits in a law that names 2023, and the finance ministry’s own page for 2026 points back to the 2023 budget.

None of this makes any of the three thresholds wrong or unenforceable. It makes the sentence “the requirement is indexed” an incomplete description of what an applicant has to prove: it gives the percentage and leaves the reader to find the number.

What this does not establish

This article does not establish what the IPREM in force for 2026 is. It establishes two narrower things: that the 2023 budget law set 600 euros a month and called it the figure for 2023, and that the Ministry of Finance describes the 2026 budget as an extension of the 2023 budget. It does not establish how many budget laws have or have not been passed between them.

It does not establish the state of the Colombian proceeding after 19 February 2026, and it does not establish anything about how often instruments of this kind are issued on time.

One cross-check could not be made: the page that publishes Spain’s IPREM amounts by year returned a server error at both of its addresses when it was read for this article, so the figure taken from the budget law was not compared against a second official source.

This compares the mechanism that sets a threshold, not the routes themselves; document lists, fees and processing practice were not examined. No exchange rate is used between euros and pesos, and no country is called cheaper or easier than another. Three is the number of countries whose underlying instruments were read for this article, not a count of the countries that index.