New Greek Golden Visa filings fall 36% as investor backlog drops 45%

Greece received 3,426 new applications from main investors for its Golden Visa, the investor permanent residence permit, between January and August 2026, 35.8% fewer than the 5,333 filed in the same months of 2025, according to the Ministry of Migration and Asylum’s August report, posted on 23 September. Decisions moved the other way: 6,983 first-time permits were issued, up from 5,555, and pending main-investor files fell to 7,686 from 13,906.

For a Vietnamese family, the property route remains open, at the thresholds set by Law 5100/2024 and described below. An opposition amendment that would have closed it to new applicants was debated in Parliament on 1 October; PASOK, which tabled it, says the government rejected it. It is an opposition proposal, not law. On TLT’s reading, the fall in pending files and the rise in decisions are what bear on a file already lodged, although the tables do not show how long an individual file takes. Vietnam does not appear in the ministry’s nationality breakdown.

What the August figures show

The numbers come from the investor-permit section of the ministry’s August 2026 Legal Migration report and the tables in its Appendix B, set against the same tables a year earlier. Applications are counted by month of filing, permits by month of decision and pending files at the end of the month.

The fall in new filings did not begin this year. On the ministry’s latest count, 7,021 initial applications were filed in 2025, against 9,372 in 2024. Valid main-investor permits rose to 34,759 at the end of August 2026 from 23,882 a year earlier. The Decentralised Administration of Attica, which covers Athens, held 5,571 of the 7,686 pending main-investor files.

Three limits on the comparison

• The ministry says its monthly figures are updated continuously, because a permit’s start date is recorded as the filing date. On TLT’s reading, the latest month is undercounted: August 2025 filings stood at 288 in the August 2025 report and at 308 a year later. The 311 filings recorded for August 2026 can be expected to rise in the same way; the 2025 total used here is likewise provisional, taken at the same point in its year.
• The August 2026 decision row, 232 first-time permits and 38 renewals, is far below July’s 1,208 and 189, but the latest month’s decisions are revised too: the August 2025 row grew from 324 and 142 to 448 and 183 over the following year. Leaving August out of both years, first-time permits rose by 29.1%, from 5,231 to 6,751.
• The August 2025 pending table counts files lodged from 2021 to 2025; the August 2026 table counts those from 2022 to 2026, so 2021 files still pending drop out and the comparison is not like-for-like. In August 2025, 52 main-investor files from 2021 were pending; on TLT’s reading, that is small next to a fall of 6,220.

What the PASOK amendment proposed

The parliamentary group of PASOK–Movement for Change, which describes itself as the main opposition, published an amendment on 30 September to the Development Ministry’s bill on new incentives for foreign direct investment. From the day it took effect, no new applications for the investor permit through real estate would be accepted; files lawfully lodged before then would be decided under the rules in force when they were filed. The other investor routes in the Migration Code would stay, but holders of financial or start-up investor permits could no longer switch into property.

For existing holders, the ban on short-term letting and sub-letting would extend to every property held under the route, renewal would depend on observing it, and a resale of the property would revoke the permit. PASOK’s explanatory note says the wider letting ban would start at a later date, though the amendment’s entry-into-force article names none. PASOK presents the change as a move from a “Golden Visa” to an “Angel Visa”.

The amendment was debated in plenary on 1 October. PASOK’s leader, Nikos Androulakis, told Parliament that the Golden Visa had turned from medicine into poison for millions of Greeks, according to the party’s release of his speech. On 7 October the party wrote that the government had again rejected it. An amendment has legal effect only once passed and published in the Government Gazette; TLT has seen no record of its adoption, and as published it is a proposal with no legal effect.

What the minister said, as reported

The Ministry of Development’s release on Minister Takis Theodorikakos’s speech in the same debate does not mention the Golden Visa. According to To Vima, a national daily, the minister countered that the government had already legislated changes to the Golden Visa regime; the paper reported this in its own words, not as a quotation.

Thresholds and nationality

Under Article 100 of the Migration Code as replaced by Law 5100/2024, in the codified text on the ministry’s site, the property must be worth at least €800,000 in Attica, the Thessaloniki regional unit, Mykonos, Santorini and islands of more than 3,100 inhabitants, €400,000 elsewhere, in each case for a single property with at least 120 square metres of main space, and €250,000 for a building converted to residential use or a listed building. When Latvia dropped its property route, TLT found Greece, Cyprus and Malta to be the only ones among nine EU investor schemes it reviewed that still accepted a direct home purchase. TLT reported separately on the 15% transfer tax announced for third-country buyers.

The ministry breaks down valid initial permits by nationality but names only the ten largest groups. China accounts for 47.4% and Turkey for 19.1% of valid initial permits; nationalities outside the top ten are grouped together as “other nationalities”, 12.2%. Vietnam is not shown. The tables of applications, decisions and pending files carry no breakdown by nationality.

What comes next

The ministry posted its July report on 25 August and its August report on 23 September; no September report had appeared on its statistics page by 13 October.

What this article has not established

The ministry’s tables do not show how many applications used each type of investment, including the €250,000 conversion option, or how long an individual file takes to decide. TLT could not consult the parliamentary record; the amendment’s registration, whether it was put to a vote and how members voted were not verified, and the account of its rejection is PASOK’s. No government statement naming the amendment was found. TLT did not check whether laws passed in 2026 changed the thresholds or whether the 15% transfer tax announced in September has been legislated, and the number of Vietnamese applicants or permit holders is not published in these tables.