Of 61 jurisdictions counted, eight closed a Golden Visa by April 2025

Among the 61 jurisdictions counted, eight Golden Visa programmes stopped taking new applications between March 2021 and April 2025, in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada’s Saskatchewan. In the 12 months to 14 October 2026 the record holds no dated closure. Those months brought both tightening and loosening, so the record does not show one movement in one direction.

What was counted

A Golden Visa here is any programme that grants residence, temporary or permanent, for an investment, deposit, fund unit, property or business capital; citizenship by investment is outside the count. The window runs from 1 January 2020 to 14 October 2026, with the last 12 months counted separately.

One event is one dated instrument, such as a law, decree or an authority’s notice, that changes the terms on which a named programme admits new applicants. A closure stops new applications; a restriction raises an amount, removes a route or adds a condition. An opening is a new programme, route or reopening; an easing lowers a threshold; an instrument that does both is mixed.

Bills, announcements and press reports are not counted. Tier A events are backed by the instrument or the issuing authority’s own page; for tier B an official record shows the change but the instrument was not opened. The 61 jurisdictions were selected in advance, 24 of them in Europe and the Caucasus, and coverage within them is uneven; the figures are floors, not a census.

Tightening events, meaning closures and restrictions, number 36 against 31 loosening events, meaning openings and easings, on tier A evidence, and 43 against 41 with tier B. Another 11 instruments, or 13 with tier B, do both.

The eight permanent closures

All eight are tier A. Five are in Europe and three in Australia, New Zealand and Canada (the province of Saskatchewan); none was found in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America or Africa, where some official pages could not be reached. The latest is Spain’s.

Three further stoppages were temporary. The United States EB-5 Regional Center Program lapsed on 30 June 2021 and resumed on 14 May 2022; the Philippines suspended its retiree visa on 23 October 2020 and reopened it on 30 April 2021 for those aged 50 and over. Malaysia froze My Second Home on 4 August 2020 (tier B: confirmed in Parliament, instrument not opened); its reopening is reported, not counted.

The last 12 months

The record holds 15 events from 15 October 2025 to 14 October 2026, none of them a closure; one Mauritian act accounts for two. Kuwait’s opening and Jordan’s easing are tier B; an official page and press reports show the change, but the decision text was not opened.

No closure with a dated instrument is in the record for the period. Tightening and loosening events are 5 each counting Kuwait and Jordan, and 5 against 3 on tier A evidence alone; five more instruments do both.

Why the record does not tell one story

There is no single Golden Visa programme: each country legislates its own, and the direction depends on the region.

In Europe and the Caucasus, tier A evidence shows 17 tightening events against 6 loosening ones (23 against 7 with tier B). Outside Europe it is 19 against 25 (20 against 34), which puts numbers on an earlier analysis of Europe’s shrinking investor-residence map.

Most European tightening narrows a programme without ending it. Portugal closed its property and capital-transfer routes on 7 October 2023 but kept its culture, research, job-creation and fund routes. Greece raised its minimum in the named areas from EUR 500,000 (December 2022) to EUR 800,000 (April 2024) and added a EUR 250,000 tier for conversions and listed buildings.

Latvia dropped its property route on 15 September 2026 and opened a EUR 150,000 fund route.

Several programmes remain open on the official pages read on 14 October 2026: Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Italy, Hungary, Estonia and the fund and share-capital routes of Latvia. Portugal’s backlog has no official figure, and Greece’s new filings fell 36% in January–August 2026.

Four European steps are proposals, not law, and none is counted:

• Luxembourg: Bill 8586 to repeal the investor permit was adopted in committee on 16 September 2026 and has not been voted in plenary (report).
• Cyprus: curbs were announced orally by the Deputy Migration Minister on 24 September 2026, with no draft, threshold or date (report).
• Greece: an amendment by the opposition PASOK group to end new property applications, published on 30 September 2026, is a proposal; Law 5338/2026, published on 5 October, contains no change to article 100.
• Latvia: bill 1521/Lp14 to delete the EUR 150,000 fund route was referred to committee on 10 September 2026.

Five counted restrictions apply only to Russian and Belarusian citizens: Greece (28 February 2022), Italy (14 July 2023, 20 March 2024) and Latvia (9 April and 24 September 2022). The Greek and Italian ones rest on official records, with the orders not opened, and Latvia’s 2026 law keeps the bar for its share-capital and fund routes. By their terms, none reaches a Vietnamese passport.

What the official pages say for a Vietnamese applicant

No official page read excludes holders of a Vietnamese passport, and none names Vietnam among eligible nationalities. The record supports only that no restriction on Vietnamese nationals is stated on the page, which is not the same as the programme being open to Vietnamese.

The nationality rules that do appear name others: Russian and Belarusian citizens in Greece, Italy and Latvia; Portugal’s page excludes its own, EU, EEA, Andorran and Swiss nationals; and, on Malta’s page, applicants from “sanctioned countries” announced from time to time, with no list printed.

A minimum stay is stated for Portugal, at 7 days in the first year and 14 in later years. Cyprus states none, but the permit lapses after two years’ absence; the other pages read state none in the passages examined.

The nationality line, the amount for the route, any minimum stay and the rule for applications already filed are fixed only by the official page and the text in force; the last is not stated here. The eight closed programmes take no new applications from any passport.

What this article has not established

Bulgaria’s official sources could not be opened, so no event is counted there; Egypt, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Pakistan, Ethiopia, North Macedonia, Moldova, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were not researched or not completed.

Oman, Bahrain, Turkey and Dubai’s two-year property visa were reachable only through press reports, so changes there are reported, not counted, which under-counts tightening and loosening alike.

Ontario’s Entrepreneur stream shows as closed on the province’s page of 14 July 2026, but no date or instrument was found. It is not counted, and whether it falls inside the last 12 months is not established.

Nineteen of the 97 counted events are tier B, and some rows lack a second confirmation from an independent official page or national daily.

The Hellenic Parliament’s record could not be opened, so whether the PASOK amendment was put to a vote is not established; the account that the government rejected it is PASOK’s. The Paraguay and Panama texts were transcribed by hand from image-only documents.