Greece’s pending Golden Visa files fall below half of their 2025 peak

Greece’s Ministry of Migration and Asylum counted 25,970 pending applications for the Golden Visa, the investor residence permit, at the end of September 2026, according to its September report, posted on 23 October. That is 49.2% of the peak of 52,821 recorded at the end of March 2025. No bulletin since January 2024 had put the total below half of that peak.

For a Vietnamese family with a file already lodged, the bulletin shows fewer pending files overall and, for main investors, more permits issued than new applications filed. It does not show how long one file takes or how many of the pending files are Vietnamese: Vietnam is not among the nationalities the ministry names.

What the September bulletin shows

The figures come from the investor-permit tables in the ministry’s 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.

Pending files fell by 2,711 in a month, from 28,681 at the end of August. Family members make up 73.2% of the September total, against 70.5% a year earlier.

Where the fall in new filings sits

The 1,885-file shortfall in new applications occurred almost entirely between January and April. Those four months brought 1,672 filings in 2026 against 3,512 in 2025, a fall of 52.4%. From May to September the count was 2,190 against 2,235, a fall of 2.0%.

Filings in August and September 2026 were slightly above the same months of 2025, at 331 against 313 and 418 against 392. September is a first count in both years.

Decisions against filings

In the 12 months to September, the ministry issued 10,677 first-time permits to main investors and received 5,136 new applications from them. First-time permits exceeded new applications in each of the 13 months from September 2025 to September 2026.

Among main investors, first-time files account for most of the fall: 5,405 of them are pending against 11,365 a year earlier, while first-time permits ran ahead of new applications. For family members, the tables record no decisions, so their fall shows only as a shrinking stock.

How old the pending files are

Of the 25,970 pending files, 6,723 (25.9%) were filed in 2024 or earlier and 12,160 (46.8%) in 2026.

Among main investors, 3,030 of the 6,962 pending files (43.5%) were filed before September 2025, more than a year before the end of September 2026. That figure combines the ministry’s table of pending files by year of filing with its table of applications by month, and it includes renewals.

Revisions to the August figures

The ministry’s footnote to its table of permits by month of filing says those figures are updated continuously, because a permit’s start date is recorded as the filing date. Its monthly counts of filings and of decisions also change between bulletins, and the bulletin states no reason for those changes.

Against the August bulletin covered in an earlier article, the September bulletin raises new applications for January to August 2026 from 3,426 to 3,444, and for August alone from 311 to 331. It raises first-time permits for January to August from 6,983 to 7,309, and the August row from 232 to 552.

On the revised figure, new applications for January to August are 35.7% below the 2025 level, against the 35.8% reported then. The September rows, 418 filings and 798 permits, are first counts and can rise.

Limits of the comparison

• Each year is read from its own September bulletin, so both are at the same stage of revision. The Greek business site Enikonomia reported January to September 2025 filings from the ministry’s data as almost 5,750 on 6 November 2025, matching the 5,747 recorded in the September 2025 bulletin.
• The September 2025 table of pending files counts filing years 2021 to 2025, and the September 2026 table counts 2022 to 2026. Setting aside the 194 files from 2021 that were pending in September 2025, the 12-month fall is 43.1%, not 43.3%.
• The March 2025 table also starts at 2021. Without its 220 files from 2021, September’s total is 49.4% of the peak, still below half.
• “Peak” means the highest of the 33 monthly bulletins from January 2024 to September 2026. Earlier bulletins were not read.

Nationality

The ministry names the ten largest nationalities among 27,602 valid initial permits, which together hold 87.9%. China accounts for 47.4% and Türkiye for 19.6%. Nationalities outside the ten are grouped as 12.1%.

Vietnam is not shown. The tables of applications, decisions and pending files carry no breakdown by nationality.

Publication dates

The ministry posted its August report on 23 September and its September report on 23 October. Its statistics page listed no October report on 3 November.

What this article has not established

How long one file takes is not shown: the tables count files, not durations. The ministry’s tables do not say why any file is still pending.

The number of Vietnamese applicants or permit holders is not published in these tables.

No reason for the fall in filings between January and April, or for the levelling since May, appears in the bulletin, and no ministerial statement on the September figures was found.

The rules for new applicants, including the opposition amendment and the transfer tax announced in September, are covered in earlier articles and were not re-checked here.