Minimum stay is the clause that decides what an investor permit is worth

In the marketing material for any investor-residence programme, the figure set in bold is the capital requirement. The clause that decides what the permit is actually worth sits elsewhere: The minimum stay requirement, meaning the number of days the investor must genuinely be present on the territory of the issuing state.

That clause separates a permit that is a convenience at the border from one that is the first rung towards permanent residence and citizenship. Investors compare programmes by the sum they pay. That comparison omits the largest cost a busy person carries, which is time.

Who actually publishes a number

Read on 19 August 2026. The table says something uncomfortable: The measure that decides the real value of the permit is the one most authorities do not put on the front page. An absent figure is not evidence of an absent obligation — it means the obligation has to be asked for by name, in the governing regulation.

What a presence requirement really measures

Every state uses days of physical presence as a test of attachment. A low threshold signals a policy that treats the programme as a channel for capital. A high one signals a policy that treats it as genuine migration, where the permit survives only if the holder lives, pays tax and integrates. Those two philosophies produce entirely different assets, even when both are sold under the same label.

Three milestones that get collapsed into one

A typical file passes three separate tests, routinely spoken about as if they were the same: The condition for holding the permit, the condition for renewing it, and the condition for moving up to permanent residence or citizenship. The day counts attached to each are not necessarily the same number, and the third is usually set by a different statute from the first two.

The conditions differ at each milestone. Renewal is usually the lightest, but it is also where the day count is checked first. Permanent residence is where many states begin to require continuous presence and stop accepting long absences. Citizenship adds language, criminal record and tax obligations on top of the time.

The counting differs too. Some states add up the total days across the whole validity of the permit; some set a minimum for every year; some require a single entry to activate and maintain it. Whether time spent waiting for a decision or for a card to be reissued counts as residence is a technical detail, and it can move the citizenship milestone by several years.

Putting the options on the same measure

A programme requiring a fortnight a year and one requiring half a year are not two prices for the same product. Put the presence obligation beside the capital figure before ranking anything, and count it across the full horizon rather than the first year alone.

Then put the same five questions to every programme on the list. Does the day threshold apply to the principal applicant alone or to dependants as well? Are residence days counted by calendar year, by permit cycle, or across a multi-year period? What evidence of presence does the authority accept: entry and exit stamps, a lease, medical records, statements? Is the threshold for keeping the permit the same as the threshold for applying for citizenship? And do the conditions change on moving from the investment category to permanent residence? Answered from the regulation itself, those five usually reorder a shortlist against the first impression.

Risks that are rarely quoted

The largest is the law changing mid-route. Whether a file lodged before an amendment is judged under the old text or the new one decides a plan that runs for years, and that provision exists only in the original instrument, never in an intermediary summary.

The second is tax. The day threshold that makes a person tax resident is set independently of the day threshold in immigration law. An investor can be present long enough to trigger a worldwide filing obligation in the host state while still falling short of the residence needed for citizenship. That is where the two bodies of law cross, and where tax advice belongs before an investment commitment is signed.

Where to find the current figure

Where an authority does publish a figure, check whether it applies per calendar year or per renewal period, because those produce very different totals over a decade. Where it publishes nothing, ask for the regulation rather than accepting the silence as an answer.

What to check

Ask for the presence requirement in the text the authority itself publishes. Ask whether it is measured per calendar year or per permit cycle. Ask what happens to the permit if the requirement is missed in a single period. And ask whether the requirement for renewal is the same as the one for the next status up — because it usually is not.

A working rule: if a figure for residence days cannot be traced back to the page of the issuing authority, treat it as not yet published. For the two European programmes described above, those authorities are the Agência para a Integração, Migrações e Asilo in Portugal and the Ministry of Migration and Asylum in Greece.

The minimum stay is the variable that turns an investment into a way of living, or fails to. Before a programme is chosen, it is worth writing down the number of days each year that can genuinely be given to another country, and removing every option that does not fit that number, however attractive the capital terms are.