Albania Citizenship by Investment

The law sets no monetary threshold, and has no investment route in which to set one: the whole text makes no mention of investment. What the law does set is a sliding income standard, and the way it slides is the point worth recording.

Article 8(1)(d) requires the applicant to have lawful income and financial resources sufficient for living in Albania, corresponding to the minimum living standard — and that standard is indexed annually against the price index of certain selected goods, as provided in the regulation of the social insurance institute.

The sum required is therefore not in the citizenship law at all but in an instrument of the social insurance body, and it changes every year without the law being touched.

Two words repay close reading, lawful and corresponding: the provision reaches the origin of the money, not merely its quantity; and it anchors to a minimum living standard rather than to a multiple of salary as many other countries do.

Beyond money, Article 8 imposes a separate material condition at point (ç): the applicant must have housing meeting the approved housing standards in Albania — housing is an independent requirement and is not treated as subsumed within the income condition.

There is no legal outcome for an investment route, because no such route exists in the law.

The consolidated Citizenship Law No. 113 of 2020, as updated to 8 June 2026, does not mention investment in any provision.

What does exist, and what a wealthy applicant is often pointed toward, is a different door altogether: Article 9, naturalisation in the state interest, heavily amended by Law No. 77/2023 of 2 May 2024 and then Law No. 49/2026 of 8 May 2026.

A foreigner acquires Albanian citizenship outside the conditions of Article 8 on age, language and history knowledge and the period of lawful residence, where the Albanian state has a special state interest in creating a stable link with that person.

That interest must arise by reason of the specific useful qualities, abilities and circumstances of the individual or of their activity, private or public.

That frame is wide, but the procedure is narrow and has four locks.

Lock one, paragraph 1/1: the special state interest must be identified, supported and guaranteed before the President by the Minister covering the relevant field, and the law states plainly that applications are not accepted without that supporting-guaranteeing documentation.

Lock two, paragraph 2: the conditions, criteria, circumstances, the documentation and verification of the state interest, and the specific security and integrity vetting rules are set by decision of the Council of Ministers.

That decision itself establishes a dedicated State Agency under the minister responsible for internal affairs to examine, verify and assess applications.

Lock three, paragraph 2/1: requests assessed as lawful are forwarded by the minister of internal affairs to the President of the Republic together with the proposal to grant citizenship.

Lock four, and this is the costliest point for anyone travelling with a family: paragraph 3 subjects any requested naturalisation of the naturalised person's family members to the conditions and requirements of Article 8.

The family inherits no exemption at all and must still meet the age, Albanian language, historical knowledge and lawful residence requirements.

The law sets deadlines on the state itself at four stages, which is uncommon in this dataset — most routes put the clock only on the applicant.

Stage one, Article 18(1): once a request is filed domestically, the local structure of the state police carries out the verifications needed to assess the threat to public security and, within one month of filing, must send the request and accompanying documentation to the structure responsible for citizenship matters in the ministry.

Stage two, paragraph 2, covers filings abroad: the diplomatic mission or consular post sends the file to the ministry of foreign affairs, which within fifteen days must forward it for examination to the responsible structure in the ministry.

Stage three, paragraph 4, handles incomplete files: where the documentation is not complete the ministry returns it within forty-five days to those structures and institutions, which must then notify the person concerned within fifteen days.

Stage four, the last, Article 20(1): the President of the Republic, within sixty days of receiving the ministry's proposal, shall issue the corresponding decree and communicate it to the applicant.

The same paragraph adds a further marker for incomplete files: they are returned to the responsible structure at the Ministry of Interior within thirty days of the day of filing.

On refusal the decision is an administrative act and the applicant may bring proceedings before the Tirana Administrative Court of First Instance.

The law demands two things at once, not one: Article 8(1)(c) requires the applicant both to be staying lawfully and to have resided continuously for not less than seven years on Albanian territory, and to have obtained a permanent residence permit valid at the very moment of filing, under the law on foreigners.

Seven years without a valid permanent permit does not suffice, and a permanent permit short of seven years does not suffice either.

Two groups get relief, at different levels.

The first, Article 8(4): a foreigner who is the minor child of a person holding Albanian citizenship may apply even without point (c) on residence or point (e) on Albanian language and historical knowledge, provided they have resided lawfully and continuously in Albania for at least three years.

A reduction from seven to three, not an abolition.

The second, Article 9: a person naturalised in the state interest is relieved entirely of the lawful residence period, along with the age condition and the language and history conditions.

A stateless person, by contrast, must under paragraph 2 satisfy only points (c), (dh) and (ë) — which keeps the seven-year requirement of point (c) intact and waives instead the housing, income and language conditions.

Family members of a person naturalised under this route receive no waiver of any condition, and that is the language of the statute itself.

Article 9(3) of Law 113 of 2020, in the consolidated text to 8 June 2026, provides that the naturalisation of family members of a person naturalised under this article, where requested, is subject to the conditions and requirements of article 8.

That means the ordinary naturalisation conditions of lawful residence period, Albanian language competence, knowledge of history and means of income.

In other words the article 9 concession runs to exactly one person. Article 9(3/1) adds a condition for minors: a foreign national under 18 may acquire citizenship only with the consent of both parents or the legal guardian, and of the child personally if aged between 14 and 18.

There are no accompanying parents, grandparents or siblings, and the statute states no monetary figure at all.

Two points larger than this record belong here.

The statute does not mention investment anywhere. Albania therefore has no citizenship by investment, only naturalisation in the state interest under article 9, identified and sponsored before the President by the minister responsible for the sector.

Article 9(2) delegates the procedure and criteria to a Council of Ministers decision whose full text has not been verified at source, so any monetary figure lies there and not in the statute.

A person granted citizenship under this programme receives the Albania passport, so the figure in this cell is the figure for that passport itself.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Albania passport reaches 121 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The programme does not exist as a distinct regime, so there is no distinct tax regime to describe.

The Nationality Law 113 of 2020, in the consolidated text to 8 June 2026, contains no provision on investment.

The national gazette register for the years 2020 to 2026 shows that article 9 has been implemented by six Council of Ministers decisions and ten Ministry of Interior instructions only, and the fields listed are the national interest, education, science, art, culture and sport.

No instrument creates an economic or investment route.

The framework currently in force is Decision 135 of 6 March 2024 as amended by Decision 198 of 4 April 2025, and it makes no mention of investment, fiscal matters or business.

The second tier is a join rather than language from the nationality statute:

Article 8 of the Income Tax Law 29 of 2023, consolidated to 16 January 2026, fixes tax residence by five tests, namely a settled home during the tax year, presence of 183 days or more, a place of business or habitual residence in Albania, and a centre of vital interests.

Albanian citizenship itself forms no part of the test, and the single instance where citizenship carries a tax consequence runs the other way, making an Albanian citizen serving the Albanian government abroad a tax resident. A resident is taxed on worldwide income.

The law prints no fee figure, but sets a cap of principle that very few states write into a citizenship statute.

Article 17(3) provides that the fee for a request to acquire, reacquire or renounce Albanian citizenship is fixed by a joint instruction of the responsible minister and the minister for finance. The following sentence is the decisive one: in every case, the fee may not exceed the cost of the service.

Legally, then, this charge may not be a source of budget revenue — it may only recover cost, and every later adjustment is bound by that ceiling.

It is the point that most clearly separates the Albanian route from citizenship-by-investment programmes, where the contribution is the purpose.

On filing, Article 17(1) requires every request to acquire, reacquire or renounce citizenship, together with all documentation, to be lodged online through the e-Albania electronic platform — there is no parallel paper channel.

The list of documents, the forms and the manner of completing them are approved by a separate joint instruction of the minister responsible for public order and security and the minister of foreign affairs, so the practical cost of assembling a file sits outside this law.