Italy Golden Visa

Four routes with four separate thresholds: EUR 2 million in Italian government bonds; EUR 500,000 in an Italian limited company; EUR 250,000 in an Italian innovative startup; or EUR 1 million in a philanthropic initiative.

Two accompanying rules matter as much as the figures themselves. First, the visa is issued for one investment falling into only one route — it is not possible to combine investments directed at different recipients, nor different types of investment each of which individually falls below the minimum threshold for its own case.

Second, an investment executed in whole or in part before the application is submitted does not qualify — the money must follow the file, not precede it.

On what each route covers, the bonds are CCT/CCTeu, CTZ, BTP, BTP index-linked to Eurozone inflation and BTP Italia, each requiring a minimum residual maturity of at least two years.

The recipient company must be in active state and must already have filed at least one balance sheet as at the date of application, listed or unlisted alike, with its name and tax code mandatory information from the moment of filing.

An innovative startup must appear on the official list updated weekly on the portal administered by the Italian Chambers of Commerce.

One nationality condition appears on the programme own front page: the programme is suspended for Russian and Belarusian citizens by order of the Chairman of the Committee dated 14 July 2023, and suspended for non-EU citizens holding two passports one of which is Russian or Belarusian, under the Foreign Ministry note of 20 March 2024

The legal basis is article 26-bis of the Consolidated Act on Immigration, legislative decree 286/1998, inserted by Law no. 232 of 11 December 2016 — the 2017 Budget Law — at article 1, paragraph 148.

The inter-ministerial decree of 21 July 2017 sets the procedure, and the policy guidance was approved by the Committee on 16 November 2017 and updated on 19 July 2021.

The outcome comes in two steps: a two-year investor visa, then a two-year investor residence permit running from the date of entry, and that permit is renewable for further three-year periods rather than for one final three years.

Three accompanying features are law, not administrative latitude. First, investor visas are issued outside the annual entry quotas of article 3, paragraph 4 of the Consolidated Act, so the route competes with no one and waits for no intake.

Second, the applicant need not be an individual: a foreign legal entity may apply, identified in its legal representative aged over eighteen, under article 40-quater of Law Decree no. 76 of 16 July 2020 coordinated with Law no. 120 of 11 September 2020.

Third, that same amendment added paragraph 5-bis to article 26-bis, granting exemption from verification of the condition of reciprocity under article 16 of the provisions preliminary to the Civil Code, and exemption from the obligation to sign the integration agreement under article 4-bis for five years from first issue.

The third deserves close reading because the document says two different things in two places: the body text states that on issue of the residence permit the foreign national must sign the integration agreement, while the footnote on that same page sets out the exemption.

A reader working from the body text alone would prepare for an obligation the law has lifted.

On keeping the outcome, one rule surprises most readers: the destination of the investment may not be altered under any circumstances, even after the permit has issued; replacing the investment or donation with another requires a new investor visa application from the start rather than a notification of change.

If, by the time execution is demonstrated, any change has occurred in the circumstances that enabled the Nulla Osta and the visa to be issued, the Committee will revoke the visa, or the permit if already issued.

Changes are admissible only in exceptional circumstances assessed case by case, with the applicant required to justify them with supporting documents for the Committee to decide.

One technical obligation attaches to the two securities routes: bonds or shares purchased must be deposited with a financial institution domiciled in Italy, proved by the relevant certificate of deposit of the securities.

The clock the programme presents as its strength: the Committee notifies the outcome of its evaluation through the platform within 30 days of the application being submitted.

Before that sits a smaller one — the Secretariat gives feedback on formal admissibility within one working week. Both can be suspended, and the suspensions are what decide the real elapsed time.

Where documentation is incomplete or non-compliant in a rectifiable way, the Secretariat sends a detailed request for additional documentation, the procedure is suspended until it arrives, and the applicant has 30 days from the date of the request to file through the platform.

A reply after that deadline leads the Secretariat to propose rejection to the Committee.

Structural shortcomings that cannot be rectified lead straight to a proposal of rejection. If the Committee decides to acquire further information, or in the cases under article 2, paragraph 7 of law 241/90, the term for concluding the procedure is suspended for up to 30 further days.

And a new application from someone previously refused must contain significant new elements compared with the earlier submission, so refiling the same papers goes nowhere.

Once the Nulla Osta issues, the applicant has six months to request the visa at the Italian representation abroad, after which it expires — but that limit may be waived on written request to the Secretariat and to the Visa Centre of the Foreign Ministry, only for serious and justified reasons that prevented attendance at the appointment.

For the visa itself the consulate acts "as soon as possible", with no stated term.

The deadline easiest to lose is also the one carrying two figures: the policy guidance says eight working days from entry in which to apply for the permit at the Questura, while the programme's official page says eight days without the qualifier.

Two documents of the same authority, two wordings of one deadline, so the safe reading is the shorter one; the authority also advises notifying the Secretariat in advance of the planned date of attendance at the Questura.

Then come three months from the declared date of entry in which to execute the investment or donation in full.

And one long clock that draws little attention: if two years after the visa issue date the holder has still not communicated a date of arrival in Italy, the entire procedure is considered lapsed, the Secretariat informs the consulate and the consulate revokes the visa.

At renewal the first-round clocks apply again in full: the same times and procedures for the Committee's check, the same power to request additional documentation with its 30-day suspension, and an alert message from the platform as expiry approaches.

This round adds a documentary clock of its own: for listed companies, the copy of the shareholders' register and of the securities dossier must be issued no more than 30 days before the date of the declaration.

There is no minimum number of days of presence, but there is a chain of consecutive clocks, and missing any one of them costs the permit.

Once the Committee releases the Nulla Osta, the certificate of no impediment, the applicant has six months to approach the Italian representation abroad to request the visa, and once the visa is issued has up to two years to enter Italy.

Once in Italy there are only eight days to apply for the two-year residence permit at the Questura, the local police headquarters, bringing passport and entry visa; the applicant must then log in to the programme portal and enter the date of arrival in Italy, the date of the application at the Questura and the location of that Questura.

The heaviest clock is three months from the date of arrival in which to execute the investment or donation declared in the visa application; failing that, the permit is revoked or never issued.

Even where the Committee requests supplementary information and allows a further 30 days, the applicant must still demonstrate that the entirety of the investment took place within those three months — the document deadline stretches, the investment deadline does not.

The condition for keeping the permit is also the condition for renewing it: the original investment must be maintained for the whole validity of the permit, failing which the permit is revoked even before its expiry date and renewal is not permitted.

The two-year permit renews for three years, but the renewal must be filed at least 60 days before the expiry date and requires a new Nulla Osta from the Committee

The programme carries no dependant regime of its own: the frequently asked questions issued by the administering ministry state plainly that family reunification is allowed and is governed by the general law on the subject, specifically article 29 of Legislative Decree No. 286 of 25 July 1998.

Four classes under that article: spouses not legally separated and aged over 18. Minor children, including those of the spouse and those born out of wedlock, who are unmarried, provided the other parent has consented.

Dependent children over 18 are included, but only where for objective reasons they cannot provide for their essential needs owing to a state of health entailing total incapacity.

Dependent parents are included if they have no other children in the country of origin, or parents over 65 where the other children cannot support them owing to serious and duly documented health conditions.

An unmarried partner is absent from the list, as are grandparents and siblings. Neither official document sets an additional financial threshold per dependant.

One trap to avoid in this document set: the figure of 25,000 euros per family member appearing in the policy guidance is the annual substitute tax under the flat-tax regime of article 24-bis of the income tax code, not an immigration condition, and must not be carried into this record.

One point on sourcing: the domain held in the record is the general visa application portal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while the ministry administering the programme is the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Italy passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Italy passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Italy passport reaches 203 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 tax regime the guidance describes is an option rather than an obligation attached to the visa.

A person transferring tax residence to Italy may elect to pay an annual substitute tax of EUR 100,000 on income produced abroad under article 24-bis of the Consolidated Act on Income Taxes, presidential decree 917/1986. The condition is that they have not been tax-resident in Italy for at least nine of the previous ten years.

The election extends to family members on payment of a further annual substitute tax of EUR 25,000 each, and the scheme runs for a maximum of fifteen years.

The document goes that far and then points the reader to the Revenue Agency's own page, while noting that the 2017 Budget Law carries several further incentive measures, mainly fiscal, which this guidance does not set out.

What is seldom mentioned weighs more than the figure: the tax administration sits inside the body that decides the application.

The Italian Revenue Agency is a permanent voting member of the Committee, and its remit has two limbs.

The first is to ensure coordination between this visa procedure and the procedure for electing the substitute tax under article 24-bis.

The second is to inform the Committee whether agreements are in force with the country of origin of the financial resources allowing effective exchange of information under article 26 of the OECD model convention against double taxation.

Agreements following the model the OECD drew up in 2002 and called a Tax Information Exchange Agreement also count.

The tax treaty network here is therefore not used to relieve the investor but to examine the money.

The consequence in cash terms is concrete, and three situations trigger it.

The first is where the country of origin of the funds appears on the list of high risk third countries under article 9 of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

The second is where it appears on the list of countries and territories with favourable taxation systems identified by the decree of 4 May 1999 of the Minister of Finance and the decree of 21 November 2001 of the Minister of the Economy and Finance.

The third is any other requirement linked to verifying the licit provenance of the funds. In each case the Committee reserves the right to require the applicant to transfer the funds to a bank with a registered office in Italy.

In short, the tax jurisdiction the money comes from determines where it must sit before the file can advance. One point of scope, so that nothing absent is added in: the guidance imposes no tax obligation as a condition of issuing or keeping the permit, and names no rate other than the substitute tax cited.

Three sums are payable to the Italian state when applying for the residence permit, all three at a post office or in the form of a stamp, in euro:

Beyond those three the guidance names no other charge, and it states plainly that submitting the investor visa application is free of charge.

Of the sums in euro that the document names, only the three above are money the applicant pays to an Italian authority.

The others are the EUR 18 billion of the Industria 4.0 plan, the EUR 100,000 and EUR 25,000 of the substitute tax regime, and the EUR 8,500 income threshold at the consular appointment.

There is no mention anywhere of a consular visa fee, so that must be looked up elsewhere rather than inferred here.

The items that are not called fees are what most often breaks a budget.

First, all documents must be in Italian or English and uploaded to the platform in .pdf format; where no Italian or English version exists a certified translation must be provided, and the requirement recurs at all three stages — filing, proving execution of the investment, and proving it has been maintained.

Second, the complete documentation must be electronically signed in the advanced electronic signature formats laid down by Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2015/1506 of 8 September 2015 under Regulation (EU) 910/2014, so for a non-EU applicant a conforming certificate is a real cost and has to be arranged in advance.

Third, an investor residence permit application may not be filed by "postal kit", the form-at-the-post-office route available for several other permit types, so attendance at the Questura is compulsory.

The rest costs nothing but loses the appointment if missing. At the Questura: a photocopy of the entire passport including all internal pages, 2 photos in passport format, and supporting evidence about the accommodation status of the applicant in Italy.

At the consulate the applicant files a copy of the Nulla Osta together with all the original application documents, and demonstration of suitable accommodation in Italy; hotel bookings or accommodation made available by third parties count for this.

The file also needs proof of income in the previous financial year in the country of residence above the statutory threshold for exemption from healthcare expenses, currently about EUR 8,500, a photograph in passport format, a valid passport, and demonstration of residence in the relevant consular district.