Italy Start-up Visa

This route has two thresholds rather than one, and they belong to two different branches — taking the wrong figure miscalculates by double or by half. Both thresholds are in euro:

The guidelines also state outright that higher financial commitments are encouraged and are regarded as a bonus in the assessment, so both figures are floors rather than sufficient levels.

The accepted origins are wide: the investor own funds, provided they are liquid or readily convertible into cash such as a bank deposit; or financing from venture capital funds, corporations and other third-party investors, including funds issued by Italian or foreign government agencies; or a combination.

For team applications the figure reads quite differently: 50,000 EUR is the amount for the entire team rather than per person, and the guidelines call it purely indicative because assessing the resources is closely tied to assessing the soundness of the business idea.

The level the Committee considers adequate may be considerably above the statutory minimum.

And one cumulative rule is easily missed: an application for a project where others have already received a Certificate is considered only if the applicant shows 50,000 EUR, and that sum must be in addition to what the original team declared.

What the Committee issues is not a visa but a certificate of no impediment — a nulla osta — and it is that certificate which then opens the door to applying for the visa at an Italian mission.

The distinction governs how the whole path reads: the Committee decision is an assessment of the business idea, not an immigration decision.

And this route is not really a visa category of its own: the guidelines call it a simplified, digitised and fast-track variant of the ordinary self-employment visa procedure, so every condition of a self-employment visa continues to apply.

The direct consequence sits where few read: a member of a startup team may not merely be an employee — they must be a co-founder, must have a self-employment relationship with the company, and must own part of its share capital; the guidelines state plainly that there is no statutory minimum for the percentage each member must hold.

On numbers: a team may comprise up to five non-EU citizens of any nationality, and in exceptional circumstances the Committee may grant more, up to ten Certificates for one project.

The visa also sits inside a quota: the flows decree of 2 October 2025 allows, for each of 2026, 2027 and 2028, a total of 500 self-employment entries shared by five categories, one of which is founders of innovative start-ups, and the programme guidelines confirm that the start-up visa counts against the quota of the flows decree for the year concerned.

One restriction in force must be stated because it closes the door entirely for some: the programme is suspended for Russian and Belarusian citizens with effect from 27 October 2023, by decision of the Committee chair of that date.

The permit duration ladder that follows, and the procedural marks, are recorded in the timing cell of this table.

The Technical Committee must notify the outcome of its assessment within 30 days of submission, and the Certificate of No Impediment is generally issued within that same period.

But the period runs only once the file is complete: where the programme Secretariat's preliminary check finds the file not complete enough to assess, it requests further documents and suspends the procedure at the same time. The rule that the countdown restarts from the day the further material is sent appears only in the section on the variant of joining an existing start-up.

Where more than 60 days pass after the request without new material, the application is recorded as lapsed, and the guidelines state that this recording serves statistical purposes only. Once the Certificate is in hand, the applicant has three months to attend an Italian mission to collect the visa.

After entry into Italy the residence permit runs on its own ladder: the first self-employment permit is valid for one year. The guidelines of 20 March 2018 say it is renewable for up to two years and then again for the same period, but Article 5(3-quater) of Legislative Decree 286/1998 as now in force caps a self-employment permit at two years and each renewal at three years. Renewal must be requested at least 90 days before the permit expires, not the 60 days the programme site still shows, under Article 5(4) as applied from 22 May 2026, and the permit is issued, renewed or converted within 90 days of the application. Only after five years does the long-term step come into view.

And there is a reporting duty very few routes in this table carry, so overlooking it is a real risk.

Within 90 days of applying for the residence permit, the visa holder must report to the programme Secretariat on the state of the file and on the launch of the business, giving the name, tax code and date of registration in the special section of the Business Register, together with up-to-date contact details.

The Secretariat will notify the competent authority if contact with the visa holder is lost.

The programme has a variant for those joining an innovative startup that already exists, rather than founding a new one.

On that variant the applicant must take up one of the positions of president, managing director, board member or auditor of the company, and both the applicant and the startup must sign an agreement and submit it to the Committee.

Where a team applies together, each member files their own form with their own contact details and cv, while the sections describing the startup project must be identical across all of them

The programme has no dependant regime of its own; family reunification runs under article 29 of Legislative Decree No. 286 of 25 July 1998, in the consolidated text in force from 4 October 2025.

Four classes: the spouse not legally separated and aged eighteen or over. Minor children, including those of the spouse and those born out of wedlock, who are unmarried, provided the other parent where living consents.

Dependent adult children 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 where they have no other children in the country of origin, or parents over sixty-five where the other children cannot support them for serious and duly documented health reasons.

The article speaks only of a spouse, so Article 29 does not open reunification to an unmarried cohabiting partner; the other party to a same-sex civil union is, however, treated as a spouse, because Article 1(20) of Law 76/2016 applies every provision using the word spouse to each party to such a union. Grandparents and siblings are absent. Adopted children, children placed in care and children under guardianship count as natural children, and minority is assessed at the date of application.

The per-head financial threshold is the clearest in the startup group:

Minimum lawful annual income equal to the annual social allowance plus half that allowance for each family member to be reunited, and where two or more children under fourteen are reunited, double the annual social allowance is required in every case; the income of cohabiting family members may be aggregated.

Two further conditions attach: housing meeting the hygiene and space standards certified by the municipal office, and parents over sixty-five must hold their own medical insurance covering all risks in Italy or enrol in the national health service with contributions.

Applications are filed electronically at the provincial one-stop immigration desk and issued within 150 days, and are refused where the marriage or adoption was arranged solely to secure entry.

A waiting period has since been added: Article 28(1-bis), in the text in force from 11 December 2024, requires at least two years of uninterrupted lawful residence in Italy at the time of applying to bring a spouse, dependent adult children or dependent parents; minor children are not covered by this requirement. The provision is written for reunification applications and does not mention family members entering alongside the visa holder under Article 29(4).

One point must be stated openly: the Italian startup route is issued under the self-employment label, so it falls within article 29(4), which permits family members to enter alongside the holder of a visa for non-occasional self-employment.

That link is stated in writing: the programme guidelines say Italia Startup Visa falls within the ordinary self-employment visa category and is subject to Article 26 of Legislative Decree 286/1998, and the flows decree of 2 October 2025 lists founders of innovative start-ups among self-employment entries.

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 programme does carry a real package of tax incentives, but whose name they stand in repays attention: every measurable incentive stands in the name of the company or of an equity investor, not in the name of the person entering the country.

The official programme guidelines make no mention of income tax, the personal income tax, the inbound-worker regime or tax deductions.

The attachment mechanism is stated in the guidelines themselves: to enjoy the incentives, the law requires innovative startups and certified incubators to register in dedicated sections of the companies register, under Article 25(8) of Decree-Law 179/2012.

The incentives attach to the company registration status, not to the visa. The current list of incentives, and this is where the figures must come from the ministry page rather than from the guidelines: a de minimis tax incentive at 65% for investment in the capital of an innovative startup.

A tax incentive at 30%; exemption from chamber of commerce fees and stamp duty. The state startup support programme; and the ability to convert into an innovative SME without losing continuity of benefits.

The time limit must now be read from Article 25 of Decree-Law 179/2012, in the text in force from 18 December 2024: a company may stay in the special section after the end of its third year only if it meets at least one of five conditions, up to five years in total from registration in the special section, and paragraph 2-ter allows further two-year extensions, up to four years in all, for a company moving into the scale-up phase that meets separate conditions. The same text requires the company to be a micro, small or medium enterprise that does not mainly carry on agency and consultancy activity.

The most recent legal change: the Annual Competition Law No. 193 of 2024, at Article 31, introduced further measures and amended that de minimis incentive.

A warning about the sources: the programme guidelines are the version of 20 March 2018, while the incentive framework has moved on to Law 193/2024 — so the percentages above are taken from the ministry page and not from the guidelines.

On the side of the person entering, the programme attaches no tax concession to the visa, but that does not mean the person can claim none. The impatriate workers' regime in Article 5 of Legislative Decree 209/2023 brings into taxable income only 50% of the employment income, assimilated income and professional self-employment income of a person who moves tax residence to Italy, within an annual cap of EUR 600,000, where that person meets the high-qualification requirement and keeps Italian tax residence for at least four years; from 2027 the regime sits in Article 225 of the consolidated income tax code issued by Legislative Decree 117/2026. The regime is not tied to the type of visa, and whether a founder's income qualifies depends on how that income is classified and on the qualification test. The consular visa file requires a certificate of minimum income for the previous year, for example an income tax return.

And there is a post-visa reporting duty whose tax-facing part belongs here: among the things the visa holder must report to the programme secretariat is the tax code of the company — the deadline and the full content of that duty are recorded in the timing cell.

The substantive conditions, to show what the company incentives attach to: under Article 25(2) of Decree-Law 179/2012 the company must satisfy at least one of three — research and development expenditure of at least 15% of the greater of costs and total value of production.

Highly qualified personnel comprising at least one third doctorate holders, doctoral candidates or researchers, or at least two thirds holders of a master degree; or ownership, deposit or licence of at least one patent or one registered software.

The applicant own conditions on the branch of joining an existing company: an undertaking to hold a self-employed role within it, and an academic and professional record matching the startup activity; the two capital thresholds of the two branches, with the figure for each, are recorded in the capital threshold cell of this table.

The charges on applying for the residence permit are recorded in the other costs cell, and the permit duration ladder with its renewal marks in the timing cell of this table.

One restriction on who may be admitted, currently in force, is recorded in the outcome cell of this table.

Read this cell within its scope. The three sources cover the self-employment visa procedure for non-EU nationals founding an innovative startup, the conditions for innovative startup status, and the incentive package attaching to registration.

They say nothing about the personal income tax position of a visa holder, never mention the inbound-worker regime, and say nothing about transferring tax residence to Italy

Filing with the Committee costs almost nothing; the paying happens later, after arrival in Italy. Filing: send by email to the programme mailbox at the Ministry of Economic Development an application form, a copy of a valid passport and the statement of financial availability;

Italian or English are both accepted, and no certified translation is required unless requested for investigative purposes — those two conditions save exactly what most other routes in this table have to pay for.

The guidelines further advise attaching documents through a file-sharing service rather than to the email itself, to avoid size limits.

When attending the mission to collect the visa, four passport-size photographs are needed, along with the valid passport and proof of residence within the relevant consular district; the signed original of the application form must be kept by the applicant and must be produced at this stage.

The three real charges all fall at the residence permit stage after arrival in Italy, and they are small but specific: EUR 30.46 for the electronic document, a EUR 16.00 revenue stamp, and the permit contribution, which the guidelines give as EUR 50.00. The State Police schedule, applied from 9 June 2017, sets that contribution at EUR 40.00 for permits of more than three months and up to one year and EUR 50.00 for permits of more than one year and up to two years, so for the first one-year permit the amount payable is EUR 40.00.

Those three together come to under a hundred euros, so the real cost of this route is not in fees but in the capital that must be evidenced — the thresholds for the two branches are recorded in the capital threshold cell of this table.