Romania Digital Nomad Visa

The threshold is not a fixed sum but a floating multiple, and it must be proved across two time frames at once.

Article 49(1)(f¹) of Emergency Ordinance 194/2002, as inserted by Law 22 of 14 January 2022, requires means of maintenance obtained from that very activity of at least three times the average gross monthly salary earnings in Romania.

That level must be met for each of the six months preceding the date of the visa application, and also for the entire period entered in the visa.

The two limbs are joined by “and”, not “or”, so one short month out of six defeats the application, and an income that was once sufficient but is not sustained defeats it too. Three points about the figure itself.

First, the reference point is the average earnings of Romania, so the threshold drifts with the Romanian economy rather than with the applicant's own country.

Second, the name of that reference has changed: Ordinance 25 of 26 August 2014 replaced the phrase “average gross salary in the economy” with “average gross salary earnings” throughout the instrument, so searching on the older phrase returns nothing.

Third, the provision requires the money to come from the remote activity, not from savings or any other source — this is a condition on the origin of the funds, not only on their size.

The outcome runs through two different instruments, and that is where it is easy to read past.

The first is a long-stay visa in the “other purposes” family: Article 49(1)(f¹) places digital nomads alongside groups such as people undergoing long-term medical treatment, so the law does not build a visa type bearing their name but files them under an existing one.

The second is a temporary residence permit, and here the law does give them a marking of their own: Article 107(2⁵) provides that the temporary residence permit granted to a digital nomad shall carry the endorsement “nomad digital”.

The conditions for extension sit in Article 69(1)(i), and they split applicants into two classes carrying unequal burdens. An employee need only produce the original employment contract concluded with a company registered outside Romania, together with an authenticated Romanian translation, proving remote provision of services.

A company owner must prove having held that company for at least three years before the date of the visa application, the company being registered outside Romania and administered remotely by that person.

Three years is a barrier the employee never meets.

Both classes must additionally file an original document issued by the company itself, again with authenticated translation, setting out the company's full identification and contact data, its field of activity, the applicant's capacity within it, and information on its legal representatives.

The ordinance sets no deadline for the authority, but it sets three hard dates for the applicant, and the second is far shorter than the usual picture of a digital nomad route.

The first sits in Article 51(1): applications to extend the temporary right of residence must be filed in person, at least thirty days before the approved period expires, at the territorial unit of the immigration authority for the place of residence.

In person, thirty days, and that particular office are all conditions rather than recommendations. The second is the most notable: Article 69(7) provides that the first extension for a digital nomad is granted for six months.

Not a year, and not for the term of the employment contract — six months. That first extension follows directly on the long-stay visa, which Article 24(1) limits to 90 days, and the General Inspectorate for Immigration describes it as the issue of the residence permit; the first cycle is therefore 90 days plus six months. Subsequent extensions may be granted where the foreigner continues to meet the conditions in subsection 3 and produces an income certificate issued by the competent tax authority.

The word may is a discretion, not a duty to grant. Where granted, each later extension runs for up to one year under Article 50(2).

The third date stands ahead of both and sits at the visa stage: Article 29(4) provides that a visa application is not admissible where the applicant does not produce the completed and signed form together with two photographs meeting the standards, and where the visa fee has not been paid.

So an unpaid application does not yet exist, rather than being refused after assessment.

Emergency Ordinance No. 32/2026, in force from 27 April 2026, added two constraints at the same stage: under Article 29(4)(a), an application filed more than three months before the planned date of arrival in Romania is also inadmissible; and under Article 29(5¹), biometric data, namely a facial image and the fingerprints of all ten fingers, are collected from long-stay visa applicants, in addition to the duty to appear in person already in subsection (5).

One note on the text used here: this is the consolidated form in force from 27/04/2026 to 30/04/2026, of an ordinance republished in Official Gazette No. 421 of 5 June 2008, last amended by Emergency Ordinance No. 32 of 23 April 2026.

Residence on this route is not measured against a threshold of days of presence but through successive extensions with repeated proof of income, and that is the sharpest difference from the other digital nomad routes in this table. The long-stay visa itself runs for only 90 days under Article 24(1); the first residence permit, which the General Inspectorate for Immigration calls the first extension, runs for six months; later extensions, under Article 50(2), run for up to one year each.

The absence of a day threshold does not mean there is no duty of presence: Article 50(2)(f) requires an applicant for extension to prove lawful use of housing and to actually live at the address declared as the place of residence in Romania.

Article 69(7): the first extension of the temporary right of residence for a digital nomad is granted for six months; later extensions may be granted where the person still meets the conditions in subsection 3 and files an income certificate issued by the competent tax authority.

Subsection 3 is the threshold that must be held continuously: a person under point (i) must prove income of at least three times the average gross monthly earnings, for the very period for which the extension is sought — so this is not a one-off test at entry but a standing obligation.

The documents to be held are named in Article 69(1)(i), and both must be originals with authenticated translation into Romanian:

The employment contract with a company registered outside Romania evidencing remote provision of services, or proof of having owned, for at least three years before the visa application, a company registered outside Romania that the person administers remotely.

Plus a document issued by that company setting out its full identification and contact data, its field of activity, the foreigner's capacity within it, and information on its legal representatives.

The permit carries its own marking: Article 107(2)(5) requires the temporary residence permit issued to a digital nomad to bear the words nomad digital.

And one positive fact the text shows rather than infers: Article 70 provides for a long-term right of residence, granted on application and for an indefinite period, to foreigners who hold a temporary right of residence at the time the application is decided.

Subsection 2 lists six categories that may not be granted it, and digital nomads are not among them.

The six are students, beneficiaries of temporary protection, beneficiaries of protection other than international protection, applicants for international protection, holders of residence conferred by a short-stay, diplomatic or service visa, and seasonal or au pair workers.

To qualify under Article 71(1)(a), the foreigner must have held a temporary right of residence continuously for the five years before applying, without being absent from Romania for more than six consecutive months or for more than ten months in total.

This category has no route for bringing family, and that conclusion is a join of three provisions rather than the language of one.

The four provisions that create and govern the digital nomad category, namely article 2(n^4), article 49(1)(f^1) with article 49(2^1), article 69(1)(i) and article 107(2^5), none of them mentions a spouse, child, parent or accompanying person.

By contrast, within the same article, article 49(1)(f), the medical treatment route, states expressly that the visa may also be granted for a possible companion.

The statute knows how to write an accompanying-person clause, and for the digital nomad category it does not.

The only route for family is article 46 on the long-stay visa for family reunification. It requires the sponsor to hold a temporary residence permit valid for one year, or an EU Blue Card, an ICT permit, a mobile ICT permit, a long-term residence permit, or refugee or subsidiary protection status.

Article 69(7), however, gives digital nomads a first extension of exactly six months rather than a year. And article 46(6), the provision waiving the one-year requirement, lists only scientific researchers, Blue Card holders, ICT and mobile ICT.

If and when the sponsor qualifies, article 46(1) covers the spouse and unmarried minor children, including adopted children and each party own children with the consent of the person sharing parental authority.

Article 46(2) gives the authority a discretion, not an entitlement, over first-degree ascendants, meaning parents only and not grandparents, where they cannot support themselves and have no adequate family support in the country of origin, and over unmarried adult children who cannot support themselves for medical reasons.

An unmarried partner is not recognised. A per-head financial threshold does exist: the sponsor must have means of subsistence beyond their own share, at the level of the guaranteed national minimum gross monthly wage for each family member, for three months, together with proof of accommodation and social health insurance.

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 Romania passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Romania passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Romania passport reaches 191 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 whole of the first-tier tax content sits at exactly one point, and it runs opposite to the usual assumption.

Article 49(2^1)(d) of Emergency Ordinance 194 of 2002, as inserted by Law No. 22 of 14 January 2022 published in Official Gazette No. 45 the same day, sets this requirement.

The applicant must file an original document, apostilled or legalised and accompanied by a certified translation, issued by the specialised body of the central or local public administration of the place of that person tax residence.

The document must certify that on the date of the visa application the employee or the company he or she owns has paid taxes, fees and other mandatory contributions up to date, and has no recorded conduct amounting to tax evasion or tax fraud.

In other words the applicant files proof of having paid tax elsewhere to the Romanian authority, rather than incurring any filing obligation toward Romania; the ordinance mentions tax residence only in that provision.

Article 2(n^4) defines a digital nomad as a foreigner who has an employment contract with a company registered outside Romania and supplies services using information technology, or who owns a company registered outside Romania within which they work remotely using information technology; the definition sets no time condition. The three-year condition sits in two other places and is worded two ways: Article 49(2^1)(a), at the visa stage, requires a company registered by the applicant for at least three years at the date of the visa application; Article 69(1)(i)(i), at the extension stage, requires the applicant to have owned the company for at least three years before the date of the visa application.

Article 69(1)(i) sets two specific conditions for extension, repeating the documents of the visa stage, and Article 69(3) requires income of at least three times the gross average monthly wage for the period of the extension sought; the first extension is granted for six months. Those two specific conditions are not the whole test: the general conditions of Article 50(2) still apply, among them actually living at the declared address and health insurance, which must be social health insurance except at the first extension, where cover for all risks normally covered for Romanian citizens is accepted.

From later extensions Article 69(7) additionally requires an income certificate issued by the competent fiscal body, a condition tied to a tax authority even though it is not a duty to pay tax, though the instrument does not say whether that body is Romanian or that of the country of tax residence.

Two limits: the ordinance does not refer to the Fiscal Code and sets no day-count threshold for digital nomads, although Article 50(2)(f) requires an applicant for extension to actually live at the declared address and Article 71(1)(a) caps the months of absence of an applicant for long-term residence.

So the immigration statute does not say whether this category creates tax residence; and this record does not examine the Romanian Fiscal Code, so whether the category carries any tax concession of its own is left open.

The ordinance says almost nothing about money: the consolidated text mentions a fee payable in one provision only, while the schedule sits in the annex to Law No. 198/2008 on consular services subject to fees and the level of consular fees.

Emergency Ordinance No. 32 of 23 April 2026 amended that annex: for long-stay visa applications submitted through the eViza portal from 27 April 2026 the visa fee is EUR 300, while applications submitted before that date carry the earlier EUR 120. The General Inspectorate for Immigration's page for this route also states a visa fee of EUR 300.

That single provision is nonetheless important: Article 29(4)(c) provides that a visa application is not admissible where the visa fee has not been paid — the money comes before the application even counts as filed.

The ordinance does address exemptions, but neither of its two exemptions reaches digital nomads, and that reverse check is the part worth recording: Article 69(4) exempts stateless persons of Romanian origin from consular fees, and Article 62(6) exempts the categories listed in that article's subsections (3) and (3)(2).

Beyond the state schedule, three further mandatory costs sit scattered through the text with no published price.

First, authenticated translation: Article 69(1)(i) requires both documents — the employment contract or proof of company ownership, and the document issued by the company — to be originals accompanied by an authenticated Romanian translation.

Second, the tax authority's income certificate, which under Article 69(7) is a condition of every extension after the first, making it a recurring cost at each extension after the first, each of which runs for up to one year under Article 50(2), rather than a one-off.

Third, travel and attendance: Article 51(1) requires the extension application to be filed in person at the territorial unit for the place of residence.