Serbia Investor Visa

According to the government's Welcome to Serbia page, the investor route requires two documents. The first is a certificate or attestation of the tangible and intangible assets invested in a company registered in the Republic of Serbia.

The second is a certificate or statement showing funds held in an account at a bank registered in Serbia, in the amount of at least 50 thousand euros, or the equivalent in dinars or another foreign currency. The same investment basis serves both the long-stay type D visa and the temporary residence permit.

The Government's 2020 Decree on categories of foreign nationals, the instrument that actually creates the investor category, frames the first application differently: it requires only a certificate or statement showing a balance of at least EUR 50,000 in an account at a bank registered in Serbia, and no evidence of assets already invested. An investment figure appears only at extension: the applicant must prove a paid-in cash contribution of at least EUR 5,000 to the share capital of a company already registered in Serbia. The EUR 50,000 is therefore a bank balance, not an amount that must be invested.

The other half of this record's name, residence based on real estate, carries no threshold at all. Article 21 of the Rulebook on granting temporary residence, published in Official Gazette No. 6 of 26 January 2024 and in force from 1 February 2024, requires only an extract from the real estate register as evidence for the application.

Where the property has not been entered in the cadastre, other documents proving ownership are accepted, such as a certified sale contract, a gift contract, an inheritance decision, a property tax decision or a court judgment. The full text of the Rulebook contains no value figure at all, in euros or in dinars.

The Law on Foreigners narrows this ground further in Article 54(2): the property must be a residential building or flat in Serbia that the foreign national may own and in which they live. A person granted temporary residence on the ground of property ownership may work without a single permit, under Article 3 of the Law on Employment of Foreigners.

The only money level the Rulebook sets is proof of means of subsistence under Article 5, applying to every residence basis. One of seven ways is a certificate or statement of a bank balance equal to the Serbian minimum wage for the year of application.

The other six are a salary certificate, an employment contract, pension payment records, a scholarship, registration of a farm holding, and a guarantee from a legal entity registered in Serbia or a certified guarantee from an individual.

Serbia has no standalone investor route, and that is the thing to grasp before any figure: the authority describes investing as a recognised purpose of stay, yet investment is not among the 14 grounds for temporary residence listed in Article 40(1) of the Law on Foreigners. Investors are a category of foreign nationals set by Government decree under the power the Law confers, now in Article 40(4): the Decree on categories of foreign nationals, published in Official Gazette No. 13 of 14 February 2020 and amended by No. 69 of 24 June 2022, which sits inside the general temporary-residence machinery rather than forming a programme of its own.

Amending Law No. 62/2023 requires the Government to adopt a new decree within six months, and the 2020 decree lapses only once the new one begins to apply; as at 16 October 2026 the register of acts adopted under the Law on the Legal Information System lists no new decree, so the 2020 decree remains the instrument in force.

The consequence is that what issues is an ordinary document: either a long-stay visa, type D, or a temporary residence permit, granted on the basis of the investment.

Which of the two a person needs turns on the visa regime applying to their nationality rather than on the investment itself, and the authority refers that question to its separate guide on entry, visas and residence.

For Vietnamese nationals the answer is settled: an ordinary Vietnamese passport requires a visa to enter Serbia, so the applicant must obtain a type D visa for the purpose of investment, enter, and then file for temporary residence while staying lawfully in Serbia; the Law requires the ground of the residence application to match the ground on which the D visa was issued. Serbia has no embassy or consulate in Vietnam: the Embassy in Jakarta covers Vietnam on a non-resident basis, and Serbia has an honorary consul in Ho Chi Minh City.

The right way to read this record is therefore that the investment opens the door, while what passes through it remains the same two documents every other foreign national uses, although the investor's term is set separately by the decree: a first temporary residence of six months, with each extension for one year.

Since 1 February 2024, when the provisions of the Law on Foreigners took effect, a temporary residence permit may be granted for up to three years, depending on the basis and purpose of the stay. Investors do not receive that term: the Government's 2020 Decree on categories of foreign nationals grants an investor a first temporary residence of six months, with each extension for one year.

That period is counted from the date the application is filed, not from the date of decision, so the waiting time is deducted from the permit itself.

The general deadline for a decision is 30 days from the date the application is filed; for the grounds that lead to a single permit covering both residence and work, the authority must decide within 15 days of receipt of a complete application.

A renewal application may be filed at the earliest three months before, and at the latest before the existing permit expires; where it is filed in time, the applicant may remain in Serbia until the administrative procedure concludes

Under Article 40(3) of the Law on Foreigners the holder is obliged to reside in Serbia in accordance with the ground on which the permit was granted. The Law imposes no duty to report on one's own initiative that the ground has ceased; the reporting duty it does impose is to notify the competent authority within three days of a change of residential address.

The rest lies with the authority: under Article 66, if grounds for refusal come to light after the grant, the authority issues a decision terminating the right to temporary residence; under Article 45(1)(5a), it refuses an extension where it finds that the applicant did not use the previous residence in accordance with the ground on which it was granted.

The temporary residence permit is issued as a card, and the right to work cannot be inferred from the name of the permit: it must be read from the note on the card, because that is where it is recorded whether the holder does or does not have the right to work in Serbia

The published page lists a family reunification group of grounds comprising:

Marriage or common-law union with a Serbian citizen, with a foreigner holding an approved temporary residence, or with a foreigner granted permanent settlement; and kinship with a Serbian citizen, with a foreigner on temporary residence, or with a foreigner granted permanent settlement.

One procedural exception is worth noting: an application for a minor must be lodged in person with the competent authority by the minor legal representatives, and cannot be filed through the electronic portal

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

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Serbia passport reaches 135 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 carries no tax regime of its own, and in Serbia that is not inferred from silence but rests on a positive provision in the tax law itself:

Article 1 of the Law on Personal Income Tax provides that the taxation of personal income is regulated exclusively by this law, and that tax exemptions and reliefs can only be introduced by this law.

No residence or investment instrument can therefore create a tax concession.

The tax-residence line sits in Article 7 and is wholly separate from immigration status. A resident is taxed on income arising both on the territory of Serbia and in another country, that is on worldwide income.

A person is a tax resident on satisfying one of two alternative tests: having a residence or a centre of business and life interests on the territory of the Republic; or staying on the territory of the Republic, continuously or intermittently, for 183 days or more in a period of twelve months beginning or ending in the tax year concerned.

Paragraph 3 of the same article sets out the counting rule: part of a day spent in the territory counts as a whole day, at any time between 00 and 24 hours, excepting a part-day in transit.

Paragraph 5 protects a newcomer: a person who was not a resident in the year preceding the year of arrival is not treated as resident for the period before the first day of entry.

Article 3 lists seven categories of taxable income, among them income from real estate and capital gains.

On rates, Article 16 of the Law on Personal Income Tax sets salary income tax at 10%, and under Article 15a, as consolidated to Official Gazette No. 80/2026, the tax base is reduced by RSD 37,369 a month for a full-time employee; the RSD 25,000 given on the official portal is the 2024 figure. The portal, in a section carrying no update date, also gives the same 10% for an individual registered as an entrepreneur, and compulsory social insurance contributions of 24% for pension and disability, 10.3% for health and 0.75% for unemployment.

A relief exists for a newly settled taxpayer, reducing the tax and contribution base by 70%, in force since 1 March 2020 and available for five years from the date of the employment contract — but under Article 15v of the Law on Personal Income Tax it applies only to salary from an indefinite employment contract with a qualified employer, in a post requiring special expertise; that condition is deemed met where the monthly salary exceeds RSD 439,692, or RSD 293,128 for a person under 40 who has recently studied or trained abroad, and the beneficiary must also be a tax resident. The relief therefore does not reach an investor as such, and the residence permit does not carry it.

On the programme itself, the grounds for temporary residence appear as four separate headings: Investor, Property owner, Start-up and Talent.

According to the portal, the Investor ground requires evidence of tangible and intangible assets invested in a company registered in Serbia, plus at least EUR 50,000 in a bank account opened in Serbia. Under the Government's 2020 decree, an investor receives a first temporary residence permit of six months, with each extension for one year; the single permit is reserved for the employment and professional-training grounds and is not issued to investors.

One detail is easy to misread: for the D visa on the ground of real-estate ownership, the documents accepted as proof of ownership include a property tax decision — a tax decision used as evidence of ownership, not a tax regime.

For Vietnamese nationals, the Serbia–Vietnam double taxation agreement, signed on 1 March 2013, has been in force since 18 October 2013.

Read this cell within its scope: the Law on Personal Income Tax governs liability by tax residence and does not mention a residence permit as a criterion; it says nothing about property tax, real-estate transfer tax or inheritance tax, which sit in a separate statute

The identity document filed with the application must remain valid for at least three months longer than the residence period applied for; a passport shorter than that is one of the listed grounds for refusing the application.

A person holding several citizenships is treated as a national of the state that issued the travel document used to enter Serbia, and must use that same document throughout the stay and on departure.

On procedure, the application goes through the eforeigner portal and the precondition is that the applicant has registered an account on the national electronic identity system at eid.gov.rs.

Uploaded documents are limited by format and to a maximum of 5 MB each; and the total amount payable is calculated by the system from the information entered.

On fees, from 1 July 2026, under the Law on Republic Administrative Fees with the amounts adjusted in Official Gazette No. 54/2026, the application fee is RSD 430, the temporary residence fee RSD 23,450 and the fee for issuing the temporary residence permit card RSD 2,190. According to the Welcome to Serbia FAQ, the type D visa fee is EUR 50.

Documents not issued by Serbian authorities or not in Serbian must be accompanied by a translation by an authorised court interpreter. The Apostille Convention entered into force for Vietnam on 11 September 2026 and Serbia is not among the states that objected to Vietnam's accession, so the Convention applies between the two countries from that date.