Vanuatu Citizenship by Investment

The fee table published by the Vanuatu Citizenship Office on its Fees and Charges page is priced by family composition, in US dollars:

Separate from those sits the Financial Intelligence Unit diligence fee of US$5,000.

The page presents that table as the chargeable application and citizenship certificate fees under the different Forms, while describing separately Form D of the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, with an application fee of US$250 and a citizenship fee of US$260,000

What is granted is Vanuatu Citizenship, conferred by the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission under the Citizenship Act [Cap 112].

The first thing a reader needs is that the investment route is not a single path: the authority lists eight types of citizenship, each with its own form, and four of the eight are routes for those who pay — the granting of citizenship to an investor under the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, on Form D.

Honorary citizenship under the Vanuatu Development Support Program. The granting of citizenship to an individual under the Vanuatu contribution Program; and the granting of citizenship under the Real Estate Option Program.

The other four turn on personal status rather than money: naturalisation on Form A, a non-citizen married to a Vanuatu citizen on Form B, citizenship by entitlement on Form C(a), and regaining citizenship on Form C(b).

The distinction has an immediate practical consequence on cost, because the fee schedule puts Form D in a column of its own at rates quite unlike the rest — the detail sits in the other costs cell.

One warning the authority itself places on the page is worth repeating, because it concerns fraud: check the domain carefully, since official Vanuatu Government sites end in .gov.vu.

Applying for Vanuatu citizenship gives rise to two payments falling at two different moments. The application fee is paid on lodging the file, and for Forms other than Form D that fee is 5,000 vatu per application, charged to every applicant regardless of age and regardless of the type of Form.

The citizenship fee, the large sum, is paid only after the Commission has approved the application — so the applicant does not have to place the whole amount before a decision exists.

The procedure runs in three steps: establishing eligibility and receiving the correct Form for it; gathering the documents listed in the checklist on the final page of each Form; then completing and lodging the application with all of those documents. The Office warns that a file may be returned where the checklist documents are missing

Under the Citizenship Act Cap 112, the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission grants several different types of citizenship, and the Development Support Program is classified as honorary citizenship rather than naturalisation.

Four investment- or contribution-linked routes sit side by side in the same list: citizenship for an investor under the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, using Form D;

Honorary Citizenship under the Vanuatu Development Support Program; citizenship under the Vanuatu Contribution Program; and citizenship under the Real Estate Option Program.

Candidates on the honorary route are eligible where they meet the legal requirements in Section 20 of the Citizenship Act Cap 112 and the Vanuatu Economic Rehabilitation Program.

For comparison of how favourable that is, the ordinary naturalisation route requires having lived in Vanuatu for a continuous period of at least ten years immediately before applying.

The Office also carries a standing warning on every page about fake websites posing as official ones, quoted in the outcome cell of this page; and it publishes, alongside its list of designated agents, a list of cancelled agents

On Form D of the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, the citizenship fee and the extra payments for dependants are as follows, in US dollars:

The age ceiling does not stop at 18: an applicant may include a dependant aged 18 to 21, on condition of paying per person an extra amount more than twice the rate for a child under 18.

In the general fee table, family composition likewise sets the level: a married couple, a married couple with one child, and a married couple with two children are three different figures, while each additional applicant is charged US$10,000. Applications for those under 18 must be made by a responsible parent or lawful guardian.

A person granted citizenship under this programme receives the Vanuatu 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 Vanuatu passport reaches 67 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 citizenship statute says nothing about tax: the full text of the Citizenship Act [cap 112] does not mention tax, and the same holds for the three official pages of the Citizenship Office on the legislative framework, the types of citizenship and the schedule of fees.

The tax position must be read at the revenue authority, and there one thing is worth stating.

The complete list of tax statutes administered by the Department of Customs and Inland Revenue comprises the Tax Administration Act No. 37 of 2018 and its amendment No. 14 of 2021, and the Tax Administration Regulation Orders No. 154 of 2019 and No. 156 of 2020.

It also comprises the Rent Taxation Act [cap 196], and the Value Added Tax Act [cap 247] with its amendment No. 13 of 2021.

That list contains no Income Tax Act, and neither the legislation page nor the taxes and licensing page mentions income tax.

The department own Taxes menu carries just three items: Rent Tax, Value Added Tax and Turnover Tax.

On VAT, the Department states that Vanuatu introduced it in 1998 under the Comprehensive Reform Program at an initial rate of 12.5%, and that in 2018 this rate was increased to 15%; it is an indirect consumption tax imposed at 15% on most goods and services supplied in Vanuatu by registered persons in the course of a taxable activity.

One gap must be stated plainly, because it is precisely where a fuller answer might lie: section 20 of the Citizenship Act provides that the President may, on the advice of the Prime Minister, confer honorary citizenship on any person with such privileges or exemptions as may be prescribed.

The Act delegates the detail to subsidiary legislation, and those three instruments — Order No. 33 of 2019 on the Development Support Program Regulations and Orders No. 38 and No. 39 of 2020 — are all scanned PDFs from which no readable text could be extracted.

This cell therefore does not conclude that Vanuatu grants no exemption to an honorary citizen; it records that the text which might contain such an exemption could not be read.

Other parameters, from the Citizenship Office: the legal framework is the Citizenship Act [cap 112] of 1980, amended in 2013 and twice in 2014, and the regulations section lists exactly one instrument, Order No. 33 of 2019, described as prescribing updated categories of fees for persons applying under the Contribution Program.

The types of citizenship page lists eight categories, among them honorary citizenship under the Development Support Program, citizenship under the Contribution Program and citizenship under the Real Estate Option Program — so this programme now stands alongside two others rather than being the sole channel.

The general fees, with the currency stated on each line:

For Form D, under the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, amounts are in USD:

Read this cell within its scope: the Customs and Inland Revenue pages cover the list of tax statutes administered and the operation of VAT, and say nothing about beneficiaries of the programme; and the site of the agency named on this record has not been checked, so all citizenship content was read at the Citizenship Office portal.

An application for Vanuatu citizenship carries two distinct payments, and what matters most is that they fall at two different moments: the application fee is paid on lodging, while the citizenship fee falls due only after the Commission has approved.

For forms other than Form D the application fee is 5,000 vatu per application, and it applies to every applicant regardless of age and regardless of the form.

Two currencies appear in the schedule rather than one — the application fee in vatu, everything else in US dollars.

The citizenship fee is scaled to household size, in US dollars:

Alongside sits the Financial Intelligence Unit due diligence fee of USD 5,000. Form D stands apart on an entirely different schedule, also in US dollars:

A dependant aged 18 to 21 may be included, but at more than twice the rate for a young child, which makes the age of an accompanying person the single most expensive variable in the whole schedule.