Requirements, investment routes, costs and process of the Italian investor visa, written from the primary sources by a law firm that does not sell the investment.
Almost everything written in English about the Italy Golden Visa is published by firms that earn a fee when you place the investment. That does not make it wrong. It does explain what is consistently missing from it, and what is missing is usually the part that decides whether the plan works.
This page is written from the primary source: the Manuale Operativo of the Investor Visa for Italy Committee, in its 19 July 2021 version, together with article 26-bis of the Consolidated Immigration Act. Where the official material is itself out of date, we say so rather than repeat it.
Two things are worth knowing before you read further. The investor visa gives you the right to live in Italy; it does not make you an Italian tax resident, and it does not by itself give you access to any Italian tax regime. And the feature most loudly advertised, no minimum stay, is in direct tension with the outcome most applicants are actually buying.
No Italian law uses the phrase "golden visa". What people mean by the Italy golden visa program is the investor visa, introduced by the 2017 Budget Law (Law 232/2016), which added article 26-bis to the Consolidated Immigration Act (Legislative Decree 286/1998). The implementing decree followed on 21 July 2017, and the Committee that runs the programme approved its operating manual in November 2017, updating it on 19 July 2021.
Italy's golden visa is a residence route, not a citizenship route. The golden visa in Italy has never included an Italian passport by investment, and "golden passport Italy" describes something that does not exist in Italian law. Nor is an Italy visa by investment a single product: there are four routes, and they behave very differently once you look past the headline thresholds.
What it is not: a property scheme, a fast track to an Italian passport, or a tax regime. Nor is it a European residence permit: it lets you live in Italy and travel in the Schengen area for up to 90 days in any 180, but gives no right to live or work in another EU country.
It is also still a small programme, which is part of why it works. Approvals run in the low hundreds a year rather than the thousands seen in Portugal or Greece at their peak, though volumes have climbed sharply since 2024. That scale is why a well-prepared application is read on its merits rather than processed in a queue.
The Italian golden visa program is open to nationals of countries outside the EU and the Schengen area. The applicant must be an adult, must personally hold the funds, must show that they are lawfully sourced and freely transferable to Italy, and must have no final criminal convictions or pending charges.
Since 2020 the applicant can also be a foreign legal entity, applying through the individual empowered to bind it (article 40-quater of Decree-Law 76/2020). The same provision exempts investor permit holders from the reciprocity condition and, for five years from first issue, from the integration agreement and the continuity-of-stay obligations of ordinary permits. The funds may belong to a company or a trust, provided you can show the authority to dispose of them: expect the Committee to read those documents closely.
Your family comes with you: spouse, minor children, dependent adult children and dependent parents, under the ordinary family reunion rules. Their clearance is processed after yours rather than alongside it, the most common reason a family application takes twice as long as an individual one.
The thresholds are lower than they were: the 2020 Relaunch Decree halved the company and startup routes, which is why Italy now has the lowest entry point of any major European programme. Italy residence by investment runs through exactly four routes. You must pick one: you cannot combine routes, and you cannot split a route across several recipients except in exceptional, reasoned cases. The target must be named in the application.
Eligible instruments are Italian sovereign securities: BTP, BTP indexed to European inflation, BTP Italia, CCT and CCTeu, and CTZ. The requirement no commercial guide reports: the securities must have a residual maturity of at least two years at the time of investment. A short-dated BTP bought as a safe parking place fails the test. The securities must be deposited with an intermediary in Italy, and the deposit certificate proves the investment.
An equity investment in a capital company incorporated and resident in Italy, listed or unlisted. The company must be "operating", which the manual defines precisely: active and having already filed at least one set of annual accounts at the date of the request. A company incorporated last month does not qualify, however well capitalised.
Unlisted companies require the target's written consent; listed companies require none, since you buy on the market and produce the securities dossier. That makes the listed route far simpler, and most investors take it, often into large Italian blue chips. Here is the part missing everywhere else: listed Italian shares make the visa easy and the tax position worse. Dividends from an Italian company are Italian-source income, taxed at 26% and entirely outside the flat tax for new residents. A high-yield position can throw off a dividend stream taxed in full every year, on top of the annual lump sum.
The lowest threshold in the Italian residency by investment programme, and the most used. The target must be an innovative startup under article 25 of Decree-Law 179/2012, registered in the special section of the Business Register. The official list is public, free and updated weekly at startup.registroimprese.it, so you can verify a target yourself before anyone charges you to.
A donation supporting a public-interest project in culture, education, scientific research, migration management or the recovery of cultural and landscape assets. It is the only irreversible route: the money does not come back, and the file has to show the intended social impact, not merely the transfer.
"Italy golden visa real estate" and "golden visa Italy property" are among the most searched phrases on this subject, and the honest answer is that the route does not exist. Italy has never granted residence in exchange for buying a house, at any value.
The point most guides miss is sharper. Property does not merely fail as a qualifying investment: it fails as evidence of your funds. The manual is explicit that real estate holdings, and shareholdings in companies other than joint-stock companies, are not admissible proof of the required resources, even with a signed promise of sale. An applicant whose wealth is mostly in property has a sequencing problem, and it needs solving months before the file is submitted.
You are of course free to buy a home in Italy, and most of our investor clients do; it simply happens on a separate track, through our property finder service. If a home in Italy is the main objective, the elective residency visa is usually the more sensible immigration route.
This is where the Italy investment visa is most often mis-sold. A residence permit is an immigration status. Tax residence is a separate test under article 2 of the Income Tax Code, based on registration, domicile, habitual abode and presence for more than 183 days. The permit and the tax position are two different files, and they can move in opposite directions.
Italy's regime for new residents under article 24-bis of the Income Tax Code replaces ordinary taxation on foreign income with a lump sum. Following the 2026 Budget Law it is €300,000 a year, plus €50,000 for each family member, for up to fifteen years, for those not Italian tax resident in at least nine of the previous ten years. Earlier arrivals keep the figure in force when they moved. The full mechanics are on our page on the lump sum tax for high-net-worth individuals.
Read those two paragraphs together and something follows that no page on the first results page mentions. The flat tax shelters foreign income. Italian government bonds and shares in an Italian company produce Italian-source income. The very investment you make to obtain the visa sits outside the regime you are buying the visa to access.
None of this makes the combination a bad idea. It makes it a thing to model. Two features of the regime matter before you elect it: the election can be made selectively, leaving income from chosen countries under ordinary rules and the foreign tax credit, and once the regime lapses, is revoked or is given up, it cannot be reactivated. Both are reasons to model the position, and to consider an advance tax ruling, before your residence date. The ruling can be requested before you become resident, without committing you to move.
One detail from the manual explains why tax cannot be an afterthought. The Italian Revenue Agency is a permanent voting member of the Committee, alongside the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Guardia di Finanza's currency police. Its role includes coordinating the visa file with any flat tax election and reporting whether Italy has an effective exchange-of-information agreement with the country your funds come from.
Where funds originate in a jurisdiction on the EU high-risk list or on Italy's privileged-tax lists, the Committee may require the money to be moved to a bank in Italy before it decides. That is one of several reasons we open an Italian bank account early rather than late.
The Italy golden visa price is usually quoted as the investment threshold, which tells you little, because in three routes out of four the investment is an asset you still own. The Italy golden visa cost that actually leaves your hands falls into three categories, and the state's share is the smallest.
The application is entirely digital, and that is exactly why it stalls. Four items must exist before the form can be completed, and none is instant for someone new to Italian administration: an Italian tax code, a qualified digital signature (a scanned one will not do), an Italian bank account, and a chosen target verified as eligible and willing to consent.
The Committee must decide within thirty days of a complete filing. That is the legal term, and the number every guide repeats. In practice, nulla osta decisions currently take sixty to ninety days, because of the volume of applications. Two further stretches are routinely left out: the pre-application phase (criminal records, apostilles, translations, digital signature, source-of-funds report), which takes two months to a year, and your family's clearance, which only starts once your nulla osta has issued.
One piece of good news: investor visa applications have priority at Italian consulates, which can be pointed out politely when an appointment is slow to materialise.
You file on the government platform, in Italian or English, with passport, CV, evidence of funds, a bank letter confirming due diligence to FATF standards, criminal record certificates, a description of the investment with the recipient's consent, and a signed commitment stating the sum and the municipality where you intend to settle.
Two documentary points cause most delays. Bank statements must cover the three months before the application and be issued no more than thirty days before it. Where the funds have not been held in the same institution for that full period, you must add documentation of their origin plus a report from an independent legal or accounting professional: a notary for an inheritance or gift, an auditor for business proceeds. A refused applicant may reapply, but only with materially new elements.
The nulla osta is valid for six months and must be used at the Italian consulate where you have stable residence. Bring the originals, proof of accommodation in Italy, a photograph, proof of residence in the consular district, and evidence of income above the healthcare cost-sharing exemption threshold, currently around €8,500.
The consulate issues a two-year visa. Once you enter Italy, three deadlines run at once: the Questura within eight working days, the entry date reported on the platform, and the investment completed within three months. The permit runs for two years from entry. If two years pass from the visa without an entry date being reported, the procedure lapses.
You must keep the original investment for the entire life of the permit. Withdrawing or substituting it means revocation. The permit is renewable for three-year periods, but renewal is not automatic: it requires a fresh nulla osta confirming the investment was maintained, and since the renewal must be lodged at least sixty days before expiry, the request to the Committee must go in well before that.
The permit is also convertible: if you take a job, start a business or decide to stay properly, it can be converted into another category on the ordinary requirements. And the ordinary rule against interrupting your presence in Italy is disapplied. That is the legal basis of "no minimum stay", and, as the next section explains, also its limit.
This is where Italy citizenship by investment, Italy passport by investment and the Italy golden passport need to be taken apart, because the search terms exist and the product does not. The residency by investment Italy offers is temporary at first and does not ripen into anything more by the passage of time alone.
Italy has no citizenship-by-investment programme, and Italian citizenship through investment is not a category in Italian law. What exists is ordinary naturalisation after ten years and an EU long-term residence permit after five. The investor route reaches both only as any lawful residence route does.
The government portal states that an investor who maintains the investment for five years may request a long-term residence card. Read in isolation, that suggests the money alone is enough. It is not, and this is the single most important point on this page.
So there are really two products wearing one name. The golden visa as a plan B, a European base held in reserve with family included and no obligation to relocate, is one of the best-designed programmes left in Europe. The golden visa as a route to an Italian passport requires you to actually move, and once you do, the tax questions above decide the outcome. If you have Italian ancestry, look first at citizenship by descent: it may give you by right what others pay for, although the 2025 reform means eligibility must now be checked rather than assumed.
The investor visa is not automatically the right route, and a firm that earns nothing on the investment can say so. The elective residency visa requires no investment at all: it suits people with substantial, stable passive income who will not work in Italy, and for a retiring couple it is usually cheaper and entirely sufficient, often paired with the 7% regime for foreign pensioners. The digital nomad visa suits highly qualified remote workers with foreign employers or clients. The startup visa fits better if you intend to build the business yourself rather than fund someone else's.
The investor visa earns its place where you need flexibility more than presence, approval before commitment, and where the capital was going to be deployed somewhere in any event.
Italy is no longer competing with the schemes it is usually measured against: Portugal closed its property route in 2023 and Spain ended its programme in 2025. What Italy offers that the survivors do not is approval before commitment, a capital investment you continue to own, and a tax regime for new residents that no other EU country matches at this level of income.
We do not sell the investment, place it, or receive anything from those who do. That is why our advice on whether you need this visa at all is worth something.
Avv. Marco Mesina, a member of the Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano) and formerly of Deloitte and Withers, handles the immigration file and, more importantly, the tax position it creates: when residence begins, which regime applies, what has to be elected and when, and what the qualifying investment will cost in Italian tax each year. We prepare and manage the entire application, including the parts, like the digital signature and the source-of-funds report, that quietly decide the timeline.
No. Italy has never offered residence in exchange for real estate. The four routes are government bonds, an Italian company, an innovative startup or a donation, and property cannot even be used as proof of funds.
No. The continuity-of-stay obligation is disapplied while the investment is maintained. That is why, on its own, the permit gives no access to Italian tax regimes and no time towards citizenship.
No. Italy has no citizenship-by-investment programme and no golden passport. An investor can naturalise after ten years like any non-EU national, but only on effective residence, with B1 Italian and an income record.
Very little in state fees: the application is free and the permit costs €30.46, €50.00 and a €16.00 stamp. The real costs are translations, apostilles, the source-of-funds report, professional fees and the Italian tax on the investment.
Sixty to ninety days for the nulla osta in practice, against thirty by law. Add the time to prepare documents beforehand and, for families, the separate clearance of family members afterwards.
No. The destination of the investment cannot be changed. To redirect the capital you need a new investor visa, and withdrawing early means revocation.
Yes, if it qualifies. It must be an Italian capital company that is operating, with at least one set of accounts already filed. A company formed for the purpose does not qualify.
No. The funds must be yours, freely transferable and lawfully sourced, and documented before approval.
Documentation, almost always: gaps in the evidence of where the money came from, inconsistencies between plan and papers, a missing criminal record certificate. You may reapply, but only with materially new elements.
Yes. Spouse, minor children, dependent adult children and dependent parents can join you. Their clearance follows your nulla osta, so a family file usually takes two to three months longer.
Yes. Tax residence depends on the statutory tests, not on the permit. But Italian tax regimes require Italian tax residence.
In principle yes, if the conditions are met. The 7% regime is built on foreign pension income and requires residence in a qualifying small town in southern Italy.
Not for the visa or the permit. Italian is required later: A2 for the EU long-term permit, B1 for naturalisation.
Yes. Since 2020 a foreign legal entity can apply through the person empowered to represent it, and the visa is issued to that person.
No. The investor visa is an immigration status; tax residence is decided separately under the day-count and personal-connection tests.
The investor permit is a full residence permit that allows economic activity in Italy and can be converted into another category, such as employment. It gives no right to work in other EU countries.
Avv. Marco Mesina
Founder, Move to Dolce Vita · Avvocato, Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano)
Marco is an Italian tax lawyer who advises individuals and families relocating to Italy on tax regimes, residency, citizenship, real estate and succession planning. Before founding Move to Dolce Vita he worked at Watson Farley & Williams, Withers and Deloitte in Milan.