Greece Golden Visa

What the Greece Golden Visa grants in 2026

The Golden Visa itself is a renewable 5-year residence permit, not Greek citizenship and not the Greek passport. Property bought to qualify must be used for long-term rental only; short-term platforms such as Airbnb are not permitted on Golden-Visa-qualifying property.

Greece raised its thresholds twice in quick succession: from a flat €250,000 to €500,000 in high-demand areas in 2023, then to the current three-zone system effective 31 August 2024. Unlike Portugal, which removed real estate from its golden visa entirely in October 2023, Greece kept property as the core route throughout.

Investment options by zone

Zone assignment, not applicant profile, is what actually decides the minimum here. Confirm which zone a specific property actually sits in before assuming its price bracket: zone boundaries follow administrative area rather than a simple city name, so two similarly priced neighbourhoods can fall on either side of the Zone A line.

Family and the real cost beyond the purchase price

Property transfer tax runs approximately 3.09%, plus notary, legal and registration fees on top of the purchase price. None of these are optional line items to skip when budgeting a Zone A property in particular, where the 3.09% alone adds real money at an €800,000 price point.

Spouse, dependent children, and dependent parents of either spouse can generally be included on the same permit without each needing their own qualifying property. Confirm current per-dependent fees with a licensed Greek immigration lawyer before finalising a family budget, since these figures are not fixed in the same public schedule the purchase thresholds are.

How the process runs

Applications go through the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum, processed through Greece's immigration or decentralized administration offices. There is no interview requirement in the CBI sense.

There is no Caribbean-style mandatory licensed-agent requirement here, but using a licensed Greek property lawyer to handle title checks, obtain a Greek tax number (AFM), and manage the permit application is standard practice. Gold Visa World works as an advisory desk alongside licensed Greek legal and real estate partners; nothing on this page is Greek legal or tax advice.

The property purchase itself is usually the pacing item, not the immigration paperwork: title checks, AFM registration and the permit application move in parallel once a qualifying property is under contract. We do not quote a single fixed end-to-end timeline here the way we can for Portugal's fund route or the Caribbean programs' published windows: actual speed depends on the specific property, notary availability and the local administration office's current backlog, which our Greek partners confirm case by case rather than from a generic industry figure.

Who this suits, and the gap between the permit and citizenship

Greece suits investors who specifically want a tangible Mediterranean property alongside EU residency, are comfortable with the higher Zone A threshold for an Athens or island property, or want the lower €250,000 conversion route if willing to take on a renovation project. Because the residence permit itself needs no minimum days per year, it also suits Chinese applicants and Vietnamese applicants who mainly want EU-residency optionality rather than an immediate move, each for their own reasons, covered on their nationality pages, to prefer a residence permit over an immediate second citizenship.

Unlike the four Caribbean programs on this site, Greece's Golden Visa carries none of the EU Schengen-suspension pressure building against citizenship by investment programs: Greece is itself an EU member state running a standard residence-by-investment scheme, not a third country selling a passport that grants Schengen access. The live risk here is domestic threshold and rule changes, which is exactly what happened twice already, in 2023 and again in 2024, not an external suspension threat.

There is a real distinction worth stating plainly here too, since marketing sometimes blurs it. There is no minimum-stay requirement to keep the residence permit active: the investment is what is maintained, not a day count. But naturalisation to Greek citizenship requires around 7 years of genuine, documented physical residency, not just holding the permit on paper, plus Greek language, history and civics exams. Our golden visa versus citizenship guide sets this distinction out in more depth for anyone comparing Greece against an actual passport program.