Europe's Startup and Founder Visas Compared in 2026: France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and the UK

Five routes dominate the question founders actually ask, which is not "which country is best" but "which of these will take me, how fast, and what does it cost me in money I cannot spend": France's Talent porteur de projet permit, Spain's ENISA-backed Startup Visa, Portugal's D2, Germany's EU Blue Card, and the UK's Global Talent visa. Scored on six criteria with published bands, the UK Global Talent visa comes out highest at 26 out of 30, France Talent and Spain Startup tie at 23, Germany's Blue Card takes 20 and Portugal's D2 takes 18. The scores are not a recommendation. They compress six measurable things and deliberately ignore several unmeasurable ones, including EU mobility, tax regime and how hard each route's approval body is to convince, which is why the section after the table matters more than the table.

Why publish a method at all

Comparison pages usually assert a ranking and then list features underneath it. That is unfalsifiable: you cannot tell whether the writer weighted processing time above the citizenship clock, or simply preferred the country they sell.

So the method comes first, and it is deliberately simple enough to argue with. Six criteria, each scored 1 to 5 against a stated band, equal weight, 30 points maximum. If you disagree with a band, you can re-score the table yourself in about two minutes.

Two decisions inside this method are worth stating out loud, because they are where an honest comparison can go wrong.

Criterion 1 mixes savings and salary on purpose. Spain asks you to prove you have €7,200; Germany asks you to prove someone will pay you €50,700. Those are different kinds of number and a purist would refuse to score them together. But from the applicant's side both function identically: they are the figure that gets your file refused if you cannot hit it. We score the disqualifying number, and we say so, rather than quietly dropping salary-gated routes off the axis.

France is scored on its innovation limb. The Talent porteur de projet card has two entry doors under CESEDA L.421-16: the création d'entreprise limb, which requires a Master's degree or five years of experience plus €30,000 of project financing, and the projet économique innovant limb (the French Tech Visa), which has no capital floor because DRIEETS Île-de-France reviews the innovation of the project instead. The table scores the innovant limb, which is the one Relovisa files. On criterion 2 the création limb would score 3 rather than 5, dropping France to 21.

The scoreboard

Read the columns, not the totals. Every route in this table wins at least one criterion outright, and the spread between 18 and 26 is much smaller than the spread inside any single column, which is the real finding: these routes are not better or worse than one another, they are shaped differently.

What the score does not measure

Four things sit outside the table and routinely outweigh it.

EU mobility and the long-term residence path. The UK's 26 buys you nothing inside Schengen. The four EU routes give you 90 days in any 180 across the other member states and, after five years, a path to EU long-term residence status that travels with you. If your customers, co-founders or clients are in the EU, this single omission can reverse the ranking on its own. We covered the mechanics of that in residency without relocating.

Tax. Spain's Beckham regime taxes Spanish-source income at a flat 24%, with foreign passive income broadly outside scope, for six tax years, and startup founders can access it including the carve-out for holders of more than 25% of the company. Portugal's IFICI gives a flat 20% rate on qualifying Portuguese employment income for ten years plus broad foreign-source exemptions. France and Germany have no equivalent flat-rate regime for founders and tax residents on worldwide income at progressive rates. The UK replaced its remittance-basis regime for non-domiciled residents in April 2025 with a four-year foreign income and gains regime, which is shorter than either Iberian regime. None of this appears in the score, and for a founder with meaningful foreign income it can be worth more than every other criterion combined. See IFICI vs Beckham Law and the Spain Startup to Beckham transition.

How hard the gatekeeper is to convince. Criterion 6 counts gatekeepers; it does not weigh them. DRIEETS, ENISA and Tech Nation all assess innovation, and all three refuse files that a founder considered strong. ENISA rejects HoReCa, franchises, property plays dressed as tech, and e-commerce with no technical differentiation. DRIEETS refuses projects whose innovation claim is a business model rather than a technology or method. Tech Nation sets the highest evidentiary bar of the three, requiring recognition documentation that most early-stage founders simply do not have yet. A route you cannot pass is not a fast route. Read what ENISA rejects and French Tech Visa rejection reasons before you rank on speed.

Money you spend, as opposed to money you show. Government fees are a small and similar part of every route's bill; apostille, sworn translation, private insurance and professional fees are not. The full line-by-line stack for the three EU founder routes sits in the real all-in cost of an EU founder visa.

France Talent, porteur de projet

Renamed from Passeport Talent by Décret n° 2025-539 of 13 June 2025, this is a single card with two entry limbs under CESEDA L.421-16: création d'entreprise at 1° and projet économique innovant at 2°, the second being what Business France markets as the French Tech Visa. Do not confuse either with the mandataire social card at L.421-19, which is a different permit with a salary threshold of €67,212.60 a year, three times the annual gross SMIC.

The financial test is one year of gross SMIC, €22,404.20 in 2026 following the arrêté of 22 May 2026, plus €12,000 to €15,000 per accompanying family member. Government charges are €449 per applicant: a €99 visa fee plus a €350 residence-permit tax on collection, made up of a €300 tax and a €50 stamp, in force for permits issued from 1 May 2026. The card runs up to four years and renews, the Talent Famille permit lets a spouse work without a separate application, and naturalisation arrives at five years under Article 21-17 of the Code civil, now with a B2 French requirement and, since 1 January 2026, a civic exam of 40 questions with a pass mark of 32 out of 40. Note the language split that trips people up: B2 is for naturalisation, B1 is for the carte de résident, and they are different procedures.

What France buys you is the passport clock and mobility. What it costs you is the DRIEETS review, which is a genuine innovation assessment rather than a form check. Start with the French Tech Visa hub and the DRIEETS dossier checklist.

Spain Startup Visa

Built on Ley 14/2013 as amended by Ley 28/2022, this route runs through ENISA, which issues a favourable report on the innovation and scalability of the business before the immigration file moves. The single most-repeated error about it, including on competitor pages that otherwise get everything right, is the financial threshold: the Startup Visa means test is IPREM-indexed, not SMI-indexed. The legal minimum is roughly €600 a month for the main applicant, about €7,200 a year, plus roughly €300 a month for each additional family member. The €2,849 a month figure that circulates belongs to the Digital Nomad Visa, which is a different programme with a different index.

Relovisa's own advice is to hold a practical buffer of about €30,000 for a credible file, but that is a recommendation and not a legal requirement, and the two should never be presented as the same thing.

On the clock, ENISA reviews the business plan in 10 to 20 working days and the UGE-CE decides the residence application in 20 working days with positive administrative silence if it does not answer. Those stages run in sequence, ENISA first, not in parallel. Filing location matters more here than anywhere else in the table: the three-year residence permit is only available through the in-Spain UGE-CE route, while the consular route abroad grants a one-year visa. The citizenship horizon is the weak column, ten years for most founders, with the two-year fast track limited to Ibero-American nationals and a short list of others. Details in the Spain Startup Visa guide and the ENISA business plan breakdown.

Portugal D2

The D2 is the only route in the table with no third-party gatekeeper: no innovation agency, no endorsing body, no employer. You show savings of €11,040, a business plan AIMA finds credible, and there is no statutory minimum investment, although practice favours €50,000 or more for a file that survives review. That freedom is why it scores 5 on criterion 6 and why it works as a rescue lane when a founder fails the D8 income test or lacks the qualifying role for a D3.

It pays for that freedom on the clock. AIMA's legal processing target is 90 days; the realistic 2026 end-to-end range is 9 to 18 months through Lisbon and Porto, and roughly 5 to 9 months through regional offices. Government charges are also two AIMA line items rather than one: €110 for the consular D visa, then €133 for the recepção e apreciação do pedido plus €307.20 for the concessão or renovação, so budget about €440 on the AIMA side rather than the €307.20 figure that is often quoted alone.

Citizenship moved against founders here. Lei Orgânica n.º 1/2026 of 18 May, in force from 19 May 2026, sets ten years for nationals of other countries, with seven years under article 6(1)(b) for nationals of countries where Portuguese is an official language and for citizens of EU member states. The implementing regulation had still not been published in the Diário da República as of 27 August 2026, so the law's own 90-day window for amending the Regulamento da Nacionalidade, counted from publication on 18 May 2026, has now closed unmet. That deadline was a target rather than a binding one, and missing it does not suspend the ten-year rule. The route-by-route arithmetic is in how Portugal's ten-year clock is counted, and the head-to-head against Spain is in D2 vs Spain Startup.

Germany EU Blue Card

The Blue Card is in this comparison because founders keep asking about it, not because it is a founder visa. It requires a signed employment contract at or above the salary threshold: €50,700 a year in 2026 for the standard case, €45,934.20 for shortage occupations, recent graduates and qualifying IT specialists, both effective from 1 January 2026. No contract, no card. That is why it scores 1 on both the financial entry test and the gatekeeper criterion.

Where it is genuinely strong is what happens after arrival. Permanent residence comes at 27 months with A1 German, or 21 months with B1, which is the fastest settlement clock of any route here. A spouse gets unrestricted work rights with no German-language condition and no means-test uplift. Naturalisation is five years under §10 StAG, following the repeal of the three-year turbo route on 30 October 2025, so anyone still citing three years for Germany is working from pre-repeal material.

A founder who wants Germany without an employer has two other doors: the self-employment permit under §21 of the Aufenthaltsgesetz, assessed on the business case rather than a salary figure, or the Chancenkarte, a points-based job-seeker permit with a 2026 financial threshold of €13,092 a year, which buys time in Germany to find the contract that unlocks a Blue Card. Background in the German residence permit options and the Chancenkarte guide.

UK Global Talent

Global Talent is the outlier that tops the table, and understanding why is more useful than the score itself. It has no financial threshold, no capital requirement, no job offer, no sponsor and no salary floor. You may be employed, self-employed, running your own company, or all three at once. Settlement arrives after three years for Exceptional Talent endorsees and five years for Exceptional Promise, against five years on the Skilled Worker route, where the minimum salary has been £41,700 since 22 July 2025.

The structure is two-stage: an endorsement application to the designated body for your field, then the visa application. Tech Nation is the endorsing body for digital technology and its UKVI contract was renewed in May 2025, so the "Tech Nation closed" claim that still circulates is wrong. What did change is the entry point: applicants now start on the standard Stage 1 form on GOV.UK rather than a separate Tech Nation portal.

Two cautions belong on this route, and both are the reason we would not simply tell a founder to take the highest score.

First, the fees, which are modest at the visa counter and brutal at the health surcharge. GOV.UK splits the route in two: £561 at the endorsement stage and £205 at the visa stage, £766 in total. The Immigration Health Surcharge is the line that actually decides the budget, at £1,035 per person per year payable up front for the whole period, so a five-year grant front-loads £5,175 per adult before anyone has bought a plane ticket. Note what GOV.UK says about family, because it is the opposite of what most summaries claim: a partner or child included in your application pays £766 each, not a reduced dependant rate.

Second, settlement is under active reform. The government's earned-settlement model would raise the baseline qualifying period from five years to ten and then hand back reductions for named contributions, with Global Talent and Innovator Founder holders in line for a reduction of up to seven years, which is the mechanism that would preserve settlement at three rather than exempt the route outright. As of 27 August 2026 this remains a proposal: the consultation opened on 20 November 2025 and closed on 12 February 2026, the rules have not been laid before Parliament, and no start date is confirmed, with the Home Secretary having indicated an intention to finalise the policy later in 2026. Scoring criterion 4 at 5 for the UK reflects the law as it stands today, and that is exactly the kind of number a comparison table should flag rather than freeze. The founder-focused alternative comparison is in Innovator Founder vs the EU startup routes.

Which route fits which founder

• You want an EU passport as fast as possible. France or Germany, both five years. France if you are founding; Germany if you are joining a company at €50,700 or more.
• You have a strong product and thin savings. Spain Startup. The €7,200 legal floor is the lowest real entry test in the EU column, and positive silence at the UGE-CE stage is a genuine procedural advantage.
• Your business is real but not innovative in the agency sense. Portugal D2. It is the only route with no innovation gatekeeper, and it accepts ordinary profitable businesses that ENISA and DRIEETS would refuse. Accept the timeline in exchange.
• You are already recognised in your field and the EU is not the point. UK Global Talent, with the settlement reform watched closely.
• You are optimising for tax on foreign income. Spain via Beckham or Portugal via IFICI, and then read the tax comparison before the visa comparison, because in that scenario the tax regime should choose the country and the visa should follow.

What could move these numbers before the end of 2026

Three of the six columns sit on figures that are scheduled or likely to change. France's SMIC is revalorised at least annually and criterion 1 moves with it, as does the mandataire social threshold at three times the annual figure. The UK's earned-settlement reform could move criterion 4 from 5 to a conditional score. Portugal's implementing regulation for the citizenship reform, still unpublished as of 27 August 2026 and now past its own 90-day window, will settle several open questions about how the ten-year clock is counted. Spain's and Germany's 2026 thresholds are set for the calendar year and are the most stable of the five.