Spain Residence Permits After the Golden Visa: The 2026 Route Map

Spain's Golden Visa is gone. Residence by real-estate investment was repealed by Ley Orgánica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, and stopped operating on 3 April 2025. Nothing replaced it in kind: there is no longer any amount of money you can place in Spain that produces a residence permit. What remains is four ordinary residence routes, each of which asks you for something other than capital.

This article is the map: what closed, why there is no successor, the four routes and who each genuinely fits, the tax layer that decides most cases, and the road from a first card to citizenship. It does not try to pick your route for you. Once you know roughly where you land, the specialised articles linked throughout go far deeper than any overview can, and /spanish-residencies-and-visas sets out the service-side picture. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.

What actually ended on 3 April 2025

The programme everyone called the Golden Visa was the investor residence authorisation obtained by buying Spanish real estate worth €500,000 or more. That is what Ley Orgánica 1/2025 repealed. It was the route that carried the overwhelming majority of investor files, and the only one that let someone acquire Spanish residence essentially as a transaction.

Three points are worth getting right.

The repeal was not retroactive. Authorisations granted before the cut-off, and applications already lodged, were preserved by the transitional provisions and continue to be renewed under the previous rules. If you are already inside the system, your question is one of continuity, and it belongs with Spanish counsel rather than a blog.

The repeal was scoped to real estate. Ley 14/2013 also contained investor categories built on a €1 million transfer into Spanish shares, funds or deposits, on €2 million in Spanish public debt, and on a business project of general interest. Those were not the target of the property repeal, but they were never the route the market ran on either: they cost two to four times as much and lock capital in instruments most buyers did not want. Treat them as a footnote, and confirm current conditions with counsel before building anything around one.

The stated rationale was housing, not immigration. The government framed the repeal as a housing-affordability measure aimed at investment demand in the largest cities. That matters mainly because it tells you the door is unlikely to reopen.

Why there is no like-for-like replacement

The Golden Visa did something none of the surviving routes does: it let you obtain and hold Spanish residence without living in Spain, without working, and without demonstrating ongoing income.

Every remaining route breaks at least one of those conditions. The Startup Visa requires an innovative business that an agency certifies. The Digital Nomad Visa requires ongoing income paid from outside Spain and a real relationship behind it. The Non-Lucrative Visa requires ongoing passive income and forbids work entirely. The self-employed route requires an actual business serving Spanish customers.

All four are genuine residence permits, so the residency clock, renewals and naturalisation all test continuity of residence and count absences. That is the real change of posture. If what you wanted was a Spanish card as an option on Europe while you continued to live elsewhere, none of these is that instrument.

What your capital still does is make every one of these files stronger. Liquid, documented funds are what the solvency check looks at, and a cushion above the legal floor is the cheapest way to de-risk an application. It buys a better file. It no longer buys a permit.

The four routes at a glance

Two things this table is not. It is not a decision matrix: if you are actively choosing among the three working routes, the trade-offs that decide it (the client rule, the tax fork, the autónomo confusion, and what happens when you try to switch later) are laid out in Spain Startup Visa vs Digital Nomad Visa vs autónomo. And it is not a ranking: the Startup Visa has the lowest money test on the page and by far the hardest qualifying test.

Start from what you have, not from the visa name

Capital and passive income, and you do not want to work

The closest profile to the Golden Visa audience, and the route is the Non-Lucrative Visa: €2,400/month (400% of the 2026 IPREM) in passive income, or €28,800/year in savings, plus 100% IPREM (€600/month) per family member. It asks for no business substance at all. The next section covers it properly, because no other article in this cluster owns it.

An employer or clients outside Spain

The Digital Nomad Visa, and the route with the most rejections for the most avoidable reasons. The floor is €2,849/month (200% of the 2026 minimum wage), plus €1,068/month for the first additional family member and €356/month for each one after. Beyond the money, the UGE-CE tests the relationship: at least 80% of your activity must be for principals outside Spain, your foreign employer must have traded for at least one year, and your relationship with it must predate the filing by at least three months. Documenting the income is covered in Spain DNV income proof in 2026; the route overview is the Spain Digital Nomad Visa guide.

A company, or an idea with real technical or model innovation

The Startup Visa, where most former Golden Visa applicants with an entrepreneurial background end up. The financial test is the lowest of any Spanish route: 100% IPREM, about €600/month (€7,200/year) for the main applicant, plus about 50% IPREM (€300/month) per accompanying family member. The funds are not locked, not invested and not tied to Spanish assets. In practice both the ENISA viability review and the UGE-CE solvency check go better with a cushion, and Relovisa advises demonstrating €30,000 or more in available funds as a practical buffer, not a legal requirement.

One figure to ignore permanently: the frequently quoted "200% SMI, about €34,188/year" belongs to the DNV, which is indexed to the minimum wage. The Startup and entrepreneur authorisation under Ley 14/2013 is indexed to the lower IPREM figure. Over-funding a Startup file against the DNV benchmark is the most common numeric error in this cluster.

The route has two application profiles. The first is your own innovative project, filed as a business plan to ENISA, whose anatomy is in the ENISA business plan walkthrough. The second is joining an existing Spanish startup as a co-founder, increasingly common as ENISA's innovation bar has tightened, and suited to professionals from finance, operations, business development, marketing and research who bring proven capability and capital rather than a codebase. ENISA assesses the co-founder's contribution as substantive rather than titular, so a defined role, a real equity arrangement and proper corporate documentation of the appointment are the standard package.

The gate here is the innovation test, not the money. Four business categories fail it almost every time, and they are set out in what ENISA rejects in 2026. Read that before writing a plan, not after a refusal.

A normal business for Spanish customers

The self-employed (por cuenta propia) work visa under the general regime: Ley Orgánica 4/2000 and its reglamento, RD 1155/2024, in force since 20 May 2025. No innovation test and no 80/20 foreign-income rule, which is the point of it. Also no Beckham Law access, and a slower ordinary process through the provincial immigration offices rather than the UGE-CE fast track. A restaurant, a clinic, a consultancy with Spanish clients, a shop: these are self-employed cases, and forcing them through the Startup Visa is the commonest way to burn three months.

The Non-Lucrative Visa, in detail

What it asks for. €2,400/month, 400% of the 2026 IPREM, or €28,800/year held as savings, for the main applicant. Each additional family member adds 100% IPREM: €600/month, €7,200/year. The income can be a pension, dividends, rent, interest or capital gains, and the file is about documenting that it is real, stable and yours.

What it forbids. Any professional activity in Spain, including remote work for a foreign employer. Applying for an NLV while intending to keep working remotely is a common and avoidable mistake, and it is why the Digital Nomad Visa exists as a separate route.

How it is filed. Consular only: you apply at the Spanish consulate with jurisdiction over where you legally live, and there is no in-Spain UGE-CE fast lane. The first permit is one year, renewed two plus two, reaching the five-year mark from which permanent or EU long-term residence becomes available.

What it costs in tax. An NLV holder living in Spain becomes an ordinary Spanish tax resident, taxed on worldwide income at standard IRPF rates, with Spanish-source savings income running up the savings scale (19%, 21%, 23%, 27%, and 30% above €300,000). Beckham is not available, because the regime attaches to a work or entrepreneurial basis the NLV does not have. For someone whose whole reason for choosing Spain was tax efficiency, this is usually the fact that redirects the case. Full detail on /spain-non-lucrative-visa.

The tax layer: who reaches the Beckham Law and who does not

For most former Golden Visa applicants the tax question decides the immigration question.

The Beckham Law (special regime for posted workers, artículo 93 LIRPF) applies a flat 24% to Spanish-source employment and work income up to €600,000, with 47% above, for the year of arrival plus the following five: six tax years. Foreign-source dividends, interest and capital gains are generally outside the Spanish base under the regime. It is not a blanket zero on foreign income and never was: Spanish-source savings income still runs the ordinary savings scale, and the "0% on worldwide income" framing that circulates is simply wrong.

Two conditions gate it. You must not have been a Spanish tax resident in the previous five years, which quietly excludes many returning residents. And you must file the election on Modelo 149 within six months of registering with Spanish Social Security: that window cannot be extended and there is no cure for missing it. The mechanics are in the Startup Visa to Beckham Law transition guide.

Access by route:

• Startup Visa: yes, reliably. The Startup Act carves entrepreneurs out of the exclusion for founders holding more than 25% of their company, which is exactly the exclusion that would otherwise catch a founder.
• Digital Nomad Visa: conditionally. You keep it filing as an employee of a foreign company or as a company administrator. A freelance autónomo on the DNV does not. This one distinction moves the effective rate more than any other choice here.
• Self-employed visa: no. Standard IRPF.
• Non-Lucrative Visa: no. There is no basis for the regime to attach to.

Beyond income tax, Spain levies a net-wealth tax at regional level alongside a state-level solidarity levy on large fortunes, and the impatriate regime generally narrows the wealth-tax base to Spanish-situs assets. Rates, thresholds and regional reliefs vary and change, so model it with a Spanish adviser rather than from a table. Comparing jurisdictions rather than routes, Portugal's IFICI against Spain's Beckham Law is the closest head-to-head, and founder exit tax across France, Spain and Portugal covers the departure side that catches people moving with an unrealised gain.

One unresolved dispute. In 2026 there is still open conflict over whether Beckham holders must declare imputación de rentas inmobiliarias on a Spanish primary residence. TEAC binding doctrine (Resolución 3697/2025, 17 July 2025) says they must; TSJ Madrid (Sentencia 665/2025, 17 September 2025) reached the opposite conclusion. The split is widely expected to need a Tribunal Supremo ruling, and until then TEAC doctrine binds the tax agency, so the "must impute" position is what is applied. Two later developments push the other way without settling anything: the DGT accepted the reinvestment exemption on the sale of such a home (consulta V2467-25, 11 December 2025), and the European Commission escalated an infringement procedure over imputed property income for non-resident owners to a reasoned opinion in April 2026. Neither displaces TEAC. It does not affect eligibility, but take advice before your first Modelo 151.

From first card to permanent residence and citizenship

Renewal structure differs by route. The Startup Visa issues a three-year card when the authorisation is filed inland through the UGE-CE, renewable for two more; the DNV follows the same inland pattern. The consular route on either grants a one-year visa, not the three-year card, and articles promising a three-year permit issued at a consulate in weeks are conflating the two filings. The NLV runs one year, then two, then two. Renewal conditions are their own subject, covered in the Spain visa renewal guide.

Five years is the first real milestone. After five years of legal residence you can apply for Spanish permanent residence or EU long-term residence, which decouples your status from the route you entered on. This is where the entry choice stops mattering much.

Ten years is citizenship, for most people. Nationality by residence is generally available after ten years. The path is two years for nationals of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal and for people of Sephardic origin, and one year through marriage to a Spanish national. Naturalisation also requires the CCSE civics examination and, for applicants from countries where Spanish is not official, DELE A2. Confirm current requirements before planning around them.

Absences count on every route, at renewal, at permanent residence and again at naturalisation. This is the structural difference from the Golden Visa that catches its former audience hardest, and no file quality engineers it away.

Family comes with you from the start. On the Startup Visa and the DNV, spouse or unmarried partner, dependent children and dependent ascendants join the same application rather than separate family-reunification filings, spouses receive work rights, and the financial test scales by the multipliers above. The NLV includes family at 100% IPREM each. Mobility across the 29-country Schengen area comes with any of these permits for short stays, though a residence permit is not a right to live in another member state.

Six mistakes former Golden Visa applicants make

1. Assuming money still buys the permit. It does not, at any amount, since 3 April 2025.
2. Buying the property first. Equity in a house is not liquid means, and no Spanish route treats a purchase as evidence for the financial test.
3. Over-funding against the wrong benchmark. The 200% SMI figure (about €34,188/year) is the DNV test. The Startup Visa runs on IPREM, about €7,200/year plus the practical buffer.
4. Filing an NLV while planning to work remotely. Remote work for a foreign employer is professional activity. If circumstances change after arrival, switching to the DNV from inside Spain is a defined procedure, not an improvisation.
5. Treating Beckham as automatic. It is an election with a hard six-month deadline, a five-year prior-residence exclusion, and an employee-versus-freelancer condition on the DNV.
6. Expecting the three-year card from a consulate. The consular route grants a one-year visa; the three-year authorisation exists on the in-Spain UGE-CE filing.

Where to go next

• Choosing between the working routes: Startup Visa vs DNV vs autónomo, the decision matrix with the tax fork and switching rules.
• The Startup route: the Spain Startup Visa guide, then the ENISA business plan walkthrough, and check your model against what ENISA rejects first. Already refused? Recurso de alzada versus reapplying.
• The DNV route: the Spain Digital Nomad Visa guide and income proof in 2026.
• The passive-income route: /spain-non-lucrative-visa.
• Not sure Spain is the answer: Portugal D2 against the Spain Startup Visa, the comparison most former Golden Visa applicants end up running, because Portugal applies a viability test rather than an innovation test.

Relovisa runs the full Spain Startup file (the ENISA innovation report and the UGE-CE residence authorisation), files the inland DNV route, and places co-founder clients into pre-screened Spanish startups where that route fits. See how the Spain Startup engagement works