Can you buy an EU passport?
Not any more — and the market says so plainly. We priced every investment migration programme we could verify. Of the 38 passports with near-complete access to the destinations buyers actually want, four were ever for sale. All four are now closed. What remains is one realistic route to an EU passport for someone who will not relocate — and the market charges roughly double for it.
The top tier has 38 passports. None is for sale.
Ranking passports by raw country counts hides what buyers pay for. A passport opening 120 countries but not the Schengen Area is worth less than one opening 90 that includes it. So we scored all 199 passports on access to the eight blocs that dominate demand: Schengen, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, China and the Gulf states.
38 passports sit at effectively full access, then the ranking drops sharply. That group is:
Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
Four of them sold citizenship outright, and every one has since shut:
| Country | Price when open | Closed | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Malta | €690,000 | July 2025 | Court of Justice of the EU ruled the scheme incompatible with EU law |
| Ireland | €1,000,000 | 2023 | withdrawn by the government |
| Bulgaria | €512,000 | 2022 | repealed under EU pressure |
| Cyprus | €2,200,000 | 2020 | suspended after an investigation into how passports were granted |
Every door into the top tier that money could open has been shut, and the most recent one was shut by a court rather than by a policy that could quietly reverse.
A note on method: this is a buyer's score, not a general strength ranking. The United States lands at 75% here because Americans need visas for China and parts of the Gulf — which matters to someone shopping for mobility, and not at all to most Americans.
What the market really prices is not travel
Here is the finding that surprised us. Every EU residence-by-investment programme leads to the same passport-level access, so mobility cannot explain why their prices differ fourfold. Something else does: whether you can actually finish the path.
Most EU golden visas require roughly 183 days a year in the country before naturalisation counts. That is not an investment — that is emigration. For an investor who intends to keep living where they live, those programmes do not lead to a passport at all, at any price.
Portugal requires about seven days a year. That single difference is the product.
The price of the only door left open
| Route | Entry | Years to passport | Days per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal — fund route | €500,000 | 5 | ~7 |
| Portugal — donation route | €200,000 | 5 | ~7 |
| Italy | €250,000 | 10 | ~183 |
| Greece | €250,000 | 7 | ~183 |
| Hungary | €250,000 | 8 | ~183 |
| Latvia | €50,000 | 10 | ~183 |
| Malta — citizenship | €690,000 | immediate | closed 2025 |
Portugal's fund route costs twice what Italy, Greece or Hungary charge, and delivers the same passport at the end. The premium is not for a better document. It is for a path a non-resident can realistically complete — and it is close to the only one on the market.
What this means if you are actually shopping
Three honest conclusions from the numbers:
- A top-tier passport cannot be bought today. Not expensively — at all. Anyone quoting you a price for one is selling a residence permit, a weaker passport, or a fiction.
- Cheap is not cheap if the path does not close. Latvia at €50,000 looks like a tenth of Portugal until you notice it needs a decade of actual residence. Compare the requirement, not the price.
- The Caribbean programmes price as a bloc, not a market. Since July 2024 five Eastern Caribbean states have held an agreed $200,000 floor, which is why Dominica, Antigua, Grenada, St Lucia and St Kitts all land within $50,000 of each other despite differing access.
Where these numbers come from
Programme prices were read from official government portals in August 2026 and represent the minimum qualifying threshold, with the payment type recorded — a non-refundable contribution and a property purchase are not comparable at face value. Passport access is computed from the same 199×199 entry matrix that powers the rest of this site; see our methodology.
This is research, not advice. We are not an immigration adviser, we take no commission on these programmes, and we do not process applications. Programmes change and close, sometimes with weeks of notice — the only source of truth is the programme's own government portal. Verify before you move money.