Golden Visa Statistics: €6.45bn Was Property, €867M Was Everything Else, and the Mix Flipped Before the Closure

Two totals that look like rivals

SEF published a monthly release on the ARI, the Autorização de Residência para Investimento, and Lusa and idealista reproduced it. Each release gave a monthly figure, a calendar-year figure and a cumulative figure since October 2012, split into property purchase, urban rehabilitation, capital transfer and job creation. Titles were counted for every route. Euros were counted for property, rehabilitation and capital transfer. Job creation never received a euro value, and by December 2022 it accounted for only 22 titles.

The cumulative total to September 2023 appears in print as two incompatible numbers. ECO reported on 24 January 2024 that the 12,718 titles granted to that date came with more than €7.3 billion. Observador on 14 February 2024, and ECO again on 25 September 2026, attached €6.45 billion to the same 12,718 titles. Dinheiro Vivo and Diário de Notícias settled it on 13 April 2026, quoting SEF data: property purchases from 2012 to September 2023 totalled €6,451 million and produced 11,383 titles, while all routes together produced 12,718 titles and more than €7,318 million.

The arithmetic agrees with that reading. The programme's cumulative total was already €6,754 million at the end of 2022, of which property was €6,041 million, so €6.45 billion cannot be an all-route figure nine months later. Subtracting gives 1,335 non-property titles and about €867 million (derived). Our nationality-law article repeated the all-route pairing, and the companion golden-visa article inferred the property-only reading from the same sums without a source that said it. The DN text is that source, with one caution: it does not date the €7,318 million, and we read it as the September 2023 total because it sits beside the 12,718 titles.

Route by route, 2012 to 2022

Property was the programme for its first decade. By December 2022 it had produced 10,593 of 11,535 titles, 91.8%, and €6,041 million of €6,754 million, 89.4% (both shares derived). Rehabilitation, a sub-route of property with a lower €350,000 minimum, supplied 1,485 of those titles and €534.1 million, an average of about €360,000 (derived). Capital transfers supplied 920 titles and €712 million, an average of about €774,000 (derived), well above today's €500,000 minimums. Job creation supplied 22 titles.

Annual grants rose from 2 in 2012 to 494 in 2013 and a peak of 1,526 in 2014, then held between 1,245 and 1,414 until 2019. They fell to 1,182 in 2020 and 865 in 2021, then rose to 1,281 in 2022 (SEF totals reproduced by idealista and ECO). Money followed the same shape. The 2014 peak was €921.3 million, split €840.4 million property and €80.9 million capital transfer. A mid-2014 projection of more than €1 billion for the year did not materialise.

After €466.3 million in 2015 the series ran at €844 million in 2017, above €838 million in 2018 and €742.5 million in 2019, then fell with the pandemic to €646.7 million in 2020 and €460.8 million in 2021, down 28.7%. The 2022 figure of €654.2 million was up 41.9%. SEF's 2016 euro total is missing from every release we could read, though titles that year were 1,414. The snapshots below are the raw material for everything that follows.

The mix flipped before the law

SEF never published annual route splits for 2020 to 2022, but the cumulative snapshots allow them to be reconstructed. Each annual difference ties to the published annual total (2020 €646.8 million against €646.7 million, 2021 €460.8 million, 2022 €654.2 million), which is the check that the method works. Property money was 89.0% of the year's total in 2019, 91.0% in 2020, 88.8% in 2021 and 81.6% in 2022. In titles the property share fell from 93.2% in 2019 to 92.6%, 87.4% and 78.7%.

The first nine months of 2023 give the sharpest reading. Subtracting the December 2022 cumulative from the September 2023 figures gives 790 property titles and €410 million, against 393 non-property titles and €154 million. Property was 66.8% of titles and 72.7% of money. Capital transfers had been 9% of the money in 2020 and 11% in 2021. They were 18% in 2022 and 27% in 2023. The 2023 split mixes two source families and carries more uncertainty than the earlier years, but its direction matches 2020 to 2022.

Rehabilitation followed the rest of property only until 2022. Its cumulative titles went from 768 in December 2020 to 1,009 in December 2021 and 1,485 in December 2022, so annual rehabilitation titles roughly doubled, from 241 in 2021 to 476 in 2022 (derived). Its money did the same, €85.5 million in 2021 and €171.6 million in 2022. No source we found explains the jump. The pattern fits buyers moving to the lower €350,000 entry point, which is a reading and not a finding.

One feature of the 2023 ledger does not reconcile. The 393 non-property titles brought €154 million in the nine months, an average of about €392,000 (derived), and ECO's report put fund investment at more than €125 million for 352 fund titles, about €355,000 each. Fund units now require at least €500,000, and a SEF release for 2019 labelled the fund and venture-capital line as €350,000 and above. Either the fund threshold was lower than €500,000 for part of this period, or SEF recorded euros and titles at different moments, or the €125 million is a partial figure. The releases we read do not say which.

The cultural route shows the same pattern. Its 211 declarations carried €46.8 million in 2025, an average of €222,000 against a stated minimum of €250,000. Averages of this kind are derived from rounded press figures, but they sit consistently below the thresholds. Nobody should multiply a route's title count by its minimum and call the result investment.

What closed on 7 October 2023

Lei 56/2023, the Mais Habitação law, was published on 6 October 2023 and took effect the next day. idealista quotes its wording as "Não são admitidos novos pedidos de autorização de residência para atividade de investimento", with a saving for renewals of permits granted under the earlier regime. Read alone, the sentence bans all new applications. It cannot apply to every route, because Dinheiro Vivo listed five routes still open in April 2026. We read the operative articles only through secondary summaries, so the route list below rests on Dinheiro Vivo for what remains and on SEF's own labels and law-firm summaries for what went.

Pending applications are the open question. Law-firm summaries cited in our companion article say applications filed before 7 October 2023 remain valid, and AIMA's pending queues have been quoted anywhere from 29,000 to more than 55,000 on different dates and scopes, with the figure for investor files alone unclear. None of it is tied to a route, so the 2,081 grants in 2024 and 2,685 in 2025 may include property cases filed before the cutoff. Nobody can say how many. That is why no figure here describes post-2023 grants as non-property.

The routes that remain

Funds are the route with the most data and the least official data. ECO's January 2024 report on SEF figures, which idealista republished, counted 352 titles through funds in January to September 2023, three in ten, with more than €125 million invested, up 45.5% on all of 2022 (implying about €86 million for 2022, derived). Since then the evidence comes from APFIPP, the funds association. It reports record subscriptions to eligible funds of €732 million in 2025 against redemptions of €45.3 million. For January to May 2026 subscriptions were €283 million and redemptions €94.7 million, close to three to one (2.99, derived), with redemptions running at about €20 million a month. Redemptions in five months of 2026 were already 2.1 times those of all of 2025 (derived).

Two cautions apply. Subscriptions to eligible funds include investors who are not applying for a visa, so €732 million cannot be read as golden visa money. At the €500,000 minimum it equals at most 1,464 tickets (derived), against 2,685 grants in the same year, which shows the two series are not the same population. The regulatory picture also moved. On 21 October 2026 the CMVM issued Circular 007/2026, with 28 recommendations to venture-capital fund managers after a thematic supervision found irregularities (Jornal Económico). It requires at least two-thirds of assets in venture-capital investments, bars hybrid instruments and loans to companies where the fund holds no equity, limits referral agents to passing on investors, and requires key information documents before subscription. The circular does not name golden visa funds. Its two-thirds test is the CMVM's own and is separate from the 60% Portuguese-company rule reported for the visa route.

The cultural route is the only one where the state publishes a ledger. The Ministry of Culture's GEPAC issues a declaration when a donation of at least €250,000 to an eligible cultural project is effectively transferred. Declarations ran at 1 visa in 2020, 7 in 2021, 8 in 2022 and 15 in 2023 (DN, 26 March 2025, with €4.5 million in 2023), then 50 in 2024 and 211 in 2025, for €11.7 million and €46.8 million (Dinheiro Vivo, 13 April 2026). The cumulative total at the end of 2025 was 293 declarations and €66.4 million. The yearly counts we have sum to 292, one short of the stated total.

The money is concentrated. The Abel and João de Lacerda Foundation, behind the Caramulo toy museum (€8.2 million in 2025), has received €13.2 million in all, Serralves €11 million and the Alentejo Foundation €5.6 million, including €4.2 million for a palace in Estremoz in 2025. GEPAC published a list of 29 eligible entities in April 2026. By nationality of the 293 transfers, the United States has 120, China 78 (Jornal de Negócios says 70), India 30 and the United Kingdom 7, so Americans account for 41% (derived).

The 2024 base is contested. DN reported €14.1 million and 52 visas in March 2025, against €11.7 million and 50 declarations in the 2026 ministry data. Growth in 2025 is 232% on the first and 298% on the second. A government figure of more than €104 million mobilised by 31 August 2026 appears on a consultancy page citing a 29 September release we could not open. If correct, it implies about €37.6 million in the first eight months of 2026, a pace of €4.7 million a month against €3.9 million in 2025 (both derived).

The remaining three routes have no published counts after 2022. SEF's last job-creation figure is 22 titles in total. The research route, a transfer of €500,000 for scientific research, and the company route, €500,000 with five permanent jobs, have no published title or euro count in any year we could find. Anyone quoting a split of 2024 and 2025 grants by route is quoting a vendor's client data or an estimate. One relocation vendor's published shares put funds at 96%, culture at 3% and research at 2% of its applications. Those figures describe its clients and not the programme.

Where the property money went

SEF did not publish a standing breakdown by municipality, so the geography comes from occasional reports. A 2020 report on data to the end of 2017 counted 7,272 property titles of €500,000 or more, with 2,423 in Lisbon, 672 in Cascais and 31 in Porto. The percentages printed with those counts do not match them: 47% for Lisbon against 33% by division. A 2022 SEF count reported by Jornal de Notícias covered 808 property titles to the autumn: 465 in Lisbon, 178 in Porto and 61 in low-density areas, which is 57.6%, 22.0% and 7.5%. Lisbon and Porto together took 79.6% (derived). Jornal de Negócios framed the result as the government failing to draw golden visas outside the two cities. We found no district figure for the Algarve, Madeira or Setúbal for any year, and none for any location after 2022. Our Lisbon and Algarve articles cover the markets involved.

By nationality, SEF data to October 2022 give China 5,209 of 11,263 titles, 46%, then Brazil 1,148, Turkey 534, the United States 495 and South Africa 483. In 2021 the five largest sources by money were China (€136.8 million), the United States (€51.6 million), Brazil (€49.5 million), Russia (€33.6 million) and India (€17.1 million), so China supplied about 30% of that year's €460.8 million (derived). The companion article gives the 2023 to 2025 counts, in which the United States leads each year. The American market article places that against nights and spending.

Two pieces of evidence bear on housing. The first is an academic study, IZA discussion paper 16857 by Pereira dos Santos and Strohmaier (March 2024), which uses property tax records for 2007 to 2019. It finds that transaction prices bunch at the €500,000 threshold and estimates a golden-visa premium of about €38,000 per housing unit, significant at the 10% level and described as roughly 15% in the text and above 10% in the abstract. The premium sits on properties near the threshold and not on the market as a whole. A survey in the paper found 61.9% of respondents agreeing the programme should end even at an economic cost.

The second is Observador's 3.1%: €6,450 million over about €205 billion of residential transactions. The rating agency DBRS said in April 2023 that ending new grants would have limited impact on the housing market, possibly more localised in Lisbon and the Algarve. The industry body APEMIP has cited 0.6% on an unstated base. A share of 0.6% to 3% of transaction value alongside a premium concentrated near €500,000 fits a small national effect and a larger local one. Our search found no study that separates the two for Lisbon or the Algarve, and no Banco de Portugal, ECB or IMF estimate.

The programme in proportion

The table below puts the programme beside the other residence and property measures in this series. Grants of 2,685 are 0.79% of AIMA's 337,880 new titles in 2025 and 0.17% of the 1,585,854 foreign residents counted at the end of that year (both derived). The €3.4 billion of purchases by non-residents that INE counted in 2025 is four times the golden visa's best property year, 2014's €840.4 million, although the two measures differ and cover different years.

The visa is not a measurable source of visitors. Holders must spend seven days in Portugal in the first year and fourteen in each later two-year period, 35 days over five years (derived from the rule described in the companion article), and INE counts only registered accommodation. A holder in an owned home does not appear in guest or night statistics, so the programme's tourism footprint is unmeasured. The hotel side of the money is covered in our hotel investment article, and the licence side in the Alojamento Local and hotels comparison.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Nothing here changes how you enter or stay in Portugal. If you are using trips to test a move, property no longer qualifies for a visa, and the surviving routes need fund units, donations, research money or jobs rather than a house. Where the property money went is documented for Lisbon and Porto, which took 80% of property titles in January to October 2022. The guides to Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve explain where to base yourself in each.

Tourism businesses and investors. The structural read is that the visa's money moved from houses to financial products and philanthropy. Funds took about 30% of titles in 2023 and now carry both the volume and the regulatory risk, with CMVM Circular 007/2026 and €94.7 million of redemptions in five months of 2026 as the two data points to watch. Culture is the smaller and better documented route and is dominated by a few foundations. Three thresholds would change the assessment: a CMVM follow-up naming golden visa funds, a subscription-to-redemption ratio below two to one, and an AIMA release that resumes investment totals or route labels. Underwriters who still assume that 89% of the money buys property are using a share that was 73% in the last nine months SEF reported and is unmeasured since.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite: 12,718 titles and more than €7,318 million to September 2023, of which property was 11,383 titles and €6,451 million (SEF via Dinheiro Vivo/DN); 11,535 titles and €6,754 million at December 2022; 2,081 grants in 2024 and 2,685 in 2025 (AIMA); and the culture ledger of 293 declarations and €66.4 million to the end of 2025. Do not repeat €6.451 billion as an all-route total, 93% as a current property share, "more than €7 billion" as a current figure, or any 2024 and 2025 split by route. The route splits for 2020 to 2023 are ours and are labelled derived. The series finding this article adds is that the golden visa's route mix can be rebuilt only from cumulative snapshots, and the snapshots stop in September 2023.