Hungary · Residency by investment
Residence Permit for Guest Investor (Guest Investor Programme)
In force since 1 July 2024. The EUR 500,000 direct residential real estate purchase route was repealed by amendment published in Magyar Kozlony on 20 December 2024 before it ever opened to applicants (it had been scheduled to become available on 1 January 2025). Only the EUR 250,000 real estate fund route and the EUR 1,000,000 higher education donation route remain.
This is the only golden visa launched in the EU while everyone else was closing theirs, and at ten years renewable to twenty it has the longest validity in Europe. But it is a residence-and-Schengen-access product, not a citizenship product: the very feature that sells it — zero presence — is the feature that guarantees it never converts into a Hungarian passport.
Qualifying routes
Investment certificates in a fund regulated by the Hungarian National Bank, at least 40% of whose net asset value is in Hungarian residential real estate; must be held at least five years
Non-refundable; to an institution maintained by a public-interest asset management foundation, for education, scientific research or artistic creation
REPEALED before it opened — announced 20 December 2024, never available to applicants. Do not rely on any advisor still marketing this route.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €250k
- Total landed cost
- EUR 250k fund subscription plus roughly EUR 15-30k in government, legal and fund subscription fees for a family of four; the donation route is EUR 1m sunk plus similar fees
- Timeline
- 4–10 months — Guest investor D visa (max 6 months, non-extendable) is issued first; residence permit application must follow within 30 days of entry, and the investment must be completed and evidenced within roughly three months of visa issue
- Physical presence
- None. The official FAQ states there is no rule on minimum length of stay for the guest investor residence permit.
- Family
- spouseminor childrenin practice dependent children under 25 and dependent parents via parallel family reunification applications — confirm case by case
- Permanent residency
- National Card (permanent-type status) after 3 years of actual residence in Hungary — the guest investor permit alone does not deliver this without genuinely living there
- Citizenship
- 8 years of legal AND physical residence; the zero-presence design of this permit means a non-resident investor never starts that clock
- Language test
- Constitutional knowledge exam sat in Hungarian (40 multiple-choice questions, 28 correct to pass); no formal certificate required but roughly B2 conversational Hungarian is needed in practice
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- non-EU/EEA national aged 18 or overclean criminal record and no threat to national security (approval by the Constitution Protection Office)documented lawful source of fundsvalid health insurance and accommodation in Hungaryhold the fund units for at least five years to keep the permit renewable
- Only about two funds have been approved by the Hungarian National Bank to date, so the EUR 250,000 route carries real concentration and manager risk — you are underwriting a single illiquid Hungarian residential fund for five years, with no meaningful secondary market and no track record.
- Henley & Partners publicly states the programme is 'currently stalled, poses several risks' and does not recommend applying. Hungary publishes no approval statistics, so uptake cannot be independently verified. Treat any advisor's claim about approval rates as unevidenced.
- Zero physical presence means zero progress toward permanent residence or citizenship. Advisors who market this as a 'path to an EU passport' are misrepresenting it.
- Hungary's predecessor residency bond programme (2013-2017) collapsed amid corruption findings: offshore intermediaries, roughly USD 600m in fees to eight opaque companies, and a documented net loss to the Hungarian budget. Political and reputational risk of a repeat is not zero, and the programme is closely watched by the European Commission.
- The EUR 1m donation route is non-refundable and channels money to public-interest asset management foundations — the same foundation structures that are themselves the subject of EU rule-of-law disputes and frozen EU funds.
- The Schengen benefit is 90 days in any 180 — this permit does not give unlimited EU-wide residence rights.
- Hungary's rule-of-law standoff with Brussels is live. A hostile Commission opinion on investor residence, or an EU-level ban on such schemes, is a live policy risk over a ten-year holding period.