Latvia · Business & founder
Temporary Residence Permit for Innovative Product Creation (Startup Visa)
Open
Last verified July 2026
Open, with no capital threshold — a genuinely cheap route that is overshadowed by the golden visa noise.
For a founder who will genuinely move, this delivers what the EUR 250k property route cannot: real residence that actually accrues toward permanent residence and citizenship, at a fraction of the cost. Subsistence of EUR 500/month is the only real financial test.
Qualifying routes
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Innovative product creation or development
No minimum capital; requires an accepted three-year business plan
The facts
- Total landed cost
- State fees only — low four figures, plus the cost of actually running the venture
- Timeline
- 1–4 months — Includes the innovation assessment
- Physical presence
- Expected to run the business from Latvia in substance
- Family
- spouseminor children
- Permanent residency
- 5 years, with the standard physical presence test — and unlike the investor routes, a founder actually living in Latvia can meet it
- Citizenship
- 5 further years of PR
- Language test
- Latvian language, history and Constitution exams
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- three-year business plan accepted by the assessment commissionsubsistence of EUR 500/monthclean criminal record
What can go wrong
- The innovation test is a real gate — a consultancy or trading company will not qualify.
- Requires genuine presence and substance, which is the point but rules out passive holders.
- Latvia's dual citizenship whitelist still applies at the citizenship stage.