Panama · Residency by investment
Permanent Residency as a Qualified Investor
Marketed as the 'Panama Golden Visa' — there is no separate programme by that name. Real estate threshold is USD 300,000 until 15 October 2026, then USD 500,000 under Executive Decree 193 of 15 October 2024.
This is the only place in the hemisphere where a family converts USD 300,000 into unconditional permanent residency in about a month, with no presence requirement and no tax on foreign income. The October 2026 repricing is the single most time-sensitive deadline in Latin American residency planning.
Qualifying routes
must be free of liens and encumbrances; funds must be wired from abroad; rises to USD 500,000 from 15 October 2026
through a trust or escrow with a Panamanian bank or fiduciary; since October 2024 a public notary must ratify the promise-to-purchase or trust contract
broker must be licensed by Panama's Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores
5-year term, unencumbered
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $300k
- Total landed cost
- USD 300k investment plus roughly USD 16k in government and legal fees for the main applicant, and USD 2–3k per dependant
- Timeline
- 1–3 months — 30–45 business days to permanent residency once a complete file is filed — the fastest permanent residency in the Americas
- Physical presence
- No annual minimum; enter Panama at least once every two years to keep permanent residency alive. Naturalisation, by contrast, demands real presence.
- Family
- spousechildren under 18dependent children 18–25 in full-time educationdependent parents
- Permanent residency
- immediate — this is a permanent residency from grant
- Citizenship
- 5 years of permanent residency before applying for naturalisation
- Language test
- Spanish at an intermediate-to-high level, plus an examination on Panamanian history, geography, culture and civics; since 2025 candidates must recite the national anthem and the pledge to the flag from memory
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- investment funds must originate abroad and be documented into Panamaclean criminal record, apostilledhealth certificate issued in Panamainvestment held unencumbered for a minimum of five yearsapplication filed through a Panamanian lawyer
- The USD 300,000 threshold expires 15 October 2026 and becomes USD 500,000. Note this deadline has been postponed before — Decree 722 of 2020 originally set the increase for 2022 and Decree 193 of 2024 pushed it to 2026 — so a further extension is plausible but must not be relied on.
- The investment must be held five years. Selling or letting it lapse without reinvesting cancels the residency retroactively; there is annual verification.
- Law 493 of 2025 authorises a 'special passport' for qualified investors. This is a travel document, not nationality: it does not confer Panamanian citizenship, does not replace your own passport, and dies with your residence permit. It is being mis-sold as a second passport. Its implementing regulations were still pending as of mid-2026.
- Panama remained on the EU's Annex I list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions at the February 2026 review. This is a live banking problem — EU counterparties apply enhanced due diligence and some refuse Panamanian structures outright. The next review is October 2026.
- Panamanian naturalisation after five years is legally available but discretionary and politically slow in practice; treat the passport as a possibility, not a plan.
- Panama's constitution does not generally recognise dual nationality — naturalising requires formally renouncing your prior nationality before Panamanian authorities. Whether your home country actually treats that renunciation as effective is a separate question, but do not assume Panama is a clean add-on citizenship.