Samoa · Citizenship by investment
Citizenship Investment Programme (Citizenship Investment Act 2015)
OUR CHARACTERISATION, STATED OPENLY: the Act remains in force, so the programme is technically live, but it has essentially never been used — a minister noted in June 2023 that it had 'never been used once after being assented eight years ago.' We label it paused rather than open because treating it as an available route would mislead. Cabinet approved reform recommendations in May 2024 and, per October 2025 reporting, approved adding government bonds and a national development fund as qualifying options. Reports also indicate consideration of halving the threshold and banning applicants with foreign government ties. None of this is confirmed as enacted.
Samoa is the region's counterfactual. Its passport is worth 129 destinations and still carries EU visa-free access — 42 more destinations than Vanuatu's — for exactly one reason: it never sold citizenship at volume. Vanuatu monetised its waiver and lost it. If Samoa reforms and scales this programme, the Samoan passport's value would very likely fall the same way. Any family attracted by the current passport strength should understand that scaling the programme is what would destroy the thing they came for.
Qualifying routes
SAT 4,000,000 — roughly USD 1.4–1.5m depending on rate. NOTE: the amount is denominated in Samoan tala (SAT), not USD; the currency code here is a schema limitation and the figure should be read as SAT 4,000,000.
Cabinet-approved recommendation reported October 2025; not confirmed as enacted and no threshold published
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $4M
- Total landed cost
- Nominally SAT 4,000,000 (roughly USD 1.4–1.5m) under the 2015 Act. Because the programme has no meaningful application history, no reliable all-in cost exists.
- Physical presence
- not meaningfully established in practice
- Family
- not meaningfully established in practice
- Permanent residency
- not applicable — the Act contemplates citizenship
- Citizenship
- nominally direct under the Act; in practice untested
- Language test
- none published
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- qualifying investment under the Citizenship Investment Act 2015, including investment in a government development fund for national developmentrequirements beyond the Act's text are untested in practice
- It does not function. A decade of the Act producing effectively no approvals is not a backlog, it is an absence of a programme.
- The passport's strength is a direct consequence of the programme's disuse. Scale it and the EU's June 2025 visa suspension mechanism — which explicitly targets CBI without genuine ties — becomes a live threat. Vanuatu is the precedent and it is only 18 months old.
- The reform has been 'under review' since at least June 2023 with Cabinet approvals in May 2024 and reported again in October 2025, and is still not enacted. Treat announced timelines with scepticism.
- Anyone currently marketing a Samoan passport as purchasable is selling something they cannot deliver.
- The threshold is denominated in Samoan tala and reported in USD inconsistently across sources. Verify the tala figure against the Act itself.
- Reported proposals to bar applicants with foreign government ties would materially narrow eligibility if enacted.