Slovenia · Business & founder
Temporary Residence for Company Founders and Self-Employed Persons
Open. This is Slovenia's de facto investor route and its only one — there is no golden visa.
The EUR 7,500 share capital figure is widely and misleadingly marketed as 'the investment threshold' for a Slovenian golden visa. It is nothing of the kind — it is the statutory minimum to incorporate a d.o.o. The real gates are six months of demonstrated operation, a real employee, and, per advisory consensus, EUR 50k of fixed assets.
Qualifying routes
EUR 7,500 minimum share capital is a company-law formality, not the real threshold. The company must prove six months of real operation via either employment of an EU/Slovenian citizen full-time for 6 months, or turnover of EUR 10,000/month for 6 months, and must have at least one EU/Slovenian employee.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €7.5k
- Total landed cost
- The EUR 7,500 share capital is trivial; the real economics are the six-month activity test, at least one EU/Slovenian employee on payroll, and a commonly-cited EUR 50,000 in fixed assets — which we could not confirm on a primary source
- Timeline
- 6–12 months — The six-month company activity test must be satisfied before the permit, so the clock starts well before the application
- Physical presence
- Genuine operation of the business
- Family
- spouseminor childrenvia family reunification
- Permanent residency
- 5 years of continuous legal residence, with renewals contingent on continued active operation
- Citizenship
- 10 years total residence including 5 continuous years immediately preceding, with a Slovene language exam and renunciation of prior citizenship
- Language test
- Compulsory Slovene language examination before a government-appointed commission
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- EUR 7,500 share capital depositedsix months of demonstrated company operation (employment or EUR 10,000/month turnover)at least one EU-member-state or Slovenian citizen employeeclean criminal record
- The EUR 7,500 figure is a company-law formality that marketing sites present as an investment threshold. Treat any advisor quoting it as the entry price as unreliable.
- The six-month activity test means you must fund and run the company before the permit exists — the sequencing risk sits entirely with you.
- Self-employment (s.p.) specifically requires that you already hold a valid residence permit for at least a year before commencing self-employed activity, unless entered in the business register as pursuing a professional activity in a self-employed capacity. This catches people who plan to arrive and immediately freelance.
- The EUR 50,000 fixed-asset requirement appears consistently across advisory sources but we could not confirm it on a primary gov.si or ZTuj-2 source. Verify before budgeting.
- Citizenship at the end requires renouncing your existing passport and passing a Slovene language exam — a hard stop for most UHNW families.
- Slovenia's 50% top rate means success in the business is taxed at the highest rate in this region.