Latvia's residence-by-investment rules have been running under a new statute for nine days. The Immigration Law adopted by the Saeima on 20 August 2026 and published in the official gazette Latvijas Vēstnesis No. 167 on 1 September entered into force on 15 September 2026, and it did what a run of European programmes have done: it took property out.
The old law, in force since 2002, ceased to exist on the same day. What replaced it is narrower. Article 27(1) of the new law lists 36 separate grounds on which a foreigner may claim a temporary residence permit — family ties, employment, study, postings, asylum status, sport, research — and exactly two of them involve capital rather than circumstance. Neither is a flat.
What the law actually says
Read the two surviving investment grounds side by side and the shape of the reform shows up in the third column, not the first. The capital figure is the smallest number in each row.
| Route | Capital in | To the state budget | What keeps the permit valid | Permit runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company share capital, smaller company | €50,000 | €10,000 at first application | Company pays at least €40,000 a year in state and municipal taxes | up to 2 years |
| Company share capital, larger company | €100,000 | €10,000 at first application | Company pays at least €100,000 a year in state and municipal taxes | up to 2 years |
| State alternative investment fund | €150,000, held at least 5 years | €10,000 | The fund manager certifies the investment contract is not terminated and the balance never falls below €150,000 | up to 5 years |
The tiers are defined by size. The €50,000 company route requires an employer of no more than 50 people with annual turnover or a balance sheet total of no more than €10 million. The €100,000 tier requires more than 50 employees — counting Latvian-registered subsidiaries in the headcount — and turnover or balance sheet above €10 million. A single company can carry no more than ten foreigners under the smaller route, and tax paid by Latvian-registered subsidiaries counts toward the €100,000 floor.
There is no property ground and no bank-deposit ground anywhere in the 36. Neither appears in the article, and the law that contained them is gone.
The €50,000 headline and the €140,000 arithmetic
The desk's own arithmetic, from the law's own figures, makes the point the brochure does not.
Take the smaller company route and run the permit its full two years. The applicant puts in €50,000 of capital and €10,000 into the state budget at first application. Over those two reporting years the company must pay at least €40,000 a year in state and municipal taxes, or the permit stops being valid. Commit the full amount and the total exposure is €140,000 — €70,000 for each year of residence the permit actually buys.
Now take the fund route, the most expensive line in the table at €150,000 plus €10,000. Its permit runs up to five years. €160,000 over five years is €32,000 a year. On that measure the €150,000 route is less than half the annual cost of the €50,000 one.
One caveat, because it is the sort of comparison that flatters by rounding. The tax floor is not a fee. It is tax the company owes on its own activity, and a trading company might pay it anyway. But it is a condition of the permit staying valid, and it is why the €50,000 entry point and a €140,000 commitment are the same route described twice.
The route the state has not switched on
The third row of that table is written to depend on something that may not exist. Point 36 grants a permit of up to five years where an applicant has contracted and transferred at least €150,000 into a state-established alternative investment fund manager, held for not less than five years. The law specifies the manager's provenance — the state establishes it — and nothing in the text records that it has been established, named or capitalised.
Get Golden Visa, the Lisbon-based advisory that reported the change on 18 September 2026, says Latvia's Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs has confirmed the required state fund has not been created, so the route cannot be used in practice yet. IMI Daily reported on 17 September that the explanatory note attached to a bill to delete the route argues there would be no budget loss from deletion, because no payments under it have reached the state budget.
Read strictly, then: there are two investment routes in force on paper, and the one with the better arithmetic is not yet a product anyone can buy.
Who can use any of it, and who cannot
Two further clauses in the same article narrow the field. Under Article 27(7) and (8), citizens of Belarus and of the Russian Federation have no right to apply under point 10 or point 36 — the two investment grounds — among other exclusions. And Article 28 gives the Cabinet a standing power to suspend the issuance of permits under those two points for up to five years, having assessed the effect on national security or on Latvia's economic development in light of the number and concentration of foreigners in a given part of the country. The Cabinet decides which third-country nationals and for how long. No suspension has been published that this desk could read; the power simply sits there.
If your file was already in
The transitional provisions are the part most applicants will need first. Documents for a visa or a temporary residence permit submitted before 15 September 2026 are examined and issued under the 2002 Immigration Law — the repealed one. Permits issued before that date remain valid until their registration or validity period expires, and a holder who wants to stay on files for a repeat permit under Article 41 of the new law.
The date does the work. A file submitted on 12 September is a 2002-law file; one submitted on 16 September is a 2026-law file, and the two are not the same instrument.
The bill that would end the fund route
The €150,000 point is already under attack. IMI Daily reported on 17 September 2026 that five lawmakers from the Progressives filed bill 1521/Lp14 on 3 September to strike Article 27(1)(36) outright, with faction chair Andris Šuvajevs heading the signatories. The Saeima sent it to the Defence, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention Committee on 10 September, where its chair is Raimonds Bergmanis of the United List. The bill carries no transitional provisions, so on its face it says nothing about applications filed before it would take effect — and it leaves the company route untouched. Latvia would be down to one investment pathway.
That is a bill in committee, not a change in force. It is worth naming because it is the live risk to the route the new law just created, and because it is moving in parallel with an election.
What this means for a Hong Kong family
For the audience this desk writes for — families whose members, money and paperwork sit in three different jurisdictions — Latvia's reform removes the two things that made it administratively simple. A flat is a known asset a Hong Kong family can buy, hold and rent out, and it needs no operating company. A deposit is simpler still. Both were the reason Latvia sat near the cheap end of European residency-by-investment, and both closed on 15 September.
What is left asks for a different posture. The company route makes residence contingent on a trading business's tax performance, which means an operating company, a Latvian accountant, and a permit that can lapse in a year when the business does not clear €40,000 in tax. The fund route wants €150,000 locked for five years in a vehicle the state has yet to create. For a family that treats a second residence as a base rather than a business, neither is a like-for-like replacement for what was withdrawn — and anyone holding a pre-15-September file should not withdraw it.
What to watch
3 October 2026 is the date to circle: Latvia's 15th Saeima elections, confirmed by the Central Election Commission, with advance voting inside Latvia from 28 September. The composition of the next Saeima decides whether bill 1521/Lp14 advances or dies in committee, and whether the fund route survives long enough to be switched on at all. Beyond that, watch the Cabinet: Art. 28's suspension power is exercised by regulation, and the point 36 manager has to be established by someone before the €150,000 line means anything.
For the parallel case — a rule change announced loudly whose instruments have not caught up with it — see Australia's September 2026 student and working-holiday visa changes, where the announcement ran three weeks ahead of anything on the register.
