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Greece cut its Golden Visa queue by 7% in two months
Greece’s Golden Visa grants renewable residence permits to qualifying non-EU investors and eligible family members, most commonly through property investment. At the end of May 2026, the country still had 33,051 related applications awaiting a decision, Movingto reports. That was 2,618 fewer than the 35,669 pending at the end of March, a 7.3% reduction in two months.
Movingto
The queue fell across investor and family files
The Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum’s May 2026 legal-migration report counted 9,210 pending permanent-investor files and 23,841 pending family-member files. Both categories declined from March, when the ministry listed 10,032 investor files and 25,637 family files.
The investor inventory fell by 822 files, or 8.2%. The family inventory fell by 1,796, or 7%. Family applications still represented about 72% of the total queue, so the 33,051 headline does not mean that 33,051 principal investors were waiting.
Most of the May inventory was recent. Files submitted in 2024 and 2025 accounted for 22,284 pending applications, roughly two-thirds of the total. Another 8,845 were submitted during the first five months of 2026. The ministry still listed 1,922 pending files from 2022 and 2023.
Authorities issued nearly 3,000 investor decisions
The same May report contains a revised series for decisions issued by month. Greece recorded 1,446 permanent-investor decisions in March, including 1,239 initial permits and 207 renewals. Authorities issued another 882 decisions in April and 659 in May.
That produces 2,987 investor decisions across the three months. The March figure is substantially higher than the 914 decisions shown in the ministry’s earlier March release, illustrating how its rolling administrative tables can be revised as files are updated.
The decision series does not account for the entire 2,618-file decline in the headline queue. The pending total includes family-member files, while the decision table cited here covers permanent investors. New applications, withdrawals, reissues, renewals, and later data corrections can also change the stock.
New application volume remains below its 2024 peak
Movingto
The ministry’s latest rolling totals show 9,382 initial permanent-investor applications filed in 2024 and 7,025 in 2025. That is a 25.1% annual decline. The May report lists 2,137 initial applications submitted during the first five months of 2026.
Of those 2026 applications, 250 had been issued, two rejected, and 1,885 remained pending at the end of May. These categories describe the status of files submitted in 2026, rather than all decisions made during the year. Many 2026 decisions relate to applications filed earlier.
Greece raised the standard property minimum to 800,000 euros in Attica, the Thessaloniki Regional Unit, Mykonos, Santorini, and islands with more than 3,100 residents. The ordinary minimum is 400,000 euros elsewhere. A 250,000-euro route remains for specified property conversions and listed-building restorations that satisfy additional conditions.
A Bank of Greece research paper on an earlier threshold increase found that qualifying transaction activity shifted geographically toward places that retained the lower minimum. The study shows that thresholds can influence where investment clusters. It does not isolate the reason for the current decline in applications, which may also reflect timing, property prices, financing conditions, exchange rates, and buyer preferences.
A shrinking queue is still a large queue
The May update changes the direction of the story. The pending inventory is no longer simply large; it is measurably lower than it was two months earlier. The reduction was broad enough to appear in both investor and family-member categories.
It is too early to infer a standard processing time from that movement. The ministry publishes an aggregate stock and monthly decision counts, not a cohort measure that follows the same applications from filing to decision. Applicants also enter the queue with different filing years, locations, case types, and family structures.
For prospective investors, the practical distinction is between demand and administration. Lower application volume can ease future pressure if it persists. It does not make the remaining 33,051 files disappear, and it does not establish when a newly filed case will be decided.
This story was produced by Movingto and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
