Guides & Research
Guides that follow one decision to the end, and research on what has changed in the rules of the five jurisdictions this site covers. Every entry lists the sections of our sources page its figures were checked against, and carries the date it was written — because a threshold that was right in August may not be in March, and an article that does not say when it was written is asking to be believed on trust.
Malta's attraction for British residents is usually described in one sentence: foreign income is taxed only if you bring it in. That sentence is about Maltese law, and Maltese law is only half the arrangement. The other half is article 23 of the UK-Malta convention of 1994, which limits the relief the United Kingdom gives to the part of the income Malta actually taxes. This page quotes both, with the dates each was read.
Jurisdictions mt
Every guide to this move answers the Brexit question and stops. The instrument that decides a British person's tax position in Greece is older than that by two generations: a convention signed on 25 June 1953, in force since January 1954, with no protocol since. It has no tie-breaker for dual residence and no article on dividends at all. This page sets out what it does say, with the dates each document was read.
Jurisdictions gr
Search demand for moving to Dubai from Britain fell by four fifths between February and April 2026 and has not recovered. This page records what happened, quotes what the British government's travel advice says today and when it last changed, and does not tell you whether to go. That last part is deliberate: nobody writing a relocation page is in a position to make that call for you, and several are making it anyway by saying nothing.
Jurisdictions ae
Two tests decide a British citizen's tax position after this move, and neither is administered in Dubai. The first is the UK statutory residence test, which decides whether you have left the UK tax net at all. The second is article 4 of the UK-UAE convention of 2016, whose tie-breaker looks at a home available to you in Britain before it ever looks at your passport. This page sets out both, with the dates each instrument was read.
Jurisdictions ae
Search this and you get the Brexit answer: freedom of movement ended, you need a visa now. True, and five years old. The instrument that actually decides a Briton's tax position in Portugal was replaced at the end of 2025 — a convention signed in 1968 gave way to one signed in September 2025, which reached UK income tax on 6 April 2026. The tax advisers' page on the first screen was written before it was signed.
Jurisdictions pt
Most pages for Americans have caught up with the ten-year citizenship period. Almost none of them says when the ten years begin, and since 19 May 2026 that answer has changed for everyone whose file was not already open. The second thing nobody expects: the sentence letting the United States keep taxing you is not in Article 1 of the tax convention. Article 1 is one sentence long and does not contain it.
Jurisdictions pt
The first page of results for this question is Reddit three times, three YouTube videos, a Facebook group and a shipping company. Between them they will tell you what the light is like on Crete. None of them mentions the two instruments that actually govern an American's position in Greece: a tax convention signed in 1950 that has never been rewritten, and a social security agreement that decides which country you pay into.
Jurisdictions gr
Search for how long naturalisation takes in Greece and every page says seven years. The Code says three, seven or twelve, and which one applies to you turns on two things: your nationality, and whether your residence title appears on a closed list in article 5(1)(ε). The investor permit is on that list. Many others are not, and that is a five-year difference nobody is telling you about.
Jurisdictions gr
Ask what it costs to live in Malta and the first page of results will give you figures between 782 and 2,205 euros a month for the same single person, none of them sourced. Malta happens to have something most countries do not: a register of every private residential lease actually signed since 2020. This page uses it, says what it does not cover, and names the one official statistic that is ten years old.
Jurisdictions mt
Portugal has two digital nomad visas. They share a name, a nickname and an income threshold, and they lead to entirely different places: one is a stay of under a year, the other is a residence visa that ends in a permit. The market prints one euro figure and lets readers guess which visa it belongs to. Underneath that, the regulation that governs the second one still routes anybody already in Portugal through paragraphs of the law that were repealed in June 2024.
Jurisdictions pt
Search for Portuguese citizenship and the first page of results will tell you five years and ten years at the same time, and almost none of it names the law that changed. Lei Organica 1/2026 did two things on 19 May 2026, in two different articles, and the second one is missing from the English-language market entirely: it repealed the paragraph under which time spent waiting for a residence permit counted towards naturalisation.
Jurisdictions pt
Sixteen months after the Court of Justice ruled against it, the market still calls Malta's citizenship scheme suspended. It was not suspended. Its own regulations were amended: Part IV was deleted, together with the Second and Third Schedules, and the instrument was retitled. What replaced it grants citizenship on the basis of merit and publishes no price for it. Every step below carries the act, the gazette number and the date.
Jurisdictions mt
Almost every page answering this question prints a monthly budget and names no source for it. The first result at the time of writing is one couple's household costs, with no statistic behind it at all. Portugal's statistical office publishes median rent per square metre by municipality, from signed contracts rather than advertisements, and median purchase prices by region. Those are the figures below, each with the release it came from and the date it was read.
Jurisdictions pt
The Portuguese golden visa still exists, and almost nothing about it works the way the guides describe. Property was repealed in 2023 and no tier of any amount survived. The income requirement everyone says is waived is not waived, and the article that would have waived it names one exception only. Since 19 May 2026 the route ends at ten years of residence rather than five. Every figure below is quoted from the instrument that sets it, with the date the text was read.
Jurisdictions pt
Search interest in the Greek golden visa process has risen more sharply than in any other query on this subject, and the reason is a real one: a law passed in February 2026 rebuilt the country's admission routes. What the market then wrote about that law is wrong in a specific and correctable way. The 250,000 euro startup golden visa is not invented — it is fourteen months older than the law it is credited to. And the provision the February law actually added is an employment visa that ends the day the job does.
Jurisdictions gr
Malta does not issue a TRC card. The document is the eResidence card, Identità issues it, and the part nobody writes down is what happens between applying and holding it: eight to ten weeks, during which the receipt in your hand is expressly not a travel document and cannot get you back into the country. The renewal window is narrower than most people assume, the fee depends entirely on the basis you applied under, and the portal withdraws applications on its own after sixty days.
Jurisdictions mt
Malta's nomad permit is the cheapest way into the country and the only Maltese route that counts your days rather than your money. It also ends. Four years is the maximum, the agency states in terms that it leads to no permanent residence and no citizenship, and it forbids you from earning anything at all from a company registered in Malta. Every one of those is published, and almost none of it appears in the pages selling the permit.
Jurisdictions mt
Golden passport is a phrase with no legal referent anywhere in these four jurisdictions. What each of them actually offers is a residence permit and a clock, and the clocks do not count what most people think they count. Three separate periods get collapsed into one in almost every comparison table: the permit's own renewal conditions, the presence test for long-term residence, and the naturalisation period. They are different lengths, they count different things, and only one of them ends in a passport.
Jurisdictions gr · mt · pt · ae
Every golden visa guide answers the same question, which is how much. Almost none answers the one that decides whether your file moves: who is allowed to submit it, whether the money has to be in place before you apply or after, and what an administration does with a file when something is missing. Those answers are published — in national procedure registries, agency FAQs and legal notices — and they differ enough between jurisdictions that a process described in general is a process described wrongly.
Jurisdictions pt · gr · mt · ae
Almost everything written about Portuguese residency stops at the moment the permit is granted. What follows is five years of renewals, a plastic card that expires on a different schedule from the permit behind it, and a permanent status that most pages confuse with a different one created by EU law. This page is about that part, and every rule in it is quoted from the statute that sets it.
Jurisdictions pt
Every guide to living in Greece prints the same confident numbers and none of them says where the numbers came from. This one gives the source for each: the state's own household survey, the ministerial decision that sets the minimum wage, the circular that sets social contributions, and two rent datasets that measure different things — what landlords ask, and what tenants signed.
Jurisdictions gr
Malta sells three different things under one word. The permanent residence programme costs about €126,000 above the price of a property and publishes no rule about how long you must be on the island. The nomad permit costs a fraction of that and will not renew unless your bank statements prove five months a year. The expensive route asks for your money and nothing else; the cheap one asks for your time. That is the opposite of how both are sold.
Jurisdictions mt
Two Dubai rules changed in 2026 and thousands of people are applying under them. Neither has been published as an instrument — the report every other page relies on says so in terms, and we walked the registers to check. Meanwhile pages updated in July and August are still selling a threshold that was repealed in April. Every figure below carries the article that sets it, or a statement that none does.
Jurisdictions ae
Greece asks €800,000 in Attica and €400,000 elsewhere, and the two €250,000 exceptions carry no minimum floor area at all. It asks a person living on their own income to prove €3,500 a month under a ministerial decision no competitor page cites. And whether either route ever reaches permanent residence turns on something almost nobody writes down: not which permit you hold, but how many days you spend in the country.
Jurisdictions gr
Portugal asks a D7 applicant to prove €920 a month — the national minimum wage, indexed to it and not to the IAS. It asks a golden visa investor to prove the same, which almost no page about the golden visa mentions. And since 19 May 2026 it asks for ten years of residence before citizenship, not five. Every figure below is quoted from the instrument that sets it, with the date the text was read.
Jurisdictions pt
The routes that cost the most money test income the least. Greece, Malta and the UAE ask investors to prove nothing about their income; Portugal is the one exception and almost nobody writing about it says so. Every threshold below is quoted from the instrument that sets it, and the cost-of-living half explains why one comparison table would be a lie.
Jurisdictions pt · gr · mt · ae · cy
Buying property gets you residency in far fewer places than the advertising suggests. Portugal removed property from its qualifying routes in 2023, Greece raised the threshold to €800,000 across half the country, and on Malta the property is one of five payments rather than the route itself. Five jurisdictions read against the statute: thresholds, the full cost on top of the threshold, real processing times, and the restrictions that get a permit revoked.
Jurisdictions pt · gr · mt · ae · cy
Two kinds of thing. Guides that work one decision through end to end — what a route actually costs once the government fees, the lawyer and the purchase taxes are counted, rather than what the advertised threshold says. And research: what changed in a statute, when it changed, and which of the figures elsewhere on this site moved with it.
Each one carries a line under its opening paragraph listing the sections of our sources page its figures were checked against. That line is not decoration. A threshold quoted without a statute number is indistinguishable from a threshold somebody remembered wrong, and the difference tends to surface only after it has cost someone money.
Because the answer expires. Greece redrew its property thresholds by zone; Portugal removed property as a qualifying route altogether. An undated article about either is worse than no article, because it reads as current and is not. Where an entry has been revised, the date of the revision is shown beside the date it was written.
No aggregated news. No pieces written to occupy a search term. Nothing at all until there is something worth saying — and if that keeps the list short, the list stays short.