Spain's telework visa: Washington now goes through BLS
Spain's digital nomad visa is open. What changed at the Washington consulate is where you hand the file in: since 1 September 2026 it goes to an outsourced BLS centre, in person, by appointment. The rules for who qualifies did not move.
What the consulate published
The Consular Section of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. keeps one page for this, its Telework (Digital nomad) Visa page on the foreign ministry’s site. The page carries no “last updated” date. The one change with a date on it is in the procedure section:
- Place of submission: “From September 1, 2026: The application must be submitted in person by appointment only to the BLS Spain Visa Application Center for Spain in Washington DC”, at 1660 L Street NW, Suite 216. Bookings are made on BLS’s own site.
- Who may hand it in: the applicant in person, a parent for a minor, or “a duly accredited representative”.
- What happens next: BLS passes accepted files to the Consular Section on the next working day. The 10-day legal decision period runs from that forwarding date, not from your appointment, and it stretches if the consulate asks for more documents or an interview.
BLS is a private contractor. It is not the consulate and it decides nothing. The page also says that only complete applications are admitted. Book the appointment once your file is complete.
Who this consulate will take
Washington accepts applications only from legal residents of its district: Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, or people enrolled in in-person study there. A driver’s licence, state ID or university student ID proves it. If you are not a US citizen you also need a long-term US visa or a green card, and the page is blunt about one group: “B1/B2 visa holders do not qualify to apply for a visa at this Consular Office.” They are sent to their country of residence or origin.
The income figure, as the page gives it
The consulate gives the figure as a formula tied to Spain’s minimum wage (SMI), which it gives as €1,221 for 2026:
- Applying alone: 200% of the monthly SMI, €2,442 a month. The page writes “approx. $ 2900”. That is the consulate’s own conversion, not a separate dollar threshold.
- First family member: add 75%, €916.
- Each further family member: add 25%, €306.
Our Spain page shows a higher figure, €2,849. It is the same 200%, worked out on the SMI’s annual total the way the in-Spain authority does it. The consulates’ €2,442 divides by fourteen monthly payments rather than twelve. We record both and grade the row medium because the two official readings disagree. This page does not settle it. It confirms the consular number.
What else the file needs
The consulate’s own list runs to eighteen items. The ones that trip people up:
- An N.I.E. first. The page opens by saying you need a foreigner identity number before you apply.
- The company has to be at least a year old, shown by a state Division of Corporations certificate, apostilled and translated into Spanish.
- Three months with the employer or client already, and a relationship that will continue for at least a year from Spain. Employees also need written permission to work remotely from Spain.
- An FBI check issued within six months, apostilled on the FBI’s own signature, not a notary’s, and translated by a sworn translator. State and local police checks are refused.
- Health insurance with no co-payments and no cover limit, from an insurer authorised in Spain. Travel insurance is not accepted.
- A degree, or three years’ professional experience in similar work.
The fee is paid in cash or by money order and is set by your nationality: USD 106 for most, USD 190 for US citizens, USD 963 for British, USD 1,566 for Canadian and USD 3,020 for Australian citizens, per the table dated 1 January 2026. The page says fees are revised quarterly.
Open, and two routes
This is a live visa. Nothing here is an announcement. The page itself points to the second route: if you are already legally in Spain, including visa-free on a US passport inside your 90 days, you can skip the consulate and apply for the residence permit directly to the UGE-CE, the Ministry of Inclusion’s Large Companies unit. That permit runs up to three years. The visa is capped at one year, and extending past it means applying to that same unit two months before the visa expires.
So for most Americans the practical question is not the BLS appointment. It is whether to get the one-year visa from Washington at all, or to fly in and file for three years from inside Spain. The Spain page lists that route’s portals.
If another Spanish consulate in the US moves to BLS, or the SMI figure changes, tell us.
The row behind this
Every figure this post relies on lives on a country page with its source and its confidence grade beside it. That is where it gets corrected, and where it stays current after the post stops being news.
- Spain — Digital Nomad Visa (Teletrabajadores)
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