The income bar that moves while you pack
Spain did not raise its income requirement this January. Neither did Portugal, Croatia or Czechia. The requirement is the same sentence it has always been - it is the statistic underneath it that moved, and nobody sends you a letter about that.
The thing the lists get wrong
Every “digital nomad visas 2026” list prints a column of dollar figures. For most countries that is honest enough. For fifteen of the live programmes in this dataset it is a snapshot of an arithmetic result, presented as though it were the law.
Those fifteen do not name a number anywhere in their rules. They name a multiple of a published statistic:
- Portugal - four times the remuneração mínima mensal garantida, the guaranteed minimum wage.
- Spain - 200% of the salario mínimo interprofesional, plus 75% for the first family member and 25% for each one after.
- Croatia - 2.5 times last year’s average monthly net salary, per the national statistics bureau.
- Czechia - 1.5 times the average gross monthly salary the labour ministry announces, on a year that starts in May rather than January.
- Latvia - 2.5 times the previous year’s average gross salary.
- Slovenia - twice the average monthly net salary, from the latest figure the statistical office publishes.
- Italy - three times the income level for healthcare co-payment exemption.
- Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador - three, three and four times the statutory minimum wage.
- Bulgaria - fifty minimum monthly wages, taken as an annual income.
- Moldova - three times the forecast average wage, set by government decision each year.
- Romania - three times the average gross salary, for each of the six months before you apply.
- Andorra - 300% of the Andorran minimum wage, which last moved in July.
- South Korea - one to two times GNI per capita, banded by your age and whether you will live in the capital region.
Fifteen of seventy-nine. Every figure on this site for those countries is a derived number with a date on it, which is why the country pages carry the formula and not just the answer.
Why it matters more than an announcement would
A government that raises a visa threshold publishes something. A government that raises its minimum wage publishes something too - but it is a labour story, it runs in January, and it is not filed under immigration anywhere. The visa requirement changes silently, as a side effect, and the first person to find out is whoever applied at last year’s number.
Portugal’s threshold moved this January because the RMMG did. Spain’s moved because the SMI did. Neither immigration ministry announced a visa change, because from where they sit there was not one: the rule is the same rule.
So the failure mode is specific and it is expensive. You read a figure in March, you spend six weeks assembling contracts, bank statements and an apostilled birth certificate, and you file against a bar that rose before you started reading.
Three ways this bites that a single number hides
The year does not start in January. Czechia’s average-salary figure runs 1 May to 30 April, so its bar steps in spring. Andorra’s minimum wage moved on 1 July. A list refreshed every January is wrong about both for months at a stretch.
Last year’s statistic is often the live one. Bulgaria’s fifty wages are fifty of last calendar year’s minimum wage, so applying in 2026 you are measured against the 2025 figure. Croatia and Latvia work the same way. That cuts both directions - it means the number is knowable in advance, and it means the obvious current figure is the wrong one.
Two arms of the same government can quote different numbers. Spain’s SMI is announced as an annual amount paid in fourteen instalments, and whether you divide by twelve or by fourteen changes the monthly threshold by a few hundred euros. The Unidad de Grandes Empresas and the consulates have been quoting the two different results. That is why Spain’s row is graded medium where Portugal’s is high: it is not that Spain’s programme is worse documented, it is that the documentation disagrees with itself.
What to do about it
Read the formula, not the figure. Every country page here shows the rule the number came from and the date somebody last checked it - Portugal, Croatia, Czechia, Colombia - and the comparison tool converts whatever that works out to into your own currency.
Then find the statistic yourself, from the body that publishes it, and do the multiplication. It is one sum, it takes a minute, and it is the only version of the answer that is true on the day you file rather than on the day someone wrote a listicle.
And if you are close to the line, assume the line is higher than you read. On these fifteen it usually is.
Everything above is checked against the programme rules and carries a confidence grade on the country page it came from. Found one that has moved? Tell us.
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