Golden visa interest is up sevenfold. The index saying so counts searches, not applicants.

On 18 September 2026, Spear’s reported figures from the Golden Visa Index, a measure of investor-migration demand published earlier this month by the UK migration consultancy La Vida. Setting 2016 at 100, the index puts 2025 at 728.5. Interest in residency and citizenship by investment has risen more than sevenfold in nine years, on that reading.

What the index actually counts

It counts searches. La Vida told Spear’s it built the index from advertiser data supplied by Google: the number of impressions its own investor-migration material received, and the proportion that represented of all impressions on the topic. Dividing one by the other yields Google’s estimate of total search volume across the terms investors use.

So the figure describes how many people looked, not how many applied, qualified or moved. It is also derived from the advertising footprint of a firm that sells the product being measured. Neither point makes it worthless. Both matter, because a number like this travels as a headline about wealth migration, and it is a demand proxy from an interested party rather than a count of anything. The Henley migration report revised its own method this year after the same distinction was pressed on it.

Paul Williams, La Vida’s chief executive, put part of the rise down to US clients after the 2024 presidential election, telling Spear’s that traffic to the firm’s website rose 23-fold the following day, largely from Democrat-leaning states. Portugal remains the most popular destination for US and UK enquirers, he said, on a €500,000 investment route with no minimum stay requirement. Henley & Partners counts more than 100 countries operating some version of an investment migration scheme.

Supply has been moving the other way

Routes have been closing while the demand line climbs. Spain ended its investor residence scheme on 3 April 2025, the government citing pressure on housing; around 16,000 visas had been granted since 2013. On 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Malta’s citizenship-by-investment programme unlawful, holding that it amounted to commercialising EU citizenship. Malta’s government has put the scheme’s receipts over its decade in operation at €1.4 billion.

Williams called the schemes “political footballs”. He expects Argentina to announce a citizenship-by-investment programme later this year, and says Panama is enhancing a $300,000 property-based residency route.

Whether any of it repays the host country is contested. Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, writing for Henley & Partners earlier this year, said that “policymakers have often found the results disappointing”, and that investor activity in large economies is small set against the size of those economies.

What it means for family offices

The planning question is a route’s shelf life, not its headline price. Spain and Malta both shut while families were mid-process, and neither closure turned on anything an applicant had done. A residency plan resting on one programme staying open is exposed to a domestic political cycle the family has no read on and no standing in.

That points to sequencing. Secure the status that is hardest to obtain while it exists, keep a second jurisdiction viable, and treat the tax and succession consequences of a move as the main analysis rather than the visa mechanics, which is the continuous discipline residency planning has become. It also points to reading the demand figures for what they are. High search volume tells an adviser that enquiry levels are up, which the inbox already says. It carries nothing about how many of those enquiries survive contact with a real balance sheet, a real tax position, or a family that has not agreed where it wants to live.

Sources: Spear’s; Euronews; idealista.