Moving to Greece in 2026: visas, taxes and costs

The question that decides most of what follows is your passport, not your bank balance. Citizens of EU and EEA member states and of Switzerland need neither a visa nor a residence permit to move to Greece. You can stay three months without any formality. After that you are expected to register in person with the Hellenic Police, at the immigration department in Attica or Thessaloniki or the local police department elsewhere. The file is short: ID or passport, photographs, proof of address and proof of your employment or self-employment. The certificate costs a EUR 0.50 stamp and does not expire.

If you are not working, the EU test is the same in every member state: sufficient resources not to rely on social assistance, and comprehensive health insurance. It is a different test from the EUR 3,500 income figure below, which applies only to non-EU nationals. After five continuous years of legal residence you acquire permanent residence automatically.

Everyone else, including citizens of the UK, the US, Canada and Australia, is a third-country national and needs a permit to live in Greece. Where you start depends on the route. The golden visa timeline below runs from purchase to card, while FIP and digital nomad files start at a consulate abroad. Where a type D national visa is issued, it authorises a stay of more than 90 and up to 365 days, cannot be extended and does not replace the residence permit, which you apply for in Greece before the visa expires. The three routes below cover investment and independent income; employment has its own section.

The golden visa is the route everyone knows and the one that fits the fewest people who are genuinely relocating. It buys a five-year renewable permit for the investor and immediate family, renewable for as long as the investment is held, with no minimum stay attached. That last point cuts both ways: nothing obliges you to live in Greece, and the permit confers no right to work there. Employment and self-employment are both off the table under article 100 of Law 5038/2023. You may hold shares or sit on a board in a non-executive capacity, but you may not be the legal representative or an executive director, and the same restriction applies to family members on the permit.

The financially independent person permit, usually shortened to FIP, is the route most retirees and passive-income households actually use. Article 163 paragraph 8 of Law 5038/2023 asks for EUR 3,500 net per month from sources outside Greece, rising by 20 percent for a spouse and 15 percent for each child, or a comparable lump sum in a bank account. The permit runs three years and renews. In exchange you may not work or run a business in Greece at all. There is a documentation wrinkle worth knowing about: at least one decentralised administration page still publishes the old EUR 2,000 monthly figure from the repealed Law 4251/2014. The current code says EUR 3,500, and that is the number to plan against.

The digital nomad visa targets people whose income follows them. The test is the same EUR 3,500 net per month, but it has to come from an employer or clients outside Greece, and you may not work for a Greek employer while you hold it. Two things changed in early 2026: bank statements now have to cover six consecutive months instead of three, and Law 5275/2026 removed the option to apply once you are already in the country, so the file goes through a Greek consulate first. If you want the wider context on why property-linked routes are narrowing across the region while income-linked ones expand, we set the numbers out in the golden visa shift.

Article 92 of Law 5100/2024 did two things when it took effect on 1 September 2024. The visible one was the tiering of thresholds. The other was a letting restriction that changes the arithmetic of the whole investment: a property acquired under the EUR 400,000 or EUR 800,000 tier may be used as a home or let on a long-term contract, and may not be let short-term through Airbnb or any comparable platform. The sanction is a EUR 50,000 fine per property and revocation of the residence permit. It is not a fee you can price in and absorb.

Short-term letting is being squeezed independently of the golden visa rules, so this is not an isolated restriction. Registration in the national short-term stay registry for an AMA number is mandatory, new registrations are blocked in central Athens districts 1 to 3 through 31 December 2026 with Thessaloniki following from March 2026, and fines under the general regime start at EUR 20,000. National gross residential yields average about 4.4 percent, and that average is built mostly on long-term tenancies rather than nightly rates.

The practical consequence is that a Greek purchase should be modelled on own use or a long lease, with the entry costs paid from capital rather than from bookings. Buying costs run 5.5 to 8 percent thanks to a transfer tax of only 3.09 percent, which you can run through the buying costs calculator, and the recurring drag is ENFIA at roughly 0.1 to 0.35 percent of market value per year. The full purchase mechanics sit in the Greece country guide.

EU, EEA and Swiss citizens can take a job or start a business in Greece without any work authorisation. For non-EU nationals the picture is the mirror image of the routes above: the golden visa and the financially independent person permit allow no work at all, and the digital nomad visa allows no work for a Greek employer. A job is a route in its own right, and it does not start with you.

Employment permits run through an employer invitation. The employer applies through the migration ministry portal with a contract of at least six months for the standard dependent-employment permit (type E.4), shows it can pay the wage and pays EUR 200 per worker. Once the employment is approved, the worker collects a national visa at a Greek consulate, enters, and applies for the residence permit. Highly qualified employment has its own type (E.1), and seasonal work runs up to nine months in any twelve (E.5 and E.6). A job offer is a precondition for the visa, not something you look for after arriving.

The statutory minimum wage has been EUR 920 gross per month for salaried employees since 1 April 2026, and EUR 41.09 gross per day for manual workers.

Article 4 of the Income Tax Code makes you a Greek tax resident once you are present for more than 183 days in any twelve-month period, and the residence is backdated to the first day of that presence rather than starting at day 184. A permanent home or centre of vital interests in Greece triggers the same result on its own. From that point Greece taxes worldwide income, and non-residents are taxed only on Greek-sourced income.

The resident scale was cut for income earned from 1 January 2026. It now runs 9 percent on the first EUR 10,000, 20 percent to EUR 20,000, 26 percent to EUR 30,000, 34 percent to EUR 40,000, 39 percent to EUR 60,000 and 44 percent above that, with lower effective scales for households with children and for people under 30. The solidarity contribution column is gone. Rental income is taxed on its own progressive scale starting at 15 percent, and capital gains tax on private property sales remains suspended through the end of 2026, a suspension that has been renewed annually since 2015 and should not be assumed permanent.

The headline incentive is article 5C of Law 4172/2013: half of your employment or business income is exempt from income tax for up to seven consecutive tax years. You qualify if you were not a Greek tax resident in five of the six years before the move and you declare that you will stay at least two years from 1 January of the first year in the regime. The exemption also removes the deemed income normally imputed from keeping a home and a car. Read the scope carefully, because it is narrower than the marketing suggests: the income has to be earned in Greece, and the employment limb requires a Greek entity or the Greek permanent establishment of a foreign company. A remote employee of a foreign company with no Greek presence does not fit that description, whatever the brochures pair it with.

For pensioners there is a separate and simpler regime. Article 5B taxes all foreign-sourced income, pension and dividends and rent and gains alike, at a flat 7 percent for 15 consecutive years, on the same five-of-six-years non-residency condition. The catch is procedural: the tax is due in a single instalment by the last working day of July, and paying late or short forfeits the regime.

Public healthcare is delivered through EOPYY, the national health services organisation, and it is a contributory system rather than a residence-based one. The key that opens it is the AMKA, the social security number, which you obtain at a KEP citizens service centre in your municipality once you hold a valid residence permit. Without an AMKA you are a private patient everywhere in the public system.

The gap that catches people out is that an AMKA follows a contribution record, and the three permits above do not create one. Golden visa, FIP and digital nomad applications all require private health insurance as a condition of issue, and holding one of those permits does not by itself enrol you in EOPYY. Cover arrives when contributions do: an employer pays EFKA on your behalf if you are employed, and self-employed residents pay a chosen EFKA category, which starts at EUR 250.77 per month in category 1 for 2026 plus a EUR 10 unemployment contribution and rises to EUR 675.87 in category 6.

Documentation on what a resident with no Greek income can buy into is inconsistent, and rules have changed more than once in recent years. Assume private cover for at least the first years, budget for it as a fixed annual cost per person, and get advice specific to your permit category before dropping a policy you already hold. Public and private care coexist in practice in Greece, and even residents with full EOPYY cover commonly pay privately for faster access to specialists.

Eurostat puts the Greek price level for household consumption at 86 against an EU-27 average of 100, which makes Greece the cheapest of the four markets covered on this site, below Portugal at 87, Cyprus at 89 and Spain at 91. That is a genuine advantage on groceries, services, eating out and domestic help, and it is the reason a fixed foreign income stretches further here than almost anywhere else in the eurozone.

Housing is where the index understates what a newcomer pays. Apartment prices are up 62 percent in five years on the Bank of Greece index, and the average asking price in Athens is around EUR 3,200 per square metre, roughly EUR 2,650 across the islands and about EUR 1,200 in rural mainland areas. An arriving buyer or tenant pays today's price, not the average that long-settled residents locked in years ago, and the gap between Athens or the popular islands and the mainland interior is large enough to be the main lever on your budget.

Recurring ownership costs are modest by comparison. ENFIA runs EUR 2 to EUR 16.20 per square metre depending on the zone value, which works out at roughly 0.1 to 0.35 percent of market value per year, and there is no net wealth tax. Set against that, financing is the weak point: only a handful of banks run non-resident mortgage programmes, loan to value tops out around 60 to 65 percent, and rates sit near 4 to 5.5 percent. Plan as a cash buyer.

The order matters more than the individual steps, because several of them block each other. First comes the AFM, the Greek tax number, issued by the local tax office or arranged by a lawyer under power of attorney. Nothing else works without it: you cannot buy property, sign a lease, open a utilities contract or in practice open a bank account. Second is a Greek bank account, which the bank will only open against your AFM, passport and proof of income, and which you will need to document the source of funds for any purchase.

Third is the permit itself, for those who need one: EU, EEA and Swiss citizens register with the police after three months instead, and for everyone else this is where the timeline lives. The golden visa file has improved but has not cleared: pending applications stood at 33,051 at the end of May 2026, down 7.3 percent from 35,669 at the end of March, with family members accounting for roughly 72 percent of that total rather than 33,051 separate investors. Law 5275/2026 introduced automatic allocation of files to the migration offices with the smallest backlogs and a 90-day processing guarantee, and current practice runs about four to six months from purchase to card. FIP and digital nomad files start at a consulate abroad and typically take one to three months. Fees are separate from the investment: the Attica decentralised administration lists EUR 1,000 for the financially independent permit plus EUR 16 for the card.

Fourth is the AMKA, which requires a valid permit or, for EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, a police registration certificate, and only then does public healthcare access become a live question at all. Budget for translations, apostilles and certified copies at every stage, and for a lawyer to hold the file together, which is customarily 1 to 2 percent of the purchase price if property is involved. If you are still weighing where to land, the trade-off against the other live property route in the region is set out in Greece versus Cyprus.