Digital Nomad Visa Income Requirements (2026)

Most published comparisons of digital nomad visa income requirements share a hidden flaw: they treat each threshold as a fixed fact about a country. For nearly half of them it is not. The number is a multiple of a national wage, the wage is reset by decree each January, and the visa requirement moves with it on the same day — with no immigration announcement, and nothing to tell a reader that the table they are looking at expired weeks ago.

Here are the 2026 figures, with what each one is actually derived from.

The table

Country	Monthly income needed	How it is set	Resets annually?
Spain	€2,849	200% of the SMI, annualised (€1,221 × 14 ÷ 12 = €1,424.50)	Yes
Greece	€3,500 net	Flat amount	No
Croatia	€3,622.50	2.5× average net salary (€1,449)	Yes
Portugal	€3,680	4× the minimum wage (€920)	Yes
Estonia	€4,500 net	Flat amount	No
UAE (Dubai)	USD 3,500 (≈ €3,061)	Flat amount	No
Georgia	No income test	—	—

Spain is the cheapest route in this set and Estonia the most demanding, a spread of a little over €2,000 a month for what is broadly the same privilege: living somewhere while working for clients or an employer elsewhere.

Pegged, fixed, or neither

The distinction that matters for whether a table is trustworthy is not the size of the number but what it is attached to.

Pegged thresholds move on their own. Spain’s is 200% of the salario mínimo interprofesional. Portugal’s is four times the retribuição mínima mensal garantida. Croatia’s is 2.5 times the previous year’s average net salary as published by its statistics bureau. None of these is written into immigration law as a euro amount, so none of them requires an immigration decision to change.

Fixed thresholds — Greece, Estonia, the UAE — are stated as amounts and stay put until somebody decides otherwise. They are easier to plan against and quietly lose ground to inflation between revisions, then move in one step rather than gradually.

Georgia has neither, which is covered further down.

What moved on 1 January 2026

Spain’s minimum wage rose 3.1% to €1,221 a month under Real Decreto 126/2026, paid in 14 instalments. The telework route asks for double it, assessed on the annualised monthly value, so the requirement went from €2,763 to €2,849. You will also see €2,442 — that is the same 200% applied to the plain monthly figure, and some consulate pages publish it; the section below explains why both exist and which one to prepare for.

Portugal’s minimum wage rose 5.7%, from €870 to €920, set by Decreto-Lei n.º 139/2025. The D8 route asks for four times it, so the requirement went from €3,480 to €3,680.

Croatia’s is recalculated from the previous year’s average net salary and currently sits at €3,622.50, which the Ministry of the Interior publishes directly.

The Portuguese move is the one to watch, because €200 a month is a wide enough band for a real application to fall into. Someone earning €3,550, checking a table that still says €3,480, would reasonably conclude they qualify. They do not. Nothing about that table looks out of date — it was correct in December.

Family raises the bar unevenly

Why Spain appears as both €2,442 and €2,849

Both numbers come from official sources, which is why they coexist. The Spanish consulate in Washington publishes “200% of monthly IMS = 2.442€ per month”, doubling the €1,221 monthly SMI. The UGE — the Ministry of Inclusion unit that decides applications made from inside Spain — says only “cantidad que represente mensualmente el 200% del salario mínimo interprofesional” in its FAQ, and in practice assesses that on the SMI’s annualised monthly value: €1,221 × 14 payments ÷ 12 = €1,424.50, so €2,849. The same method produced the widely reported €2,762 for 2025.

Neither the law (art. 74 bis of Law 14/2013) nor the FAQ fixes a 12- or 14-payment rule, so the gap is a matter of practice, not text. It is €407 a month. Our checker and the table above use the higher figure: clearing €2,849 clears every desk, while an income between €2,442 and €2,849 can be refused at the UGE even though a consulate page says it qualifies. The family uplifts follow the same basis — €1,068.38 for the first dependant and €356.13 for each further one.

Headline figures are quoted for a single applicant. The uplift for dependants varies far more than the base numbers do, and it reorders the ranking.

Country	Single	Couple + one child	Increase
Spain	€2,849	€4,274	+50%
Croatia	€3,622.50	€3,912	+8%
Greece	€3,500	€4,725	+35%

Spain adds 75% of the minimum wage for the first family member and 25% for each additional one, which is proportionally the steepest jump here — though it starts from the lowest base and still lands below Croatia. Croatia adds 10% of the average net salary per person, which is almost nominal. Greece adds 20% for a spouse and 15% per child, turning the second-cheapest route in the table into the most expensive of the three for a family of three.

Portugal, Estonia and the UAE do not publish a formula for dependants in the sources above; Portugal’s consulate checklists set additional means case by case.

How long each route actually lasts

A threshold is an annual test in some places and a one-off hurdle in others, and the difference decides whether qualifying once is enough.

Country	Initial period	Extension
Croatia	Up to 18 months	Up to 6 more months, applied for at least 60 days before expiry
Greece	Visa up to 1 year	Residence permit up to 2 years, renewable
Estonia	Up to 1 year	—
UAE (Dubai)	1 year	Renewable on re-application

Croatia’s route is the longest single grant here but the most clearly terminal: 18 months plus at most six, and the application window closes two months before expiry rather than on the day. Greece is the opposite shape — a modest first year, then a residence permit that renews, which makes it the most viable of the four for someone who intends to stay.

The distinction matters for a pegged threshold in particular. If your route renews annually and the bar is tied to a wage that rises every January, you have to keep clearing a moving line, not just clear it once.

Gross, net, and one unresolved conflict

Thresholds are not stated on a common basis, which makes cross-country comparison less clean than a table implies. Greece specifies €3,500 “after taxes”. The UAE’s USD 3,500 is stated without qualification. Spain’s and Portugal’s derive from gross statutory wages.

Estonia carries an outright conflict worth knowing before you apply. The official e-Residency page describes its €4,500 as a net monthly figure. A large share of the secondary material describes the same number as gross — a materially different requirement at that income level. The Police and Border Guard Board, which actually decides applications, publishes the evidence rule (six months of income history showing size, regularity and sources) without publishing a number at all. We follow the official net wording and flag the disagreement rather than picking one silently.

Georgia, and why a blank is an answer

Georgia appears here with no threshold, and that is not a gap in our research. Citizens of a large number of countries may enter and remain without a visa, with no minimum income attached to the stay. For many remote workers it is by a wide margin the least demanding option in this set.

A figure of USD 2,000 a month circulates widely for the “Remotely from Georgia” programme. We could not confirm it from any Georgian government source, so it is not in the table. A blank that is true is worth more than a number that makes the table look finished.

What this does not cover

Income is one requirement among several, and the only one that can be settled with arithmetic — which is why it is the one tabulated here. Every route above also asks for some combination of health insurance, a clean criminal record, evidence that your work is genuinely for an entity outside the country, accommodation, and a passport with enough validity left.

Nor does clearing a bar tell you what you keep afterwards. The routes with the highest income requirements are not the ones with the highest tax, and in places they are the opposite: Estonia asks the most here while taxing nothing on profit a company retains, and the UAE asks less than most while levying no income tax at all. You can check your own figure against every threshold above with our Digital Nomad Visa Income Checker, and see what survives tax in each place with the five-country net income comparison.

Figures verified 29 July 2026 against the official sources listed below. The three pegged thresholds will change again next January, and this page records the anchor behind each one so the update is a single number rather than a rewrite.