Digital Nomad Visa Income Requirements (2026)

The 2026 thresholds, and where each number comes from

Thresholds verified 2026-07-29 against the sources listed at the foot of this page.

Three of these numbers reset every January

Most published nomad visa tables treat the income requirement as a fixed fact about a country. For Spain, Portugal and Croatia it is not. Each is expressed as a multiple of a national wage — the minimum wage in Spain and Portugal, the average net salary in Croatia — and each of those anchors is reset at the start of the year. When the anchor moves, the visa threshold moves with it on the same day, without any immigration rule changing and without any announcement that mentions visas at all.

Spain's SMI went to €1,221 a month for 2026, a 3.1% rise. The telework visa asks for 200% of it, so the requirement moved from €2,368 to €2,442. Portugal's minimum wage went from €870 to €920, a 5.7% rise, and the D8 route asks for four times it, so the requirement moved from €3,480 to €3,680. Croatia asks for 2.5 times the previous year's average net salary, which the Ministry of the Interior currently puts at €3,622.50 a month.

The practical consequence is a €200 a month gap on the Portuguese route between what many guides say and what a consulate will actually check. If you assembled your evidence against last year's figure and your income sits between the two, you are under the line and the table you trusted will not say so. This is the whole reason this page records the anchor and the decree next to each number rather than only the result.

Fixed thresholds behave differently

Estonia and the UAE set flat amounts — €4,500 and USD 3,500 — that do not track any index. They are stable between announcements, which makes them easier to plan against, but it also means they lose ground to inflation until somebody decides to change them, and then they move in one step rather than gradually.

Estonia's figure carries a complication worth knowing before you apply. The official e-Residency page describes €4,500 as a net monthly figure. A large share of the secondary material describes the same number as gross. Those are materially different requirements at that income level, and the Police and Border Guard Board — the body that actually decides — publishes the evidence rule, six months of income history showing size, regularity and sources, without publishing the number at all. We follow the official net wording here and flag the conflict rather than quietly picking one.

Georgia, and why a blank is an answer

Georgia appears in this tool with no threshold, which is not an omission. Citizens of a large number of countries can enter and remain without a visa, and no minimum income is attached to that stay. For many remote workers that makes it the least demanding option in this set by a wide margin.

A monthly figure of USD 2,000 is widely quoted for the "Remotely from Georgia" programme. We could not confirm it from any Georgian government source, so it is not in the table. Publishing an unverified number would make the tool look more complete and be less true.

Clearing the bar is not the same as keeping the money

Income thresholds and tax burdens are unrelated, and they often point in opposite directions. Portugal asks a lot of the routes with a test, and taxes new arrivals lightly for the first two years. The UAE asks for less and takes no income tax at all. Estonia's bar is high but its company regime defers tax until you distribute profit.

Whichever route you clear, the number that matters afterwards is what lands in your account. Run the same income through all five tax systems in our five-country net income comparison, and if an overseas client is paying you, the international payment fee calculator shows what the transfer itself costs before tax touches it.

Currency conversion in the calculator above uses the ECB reference rate from 2026-07-17. Consulates apply their own rate on the day they assess you, so treat a result within a few percent of a threshold as too close to call.