Citizenship & Residency Brief: Antigua's passport programme faces a November decision
Citizenship & Residency Brief: Antigua's passport programme faces a November decision
Antigua and Barbuda may soon close its passport-for-investment programme, and the decision lands within days. If you hold that passport, or were counting on buying one, the next few weeks change the value of acting early.
Was: the programme operating, with a harmonised minimum investment threshold of 200,000 dollars and short-stay Schengen access for its citizens. Now: Prime Minister Gaston Browne said on October 24 that Cabinet is leaning toward phasing it out, but no final decision has been made. Effective: the government must tell the European Commission by November 12, 2026 whether it will phase out the scheme by June 1, 2028, and the programme would keep operating during any transition.
The pressure comes from Brussels. Under the EU's revised visa suspension rules, running an investor citizenship scheme can itself justify suspending visa-free travel, and the Commission has asked for a phase-out by June 2028. Antigua's choice is therefore not just about passport revenue, it is about protecting Schengen access for all its citizens.
Portugal is the other side of the same coin, a route that stays open but gets longer. Was: most non-EU investors could apply for citizenship after five years of legal residence. Now: since May 19, 2026, most non-EU nationals need ten years, while EU nationals and citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries need seven. The golden visa residence route itself remains open, through fund and business routes from 250,000 euros, and applications already pending when the law took effect keep the old rules.
The window logic is plain. In Antigua, the decision date is November 12, so anyone considering the programme should confirm in writing what happens to pending and approved applications before that date, and should not assume a transition protects a new filing. In Portugal, the question is no longer whether the route exists, it is whether a ten-year horizon still fits the plan, and whether a pending application is safely grandfathered.
Information only, not financial or immigration advice.
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