An appointment at the agency takes three to six months: free slots are taken within seconds, and a resale market has grown up around them. Access to entry scores 91.
between leaguesThe state is recruiting: residence and work applications rose by almost half after the reform, there is a shortage occupations list, and in 2026 an extraordinary regularisation covers about half a million people. There are no mandatory integration courses, a spouse may work without a separate permit, and children aged 6-16 go to state school whatever their status.
The real pain is queues, not refusals. The agency decides on time, but fingerprint appointments in big cities vanish in seconds, people wait 3-6 months for one, and a resale market for slots has grown around them. Even with a yes, you may live half a year without a residence card. Registering your address (empadronamiento) in Madrid and Barcelona works the same way.
Since 2026 the state checks remote-work permits after they are issued. A dedicated unit reviews them, including those approved by administrative silence, and ends them if the holder is not registered with social security; a parallel tax campaign brings fines of 50-150%. The law itself did not change, and the property golden visa was abolished in April 2025 with existing visas kept.
If you lose your job or clients there is no grace period: you must notify the agency within 30 days, and the permit may then be ended. On the other hand, a renewal filed in advance keeps the permit valid until the decision, which comes within 20 days with tacit approval.
Opening a bank account as a non-resident takes effort: you need an NIE and an in-person visit, and expat communities report refusals for some nationalities since 2022. There is no systematic data on this.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Visa-free short stays, as in the rest of the Schengen area; for living there, the same remote-work route, and the Beckham tax regime applies to it.
Citizenship after 2 years of residence instead of 10, keeping your previous citizenship.
No permit needed at all: EU free movement rules give the right to live and work.
EU temporary protection is extended to 4 March 2028. Since 31 July 2026 new applicants must show they left in line with their military obligations; people who already hold the status are not affected.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions on the remote-work permit. Threshold and procedure are the same as for other non-EU citizens.
The place interval 25-43 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Between leaguesThe league holds in fewer than half of the recalculations. Read this country as sitting between two leagues, not as a member of the upper one.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Family rights: 92 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 72.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 27 against 48.7. Above the world average: 5 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
The large-companies and remote-workers unit decides within 20 working days, and about 30 more working days go on the TIE card. In Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia the fingerprint appointment alone takes 3-6 months, so the whole process runs 5-8.5 months.
€2,849 a month in 2026: 200% of the minimum wage. The income must come from an employer or clients outside Spain.
€102.58 for the first permit, €17.72 per renewal and about €16 for the TIE card. About €153 per person over five years: one of the cheapest countries in our sample.
Yes, if you stop meeting the conditions: in 2026 remote-work permits are audited after issue and ended when the holder is not registered with social security. If you lose your job there is no grace period, and you must notify the agency within 30 days.
Long-term residence after 5 years. Citizenship after 10 years with the DELE A2 and CCSE exams and giving up your previous citizenship; 2 years for Latin American nationals and a few others.
The state wants newcomers: permits and regularisations are growing and family rights are nearly complete. What gets in the way is bureaucracy, not hostility: appointment and card queues eat months, and the 2026 audits made remote-work status less secure.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.