Visa information

Italy offers three named routes in the 2026 guide: the Elective Residence visa for people with passive income, a Digital Nomad visa for remote workers tested at about $30,000 a year, and an Investor visa via bonds or business. The guide scores Italy just 40/100 for visa and bureaucracy — the lowest in this batch — so the paperwork stage is measured in weeks, not days, on every plan tier.

The routes the guide names

Elective Residence visa — for people with passive income, and the guide's retirement route (see the Retirement page for the 7% pensioner scheme that pairs with it).

Digital Nomad visa — for remote workers, dated “(2024)” in the site data and tested against income of about $30,000 a year (see below).

Investor visa — via bonds or business, in the guide's wording. No investment minimum is printed for it in either source (do not confuse it with the separate €200k flat-tax scheme on the Tax & Legal page, which is a tax regime, not a visa price).

The income tests — what the sources actually say

For the Digital Nomad visa, the guide gives a figure: about $30,000 a year — “Digital Nomad visa (2024) on ~$30k/yr income,” identical in the site data.

For Elective Residence, the guide itself prints no threshold. The Hub's own site FAQ (in app.js, separate from the guide) says Americans can get residency through “an elective residency visa for those with sufficient passive income, typically around $31,000 per year” — treat that as the site's planning figure, attributed to the FAQ, not a guide-stated threshold, and confirm the current amount with the consulate before filing.

At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ €0.86, any dollar figure you are quoted converts at roughly that rate for planning.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, described as covering government fees, apostilles and translations (the Luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer), and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $900 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,300 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $3,100 — Luxury plan

The Retirement plan carries one further, separate line: $2,400 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and the path to residency — the honest limit of the guide

Neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal intervals, years to permanent residency or citizenship, or absence limits for any Italian route. The site FAQ confirms only that Americans can get residency — through the Elective Residence route above, or under the flat-tax regime it mentions for high-net-worth individuals. Treat the timetable as something to confirm with an immigration lawyer or the consulate before you rely on it — the Retirement plan's lawyer line exists for exactly this kind of question.

Frequently asked questions