Get citizenship by investment in Vanuatu.

No. Since 3 February 2025 ni-Vanuatu citizens need a Schengen visa. Regulation (EU) 2025/11 of 19 December 2024, published in the Official Journal on 14 January 2025, amended Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 to insert Vanuatu into Part 1 of Annex I - the list of countries whose nationals require a visa - and to delete it from Part 1 of Annex II. This is the point most matters to understand: it is an act of the European Parliament and of the Council, not a Commission suspension with an expiry date, and it contains no transitional provisions. Vanuatu is the only citizenship-by-investment country in that position. The sequence that led there was Council Decision (EU) 2022/366, partially suspending the visa-waiver agreement from 4 May 2022; Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198, suspending it in full from 4 February 2023; Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/222, suspending the visa exemption for all ni-Vanuatu from 4 February 2023; and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/2059, extending that to 3 February 2025 - at which point the permanent measure took over.

Both also require visas. The United Kingdom imposed a visa requirement on ni-Vanuatu nationals with immediate effect from 15:00 BST on Wednesday 19 July 2023, with a transitional window to 15:00 BST on 16 August 2023 for people who had already booked. The reason given by the UK government was explicit: the decision was in response to concerns relating to Vanuatu's Citizenship by Investment scheme. Ireland introduced a visa requirement for ni-Vanuatu nationals - together with nationals of Dominica and Honduras - from Thursday 7 March 2024, with transitional arrangements for existing bookings; the stated motive there was alignment with the UK and Schengen regimes rather than CBI as such. Separately, Vanuatu is not on the US Department of State's Treaty Countries list, so the passport gives no access to an E-1 or E-2 visa.

We do not know, and neither does anyone quoting you a number. The Vanuatu government publishes no current list or count of visa-free destinations. The only relevant official document, the 2021 parliamentary committee report, has an annex of visa-free and visa-on-arrival destinations, but it predates the EU, UK and Irish decisions and is therefore obsolete. What is documented is what has been lost: the EU and Schengen area, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Any figure like '100+ countries' on a marketing page is unsourced. We check the specific destinations that matter to you against current entry rules instead of quoting a total.

For people whose objective is a second citizenship rather than European travel. Four things are genuinely true and genuinely useful. The Commission has a statutory three-month deadline to decide, which no other programme here matches. There is no residence requirement and no requirement to visit - the European Commission's own report confirms that residence or physical presence is not required before the grant or during the application. Vanuatu has no personal income tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance or estate duty and no corporate income tax, and does not tax worldwide income. And the entry price, 130,000 USD for a single applicant, is the lowest published anywhere. If your plan depends on Schengen access, this is the wrong programme and we will tell you that on the first call.

On the DSP route the contribution scale published by the Citizenship Office and Commission is 130,000 USD for a single applicant, 150,000 USD for a married couple, 165,000 USD for a couple with one child and 180,000 USD for a couple with two children, plus 10,000 USD for each additional applicant. On CIIP the published citizenship fee is 260,000 USD covering the applicant, spouse and one child under 18, with 19,250 USD per additional child under 18 and 44,250 USD per dependant aged 18 to 21. Government fees are separate: a 5,000 USD FIU due-diligence fee, an application fee of 5,000 VT on every form except Form D and 250 USD on Form D, and the passport fee of 10,000 to 25,000 VT depending on speed.

Because no government source publishes one, and we do not fill gaps with plausible numbers. For the Vanuatu Contribution Program, COC tells agents to follow the government pricing in Regulations Order No. 34 of 24 April 2019, but that Order's text is not on any .gov.vu source and the fees table on the COC site is not labelled by programme. For the Real Estate Option Program, COC states only that you must invest in a property in a Vanuatu Government Approved Project in addition to the prescribed fees; no minimum and no holding period are published, and the four approved projects named are Pacific Springs at Rentabao and Narpow Point Coral Bay and FPF Rainbow City at Narpow Point, all on Efate, plus Milai on Espiritu Santo. If either route is what you want, we ask COC in writing and put the answer in front of you before anything moves.

The statute gives the Citizenship Commission three months from receipt of the application to consider it and grant citizenship - that deadline sits in ss. 13C, 13D and 13E themselves, not in a brochure. Internal screening takes up to 14 days, and no more than 30 where more is needed, on Vanuatu's own figures as recorded by the European Commission. After approval you have three months to take the oath and pay the citizenship fee, extendable by two on request. Document collection happens before any of that clock starts.

No. There is no residence requirement and no requirement to visit, before or after the grant, and the European Commission's report states that residence or physical presence in Vanuatu is not required before citizenship is granted or during the application. The one procedural step with a location attached is the oath of allegiance, sworn before a Commissioner for Oaths in a Vanuatu court. COC announced that it accepts the oath and the handover of the certificate by video conference 'until further notice' - a pandemic measure that has not been withdrawn, but equally has not been confirmed as permanent, so we check its status for each file rather than assume it.

Your spouse, and children - under ss. 13C, 13D and 13E the prescribed fee covers you, your spouse and two children, with the Minister able to set additional fees for further children and resident dependants. A resident dependant is defined by Act No. 8 of 2016 as a natural or adopted child aged 18 to 25 who lives with you or your spouse or depends on you and is in full-time education, and Act No. 20 of 2016 adds a parent of yours or your spouse's who lives with you, depends on you and is over 50. Siblings do not appear in the definition on any government source. One inconsistency you should know about: the published Form D fee scale prices dependants only up to age 21, while the resident-dependant definition in the Act runs to 25, and the government does not explain the difference. We clarify the position for the specific person before they are added to a file.

The visa chain is the headline: the EU's full suspension from 4 February 2023, the UK's visa requirement from 19 July 2023, Ireland's from 7 March 2024, the EU extension to 3 February 2025, and then the permanent Annex I move under Regulation (EU) 2025/11. On the programme side, Amendment Act No. 1 of 2023 added screening by the Police Force, the FIU and Immigration Services, automatic refusal for Interpol matches, exclusion of nationals of UN-sanctioned states and the three-month decision deadline; the Financial Intelligence Unit has since begun a blanket review of due diligence across DSP, CIIP and VCP; and COC has announced enhanced due diligence and investment verification, though the release carries no date. On tax, Vanuatu remained on the EU's Annex I list at the 17 February 2026 update, with the next review due in October 2026. Two things we cannot tell you: whether any of the four routes is currently operating in a suspended mode - no announcement of suspension or resumption has been published since 2016 - and the date the current DSP amounts took effect, because the amending Orders of 2020 and 2021 are not published.