Global mobility in 2025 quietly entered a new phase. Traditional migration routes have narrowed, investment-based migration programs have faced heightened international scrutiny, and new “digital-first” mobility tools have become increasingly important. In this article, I will examine how global mobility was shaped in 2025 and lay the groundwork for my 2026 predictions, which will be discussed in a subsequent article.
Shifts in global mobility
Cross-border mobility in 2025 became more restrictive and selective. Governments relied more heavily on travel restrictions, policy adjustments, and administrative controls, affecting not only high-net-worth individuals but also skilled professionals and international students. Processing times lengthened, rules became less predictable, and border controls grew more data-driven; hence, less visible.
At the same time, the “great wealth migration” redirected people and capital away from traditional Western hubs toward non-traditional locations such as the UAE, which is strengthening its position as a long-term lifestyle and tax base.
For ordinary travellers, global mobility in 2025 became more data-driven and selective. New tools, such as the entry-exit system (EES) in the European Union (EU), electronic travel authorisation (ETAs) in the UK, and automated risk-scoring systems, have demonstrated that visa-free travel on paper will be restricted in practice.
The Norway-Caribbean episode, where Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passport holders were denied entry despite holding visa-free rights, further illustrates how administrative guidance and algorithmic assessments can override written agreements within regional travel frameworks. In 2025, the United States significantly expanded its travel ban policy, under president Trump’s administration, through a presidential proclamation that broadened both full and partial entry restrictions for dozens of countries. This trend continued in December, when the White House further extended those restrictions, including partial entry restrictions for Antigua & Barbuda and the Commonwealth of Dominica (Dominica), apparently linked to concerns about passport integrity and applicants’ vetting standards.
Citizenship by Investment in 2025: Price shifts, legal tests and border realities
CBI programs experienced a challenging yet clarifying year, marked by significant reforms, legal challenges, and travel restrictions. Demand for fast-track alternative citizenships and residencies has historically remained strong, particularly among individuals seeking geopolitical and financial diversification. Increasingly, applicants are now Western nationals, actively seeking backup options and mobility insurance.
We observed Caribbean CBI programs harmonising and raising their minimum investment thresholds to USD 200,000 in response to external scrutiny and program efforts to strengthen due diligence on applicants. In September 2025, the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia signed the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority (ECCIRA) agreement, establishing a unified regulatory framework to strengthen oversight, due diligence, and standards across their CBI programs. The agreement has already been ratified by the majority of member states, and once Saint Lucia completes ratification in early 2026, it will become effective. The new changes will include a mandatory stay requirement of at least 30 days within the five years following the grant of citizenship.
These adjustments led to short-term disruptions and mixed application volumes, with some jurisdictions reporting declines in revenue and flows after price hikes, even as others maintained a solid base of interest. Demand remained meaningful among investors focused on mobility diversification and geopolitical hedging, but the combination of higher costs, changed conditions, and tougher screening reshaped both client priorities and behaviour.
The Caribbean model also came under pressure due to discounting practices. Continued price‑cutting and aggressive promotions remained a concern, particularly when advertising the visa-free attributes of these passports. Indeed, in late 2024, St Kitts and Nevis issued notices to some applicants who had obtained citizenship by paying below the official minimum, requiring them to cover the outstanding balance or face potential revocation of their citizenship; enforcement actions that continued into 2025 as part of broader efforts to uphold program integrity. Some promotions had effectively sold citizenship at a fraction of the official threshold, fuelling a “race to the bottom” that risked undermining the perceived value of these passports among partner states and banks.
At the same time, new and previously obscure CBI players appeared on the radar: past programs such as Sierra Leone’s diaspora‑linked citizenship offerings drew renewed attention, while newcomers like São Tomé and Príncipe and Nauru launched their investor‑citizenship or economic‑passport models, with relatively lower price points and with less‑tested frameworks.
Beyond Africa and the Caribbean, 2025 also saw a quiet rise of “soft‑CBI” models in parts of Central and South America. Several countries in the region, such as Paraguay and Uruguay, continued to market attractive Residency by Investment (RBI) options that, although not branded as classic CBI, can lead to citizenship in 3 to 5 years, with relatively light physical-presence requirements and modest financial thresholds. These hybrid schemes function in practice as delayed or passive forms of CBI, offering investors, including a growing cohort of Western applicants, a pathway from residence to passport without the explicit “citizenship for sale” label that has drawn criticism in Europe and multilateral fora.
In Argentina, a new CBI framework was introduced in 2025, allowing foreign investors to obtain citizenship through qualifying investments, potentially making it one of the first South American economies with a direct investment-to-citizenship route. The program is expected to formally open in early 2026, with a proposed minimum threshold of US$500,000.
These regional options attracted investors for whom the combination of cost, residency flexibility and citizenship potential matters more than speed alone. Latin America is now the frontier for hybrid mobility solutions beyond the traditional CBI markets.
Reputational and access risks for CBI passport holders became more visible in 2025. Norway reportedly began quietly refusing entry to Caribbean CBI passport holders, treating these passports as “no valid travel document”, a move widely interpreted as a targeted response to concerns about the integrity of alternative-citizenship travel.
In 2025, the United States expanded its travel ban and travel restrictions. In June, the Trump administration issued a proclamation restricting entry from a range of countries on national‑security and screening grounds, including partial limitations affecting several nations with Caribbean CBI programs.
In the United Kingdom, visa‑free access for citizens of Botswana was revoked in late 2025 after a surge in asylum claims soon after that country announced plans for a relatively low-cost CBI program; the UK also removed visa-free status from Nauru, expressly noting concerns about the security risks posed by a newly launched investor citizenship program.
In parallel with these targeted policy actions, 2025 saw the rollout of new and evolving data-driven border systems that are reshaping visa-free travel in practice.
In the EU, the Entry/Exit System (EES) began a phased implementation in October 2025, digitising the registration of the entries and exits of non-EU nationals using biometric data and replacing manual passport stamping with automated records. The European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) is scheduled to become operational in late 2026. ETIAS will require visitors with visa-free access to obtain prior authorisation linked to their passports before entering the Schengen area. This pre‑travel risk screening is designed to identify potential security or irregular-migration concerns while facilitating entry for low‑risk visitors. It is reasonable to assume that EES and ETIAS will indirectly enhance the EU’s ability to monitor movements within the Schengen Area and, potentially, enabling to track non-EU citizens and residents in real-time. This means police checks, asylum claims, and criminal investigations can retroactively reconstruct patterns of movement.
The United Kingdom is also updating its border management system with ETA, which was first introduced in 2023 and is set to be enforced more broadly starting in early 2026. This system will require nationals of many currently visa-exempt countries to secure a digital permit before arrival, adding a layer of pre-travel screening similar in concept to ETIAS and the US ESTA system.
Together, these new systems illustrate how data-driven tools can convert nominal visa-free access into conditional, algorithm-filtered mobility for specific nationalities and acquisition routes.
Alongside classic CBI, 2025 also saw a noticeable rise in citizenship by descent and post-colonial naturalisation. Spain continued to maintain a two‑year residency route to citizenship for nationals of Ibero‑American countries, the Philippines, and other states with historic ties, making this one of the most accessible pathways to an EU passport for millions who can relocate and integrate through legal and continuous residence.
In Portugal, a significant reform to the nationality law was approved in 2025 that will tighten access to citizenship for future applicants. Under the new framework, the minimum legal residence requirement for naturalisation is set to increase from five years to ten years for most non‑EU applicants, while citizens of Portuguese‑speaking countries and EU citizens will need seven years of residence before qualifying to apply. The countdown toward eligibility will begin from the date a valid residence permit is issued rather than from the date of initial application, and additional tests covering Portuguese language, culture, and civic knowledge are being introduced. These changes reflect a shift toward a more stringent integration‑focused model for citizenship eligibility.
In late 2025, a group of Portuguese “Golden Visa” holders formally challenged the legislative amendments before Portugal’s Constitutional Court, with hearings expected to take place in 2026.
Portugal’s descent-based pathways, including those available to children and grandchildren of Portuguese citizens, remain open. However, the broader tightening of residency requirements has prompted many prospective applicants and investors to accelerate their planning or reassess their options ahead of the new rules taking effect.
For many applicants across Europe and beyond, these ancestry‑ and history‑based routes represent legitimate restoration of rights and recognition of historic links. Yet several European states have raised concerns about forged civil‑status records, “heritage mills,” and networks selling fabricated family trees, effectively turning ancestry channels into under-regulated, back‑door alternatives to CBI. Such practices risk undermining the integrity of descent-based and historical‑link naturalisation pathways if left unaddressed.
At the very top of the market, 2025 also saw the continued use of Citizenship by Merit (CBM), or discretionary naturalisation, for select individuals, including major investors, innovators, philanthropists, and high-profile public figures. These grants are not advertised as formal programs and are typically handled on a case-by-case basis, often at high cost. Yet they function as an ultra-exclusive tier of economic citizenship, available only to those who can offer a combination of capital, influence, and prestige that governments deem uniquely valuable.
In Europe’s courts, 2025 marked a decisive moment. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Malta’s CBI scheme violated EU law by commercializing the EU’s citizenship. This judgment prompted Malta to wind down its program and provided Brussels with a strong precedent against purely financial “passport-for-investment” models within the EU. Soon after the program suspension, Maltese authorities announced to move toward the CBM model.
In 2025, the EU moved decisively to make CBI programs themselves a potential basis for suspending visa-free access to the Schengen area. In June, the European Parliament and Council agreed on reforms to the EU’s visa‑suspension mechanism that add new suspension grounds, including the operation of CBI schemes that grant nationality without a genuine link to the issuing state, alongside hybrid threats and alignment with EU visa policy. Under the updated framework, which was approved by the Council in November 2025, the EU can revoke a third country’s visa-free status if its passport-granting practices are judged to pose security or policy risks, effectively linking the existence of CBI programs to Schengen access conditions.
Taken together, the combination of discounting in lower‑tier programs, the expansion of quasi‑CBI and hybrid routes in the Americas, targeted losses of visa‑free access for countries linked to CBI, the growth (and abuse) of ancestry‑ and merit‑based citizenship channels, and the Malta judgment all point in the same direction: CBIs are being increasingly squeezed away from opaque, low‑substance offerings and pushed toward fewer, more transparent, and higher‑integrity models. At the same time, underlying demand, including from Western investors, remains strong and is unlikely to disappear.
Residency by Investment in 2025: Reforms, delays, and a new hierarchy
RBI, or golden visa programs, went through a major reset in 2025. While headlines focused on closures and backlash, beneath the surface, there was a clear reordering of the market into high-substance EU options, lower‑cost “peripheral” European residencies, lifestyle-oriented programs in Asia, and pragmatic “residency‑first, citizenship‑later” routes in the Americas.
Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain remained central to the RBI conversation, but no longer as simple real‑estate plays. Spain entirely suspended its “Golden Visa” program in 2025. Portugal shifted away from purely property-based models toward funding, business activity, and job-creation models, with processing times and administrative bottlenecks becoming serious concerns for investors and advisors. Italy and Greece continued to attract interest due to competitive entry thresholds and favourable tax regimes; however, Greece’s persistent promotion of low‑ticket property options raised questions about how much such investments genuinely support the real economy rather than fuelling speculative real‑estate cycles.
Romania offered a textbook case of how sensitive new EU‑area golden visas have become. A proposal for a €400,000 investment-based residence route was introduced in 2025 and withdrawn within weeks after national‑security and EU‑compliance concerns were raised, showing that any new Schengen-linked RBI will face intense scrutiny even before launch.
Bulgaria, in contrast, spent 2025 consolidating its shift away from direct CBI toward an RBI model: substantial investments in approved funds, bonds, or strategic projects now lead to permanent residence, with citizenship only after five years via standard naturalisation rules.
Together, these two countries illustrate Europe’s move from “passport now” to “residence now, citizenship later” on more conventional terms.
In the Baltic region, Latvia cemented its reputation as a relatively low-cost EU residency option. Its framework combined business‑investment routes at modest levels with more traditional paths through higher‑value real estate or financial instruments, making it one of the least expensive doors into EU residence for investors priced out of Southern Europe.
At the same time, the proliferation of very cheap, service-driven business residencies across the region highlighted the importance of careful due diligence, as capital protection, banking relationships, and policy stability can be weaker than in longer-established jurisdictions.
Across these European programs, 2025 also clarified an important distinction that many investors overlook: in most cases, only a limited physical presence is required to maintain a residence permit, whereas becoming a tax resident typically depends on separate 183-day and “centre of vital interests” tests. Residence has increasingly been treated as an option that can be preserved with a light presence, while tax residence is managed through deliberate control of where one actually lives, works, and holds economic ties.
Outside Europe, 2025 saw renewed attention to Asian residency options designed around lifestyle and long‑stay flexibility.
The Philippines’ Special Resident Retiree Visa (SRRV) remained one of the most versatile products globally, combining renewable residence, multiple‑entry rights, and specific tax or customs advantages in exchange for relatively modest bank deposits. Reforms made some categories more accessible to younger retirees and mobile professionals.
Indonesia, meanwhile, introduced its “Second Home Visa” and an emerging golden visa framework: multi‑year stays for those making significant deposits or acquiring qualifying property, and longer-term residence tied to larger investments in companies, bonds, or strategic sectors.
These regimes position themselves less as classic “investment migration” programs and more as lifestyle platforms for people seeking dynamic, affordable locations without necessarily pursuing fast citizenship. As in Europe, investors can maintain these visas through compliant deposits and formalities, while tax residence depends on where they spend most of the year and conduct their financial affairs.
In Central and South America, 2025 confirmed the appeal of relatively low-cost RBIs and economic‑residency options that can lead to citizenship over time. Countries such as Panama, Uruguay, Brazil, and other regional players continued to offer investor, retiree, or business-owner residencies with moderate capital thresholds and comparatively short naturalisation timelines, often three to five years, provided that residence and basic conditions are maintained.
For many globally mobile families, these programs operate as “soft‑CBI” alternatives: structured, rules-based pathways from residence to citizenship that require more presence and patience than classic CBI, but provide solid backup nationality without the same political stigma. Residence permits can often be maintained with modest days in-country or periodic entries, while full tax residence arises only when individuals genuinely shift their home and centre of interests to the jurisdiction.
In 2025, the US also introduced a new wealth-based migration initiative alongside its traditional investor visa system. In September, the presidential Executive established the “Gold Card” program, a fast-track pathway to US permanent residency for aliens who make a USD 1 million unrestricted donation to the US government (with a $15,000 non-refundable processing fee and larger corporate options available). Applicants who make this contribution can use it as evidence of eligibility under existing employment-based immigrant categories such as EB‑1 and EB‑2, potentially expediting green card processing without the job‑creation requirements that define the traditional EB‑5 investor visa.
Unlike EB‑5, which mandates an actual investment in a commercial enterprise that creates or preserves at least ten full-time jobs for US workers. The Gold Card is structured as a non-refundable gift, with no explicit job‑creation or business investment threshold, representing a clear shift toward wealth-based eligibility and illustrating how US migration policy is evolving in response to both economic and political priorities.
Taken together, 2025 has marked a sorting of the field and a clearer separation between formal residence and substantive relocation. In the EU core, high-substance, slower, and more tightly regulated programs moved to the foreground, while politically risky proposals were stopped before implementation. On the periphery, lower-cost EU residencies in the Baltics attracted price-sensitive investors willing to accept greater uncertainty. Beyond Europe, regimes in Asia and the Americas have demonstrated that long-term residence, lifestyle, and tax planning are converging, particularly for retirees, digital workers, and globally mobile entrepreneurs, who increasingly view RBI less as a speculative play and more as a deliberate pillar of overall mobility and tax-residence strategy.
Migration Systems: Canada, the West and the quiet turn to selectivity
Beyond CBIs and RBIs, mainstream migration systems also shifted direction in 2025, with major immigrant-receiving countries moving toward more selective frameworks.
Canada is perhaps the clearest example of a country that remains officially pro‑immigration but is tightening several key channels. Under the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan, Ottawa announced changes to its intake, targeting a sharp reduction in new temporary residents while keeping permanent immigration relatively stable. Authorities are trying to balance economic needs with housing, infrastructure, and integration capacity. This strategy aims to reduce the share of temporary residents (students, temporary foreign workers and some humanitarian categories) to roughly 5 percent of the total population by the end of 2027 through caps on international student admissions, stricter rules on post-graduation work permits, adjustments to open spousal work permits, and tighter hiring limits for low-wage temporary workers. At the same time, permanent immigration targets remain high, reflecting a shift from broad growth to controlled, selective growth.
Canada also announced the pause of its Start-Up Visa (SUV) program, effective January 1, 2026. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) stopped accepting new applications and work‑permit pathways for SUV entrepreneurs as of December 19, 2025, and will cease new permanent‑residence filings after December 31, 2025, with a narrow exception for applicants holding valid 2025 commitment certificates. The government has positioned this measure as part of its efforts to reduce processing backlogs and move toward a new pilot pathway for immigrant entrepreneurs in 2026, in line with its Talent Attraction Strategy.
While officials frame the pause of Canada’s Start-Up Visa program as an administrative reset, it is difficult to ignore the program-integrity issues that emerged in practice. The allowance of up to five applicants per start-up enabled the monetisation of permanent residence, with non-essential participants effectively purchasing an unconditional PR without meaningful involvement in the innovative venture. In that sense, the pause appears as much a response to structural misuse as to processing backlogs.
At the same time, Canada continues longstanding policies such as encouraging francophone immigration to provinces where French is a minority language to meet federal language and demographic goals. This move has raised practical questions about integration capacity in regions with limited francophone infrastructure.
Meanwhile, data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show migration levels still near historic highs, but the policy mood is shifting toward faster asylum decisions, stricter controls on low‑skilled entry, and greater emphasis on skills‑based labour migration.
In Europe, political rhetoric that often sounds open‑door sits alongside slow, fragmented labour‑migration systems that do not fully address clear shortages in health, care, construction, and technology. Central banks and EU institutions continue to warn that migrant labour is essential to economic stability, yet actual pathways for the needed workers remain underdeveloped. This broader tightening of migration policies in Western countries provides essential context for why investment migration, talent visas, and structured mobility tools are gaining strategic importance. As traditional routes become more selective and politicised, clients who can afford it increasingly look for predictable, rules‑based alternatives.
New mobility tools: Nomads, tech talent and “AI‑Active” capital
A defining feature of 2025 was the rise and consolidation of new forms of mobility that sit between tourism, classic work permits, and RCBI. Digital‑nomad visas or remote‑work permits, or specialised talent programs, expanded in number and sophistication, reflecting serious post-pandemic work patterns.
Many countries continued to refine these digital‑nomad and remote‑worker visas, offering tax breaks or simplified regimes to professionals who can earn online and spend locally without taking local jobs. These instruments effectively decouple the place of work from the place of residence, allowing individuals to reside in one jurisdiction, serve clients globally, and, in some cases, benefit from favourable tax treatment for a limited period. At the same time, new or improved talent-focused pathways in sectors such as technology, AI, biotech, and clean energy targeted “AI‑active” capital; people bringing not only money but also intellectual property, data, and high-value skills.
These trends blurred the boundaries between classic immigration, investment migration, and lifestyle mobility. A globally mobile professional in 2025 might hold a golden visa in one country, a digital‑nomad visa in another, and a second citizenship as a geopolitical backstop, while operating an AI-enabled business legally based in a third jurisdiction. For such clients, the question is no longer “Which visa?” but rather: “Which combination of residencies, citizenships, and work rights best matches my life, business, and risk profile?”
* * *
In a follow‑up article, I will share my predictions for 2026: how governments may respond to discounting and reputational shocks, how new border technologies will quietly reshape “visa‑free” travel, and which RCBI and RBI models are most likely to survive and evolve in this new environment.
