Digital Nomad Visas in 2026: A World Cup of Visas

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Digital Nomad Visas in 2026: A World Cup of Visas<br>There are still new options for expats who want to move in 2026.

Andrew Stetsenko<br>Jun 23, 2026

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When I started The Global Move, the first thing I published was a set of ways to move to another country and work there without an employer. I called that series Employer Not Required, and I used it to lay out the real alternatives to the one piece of advice most people ever hear, which is, go find a company to sponsor you. One of those alternatives was the digital nomad visa.<br>I wrote the 2025 version of this list, Top 21 Digital Nomad Visas in 2025. A year later, almost every number on it has moved, several programs are brand new, and one or two have gone quiet. This is the 2026 update, country by country, with an official government link for each one so you can confirm the figure yourself before you book anything.<br>These visas may have hit their peak around 2020, and the popular destinations have amended them again and again since then, yet they remain one of the widest options open to engineers who want to work abroad. That is the heart of this guide. There are a lot of digital nomad visas in 2026, and you are about to see how many, spread across regions for almost every taste: big economies and small ones, sun-soaked coasts and cosmopolitan cities. There really is something for everyone here.<br>I built this guide to name as many as I could with the most current data I could find, anchored to official sources. Digital nomad visas are a global affair, so the websites are usually in English, but for a couple of cases, I tried to access each government site in its original language (thank you, translate features) so the figures stay fresh.<br>Putting it together reminded me of the football World Cup. A bigger one than ever, with more teams to get behind than any edition before it, and that part is a fact: 48 national teams now, fifty percent more than last time. Visas haven’t grown by 50% in the past four years, but each time I come back to writing about visas, I end up thinking that opportunities keep growing more than shrinking. The way I see it, digital nomad visas are playing their own World Cup. There are dozens of contenders, and the champion is the one you pick.<br>How many countries actually offer one

The number depends on what you count, so here is how I count it. Dedicated digital nomad visas: about 55 in 2026. Add the remote-work permits that work the same way in practice, and you pass 60. Some trackers reach 70 or more if you include programs that exist only on paper. The team at Immigrant Invest puts the dedicated count around 55, and that is the figure I trust.<br>I remember writing once that there were over 70. That number mixed dedicated visas with looser permits, and since then the trackers tightened their definitions while a couple of programs closed. More countries run a real program today than a year ago.<br>The Global Move is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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A word on the numbers before you trust a single one

These thresholds are not fixed. Most of them are pegged to a local minimum wage or an average salary, so the income requirement you read in a blog post from last spring is very likely wrong by now. Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Colombia, and Ecuador all moved their figures in early 2026 for exactly this reason. Also, to give an example, I wasn’t able to get the exact number for Romania’s minimum income threshold, but still I left a pretty helpful figure for you to rely on.<br>For every visa below, I link to the official government page. Read the number there, on the day you apply, in the currency it is written in. Use my table to gauge the rough size, then confirm the live figure at the source. If a model or a forum tells you one thing and the government page says another, the government page wins!<br>What changed in 2026: World Cup Edition 🏆🗺️

Here is what actually moved this year.<br>Sri Lanka finally launched. After years of being promised, Sri Lanka opened its Digital Nomad Visa in February 2026, run by the Department of Immigration and Emigration. It asks for about USD 2,000 a month for the one-year visa; there is a longer five-year option, and it renews. If you’re heading here, make sure you buy your Sri Lankan national cricket team jersey (they’re actually quite cool).<br>Three new European...