Argentina Citizenship by Investment: $350,000 or Two Years of Residency

Argentina has announced a citizenship-by-investment program starting at $350,000 with no residency requirement, but its legal basis is being challenged in court, making the alternative path — two years of actual residency — the more reliable option for now.

In short

• Two payment paths: $350,000 non-refundable to the treasury, or $800,000 into a government bond, neither with a residency requirement.
• The legal basis for the investment program — Decree No. 366/2025 — was already ruled void by a court on June 30, 2026.
• The application form hasn’t been published yet; the government’s target launch window is the fourth quarter of this year.
• Standard naturalization grants citizenship after 2 years of legal residency and doesn’t depend on the fate of the investment program.
• An Argentine passport doesn’t exempt anyone from taxes elsewhere, and Argentina itself taxes residents on worldwide income.

What Argentina’s citizenship-by-investment program is and when it was announced

Argentina’s Economy Minister Luis Caputo officially announced the citizenship-by-investment program on October 2, 2026, in Paris, at the Argentina Week event. Cabinet Chief Diego Santilli presented it alongside him. Based on available information, this is one of the first programs of its kind in South America.

Its official name is “Programa de Ciudadanía por Inversión,” and it offers two paths to a passport. The difference between them comes down to the amount and the form of payment — the cost breakdown is covered in the next section.

How much Argentina’s investment citizenship program costs

The program offers two payment options, and they work on fundamentally different principles.

The first is a non-refundable payment to Argentina’s national treasury of $350,000 (roughly €304,000). This money is not returned: it functions less like an investment and more like a non-refundable contribution, legally structured as a donation to the state.

The second option is purchasing a special government bond for $800,000 (nearly €700,000). Unlike the first option, this money technically remains an investment: the bond is designed to return the invested sum. But the government hasn’t yet disclosed key parameters — the interest rate, the bond’s maturity term, and whether it can be resold are all still unknown.

Based on available information, both options share one feature: neither requires residency in the country. Getting citizenship through this program doesn’t require a prior residence permit, a Spanish-language exam, or the mandatory two years of physical presence in Argentina — conditions that apply to citizenship through standard naturalization.

neither requires residency in the country

Option	Amount	Refundable	Residency requirement
Treasury contribution	$350,000 (~€304,000)	No, non-refundable	Not required
Government bond	$800,000 (~€700,000)	Yes, technically	Not required

What it costs to add family members, and how much lawyers add on top

The program allows a spouse and children to be included in the application, but each family member adds to the total separately.

Family member	Additional cost
Spouse	≈ $100,000 (≈ €87,000, per unofficial figures)
Unmarried child, age 18–25	$100,000 (≈ €87,000)
Child under 18	≈ €22,000 (per unofficial estimates)

In the example cited by the ministry, a family of two adults and two young children would pay a combined total of roughly $500,000 (about €435,000).

That figure isn’t the final cost. Few applicants manage to navigate Argentina’s government agencies on their own, so the government fee is almost always paid on top of lawyer and immigration-firm fees for specialists who handle this specific program. Once those fees are factored in, the total for a family can rise to roughly $600,000, or around €500,000 — but that’s a ballpark estimate, not a fixed rate.

How applicants will be vetted, and when the program actually opens

Vetting is described as strict: it will be handled by a new investment-program agency and Argentina’s intelligence service. The country’s anti-money-laundering financial regulator and the Ministry of Security and Interior are also involved. Together, they check the applicant’s identity, the source of funds, any criminal record, and immigration history.

All funds must move entirely through the standard banking system — the program doesn’t allow payments that bypass regulated banking channels.

At the time of the announcement, though, the program itself isn’t open yet. The government has set the fourth quarter of this year as a target, but the application form still hasn’t been published: there’s currently nowhere to physically file, despite the announced terms and timeline.

Legal risk: a court has already struck down the underlying decree

The legal foundation for the investment path is Presidential Decree No. 366/2025, issued by Javier Milei in May 2025 as an emergency decree. The decree did two things: it opened a route to citizenship by investment with no minimum residency period, and it transferred authority over naturalization from federal judges to the immigration agency.

On June 30, 2026, Argentina’s national electoral chamber — the highest court on matters of citizenship and voting rights — ruled the decree entirely void. Its reasoning: citizenship is directly tied to voting rights, and in Argentina only Congress, not the president by decree, has the authority to regulate such matters. The ruling was circulated to all relevant federal judges to ensure consistent application. Earlier in June, an appeals court had already issued a similar ruling in a separate case.

Argentina’s national electoral chamber — the highest court on matters of citizenship and voting rights — ruled the decree entirely void

Formally, the June 30 ruling addressed only the transfer of authority over standard naturalization, not the investment program itself — but both provisions are written into the same decree. Despite the ruling, the government went ahead and announced the program in October 2026 anyway. Lawyers are split: some believe the investment scheme will survive, others think its foundation has been seriously undermined.

A solid legal basis will only exist once Congress passes the program as an ordinary law — and that hasn’t happened yet. Given that the $350,000 payment is non-refundable, the lack of such a law means the program’s legal basis could, in principle, be challenged in court even after the money has already been transferred.

The alternative: Argentine citizenship through two years of residency

The traditional path to Argentine citizenship through residency runs in parallel with the investment program and hasn’t gone anywhere. This rule isn’t set by Milei’s decree but by Argentina’s citizenship law, in effect since 1869, which grants the right to naturalize after just 2 years of legal residency in the country. Argentina is one of the few countries in the world with such a short requirement.

The path has a few steps:

1. Obtain a temporary residence permit. This can be based on a pension, passive income (rentista status), or an investment — one considerably smaller than the $350,000 required by the investment program.
2. Live in Argentina for 2 years. Milei’s decree required not leaving the country during that period; following the electoral chamber’s ruling, federal judges are reconsidering this question, and the legal position on this requirement is currently in flux.
3. File a naturalization application once the two-year period has elapsed.

In practice, it’s safer to assume that long or frequent trips abroad could put the continuity of the residency period at risk — whether even a short trip resets the clock is currently being revisited by the courts and has no clear-cut answer. Because of this, some applicants deliberately avoid leaving the country under any circumstances, including family matters abroad.

Unlike the investment path, where the main contribution is money, this option requires actually relocating and living in Argentina on an ongoing basis — it’s not a passport purchase, it’s genuine emigration.

Taxes and dual citizenship: what an Argentine passport changes, and what it doesn’t

An Argentine passport doesn’t automatically make someone a tax resident of the country and doesn’t exempt anyone from tax obligations elsewhere. What matters is actual physical residence: since naturalization requires living in Argentina for two years, applicants typically become tax residents there during that period as well. Argentina taxes residents on their worldwide income — not just earnings made in the country, but foreign income, assets, and stakes in foreign companies too. For entrepreneurs, people with substantial passive income, or business owners, this means calculating in advance what two years under this tax regime would actually cost — for some, it could amount to a significant burden.

Argentina taxes residents on their worldwide income

Argentina does allow dual citizenship: giving up a first passport isn’t required. For German citizens, this became especially relevant after Germany’s citizenship law reform in June 2024 — a German passport is no longer automatically lost upon acquiring a second nationality.

In terms of passport strength, Argentina ranks among the strongest in South America: in the 2026 Henley Passport Index, the country holds 15th–16th place, granting visa-free access to around 168 countries, including the Schengen Area, the UK, and Japan — the best result in the Argentine passport’s history. But for citizens of countries whose passports are already strong, this doesn’t add much travel freedom: the appeal of a second, non-EU passport lies elsewhere — as a backup plan in case of political change at home.

Which path to choose: investment vs. residency, compared

Criterion	Investment path	Residency path
Application readiness	Online application not yet live	Process is operational, no form required
Legal basis	Decree No. 366/2025 challenged in court, stability not guaranteed	Backed by citizenship law, no parallel legal risk
What’s required	$350,000 non-refundable payment or equivalent bond amount	Two years of actual residency in the country
Bottom line	A path to a passport, but currently expensive and legally unsettled	One of the fastest ways to a second passport without any investment program

For anyone looking purely for a “Plan B” without wanting to actually live in Argentina, applying through the investment program right now doesn’t make much sense: it remains expensive and legally unresolved — the form isn’t live yet, and the court ruling on Decree No. 366/2025 isn’t final. It’s more sensible to wait until the form goes live and it becomes clear whether the legal basis holds up.

For those willing to genuinely live in the country for two years, naturalization remains one of the fastest ways to get a second passport without any citizenship-by-investment program at all. And if the goal is simply reliable residency status in Latin America rather than specifically an Argentine passport, there are notably cheaper options: Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama.

Frequently asked questions

Can you apply for Argentina’s investment citizenship program right now

No: the application form hasn’t launched yet. The government has set the fourth quarter of this year as a target, but at the time of the announcement there’s no way to physically file documents, despite the published terms and amounts.

What happens to the $350,000 already paid if the program is ultimately struck down in court

This risk is directly tied to the lack of a law: a solid legal basis will only exist once Congress passes the program as an ordinary law, and that hasn’t happened yet. Since the $350,000 payment is non-refundable, if the legal basis is overturned in court there would be no mechanism to recover the money, and in theory the program itself could be challenged even after the funds have already been transferred.

Is the two-year residency path worth choosing over the investment path if you don’t have $350,000

Yes, it’s a workable alternative: the rule has been in effect since 1869, is backed by citizenship law rather than a presidential decree, and doesn’t carry the investment path’s parallel legal risks. To get started, you just need a temporary residence permit — based on a pension, passive income, or a smaller investment, for example — followed by two years of actual residency in the country.