Portugal Cultural Golden Visa: Limited €250K Project Slots Still Available In 2024!

INQUIRE ABOUT NEW APPROVED CULTURAL PROJECT SLOTS NOW

Support artistic production in Portugal and qualify for Portugal’s Cultural Golden Visa:

Most affordable Golden Visa – only €200K (low density areas) or €250K (urban areas).

Fastest Golden Visa – get approved in 12 months, vs. up to 24 months+ for a property GV.

Fastest Golden Visa – get approved in 12 months, vs. up to 24 months+ for a property GV.[/fusion_fontawesome]Government pre-approval issued before principal has to be committed.

Client applications are submitted to the Ministry of Culture by an authorized public entity – NOT by a lawyer or service provider.

VIEW SEF PROGRAM GUIDANCE AND LEGAL BASIS HERE

UPDATE: (August 8th, 2024): We have just received confirmation from our program partners that 12 new slots in a Cultural Golden Visa eligible project will be coming online before month-end. The capital contribution for this slot will be €250,000 per investor (non-refundable donations). If you’d like to secure one of these slots, get in touch today.

And if you’d prefer a cheaper option, be sure to check out the HQA Visa and the Portuguese Startup Co-Investor Visa program as well.

Also be sure to check out the new Hungarian Residency By Investment program if you’re looking for a faster, property based alternative without the application back-log currently being experienced on the Portuguese program.

Everything you need to know about the country’s artistic funding Golden Visa track – including how to start applying for it – heading towards 2025…

Looking for the fastest and most affordable Portuguese Golden Visa option going into 2025?

One with a far lower capital outlay? And that enjoys processing priority over the Golden Visa fund and property streams?

If you’d like to make a high-impact contribution to the arts in Portugal, while creating a lasting legacy and securing your Plan B, then the Cultural Golden Visa may be just the option for you.

While this boutique program track was only launched post-pandemic, it is already garnering significant interest from  art aficionados around the world.

And as the only GV option to offer a government pre-approval step before capital has to be committed, it also offers unrivalled peace of mind.

Since the Golden Visa program rules governing residential property investments have become a lot more restrictive, we’ve seen the emergence of a number of innovative new Golden Visa investment options in 2022 – including this artistic funding Golden Visa.

You can view the legal basis for the Cultural Golden Visa here, and SEF’s guidance on the program here.

This Golden Visa option is priced from only €200,000 for projects that investment in “artistic production” in low-density areas in the Portuguese interior, and €250,000 elsewhere in the country. This makes the “artistic production” Golden Visa, as the program is also frequently referred to, one of the cheapest Golden Visa programs in Europe.

Let’s get into the details below…

Cultural Golden Visa: Program background

Where did this artistic support funding option come from, and why do I only hear about it now?

The legislation supporting the creation of an “Artistic Production Funding Golden Visa” has been in existence since 2015 (Also see Order 2360/2017). Yet while it was still possible to buy residential properties in Lisbon and Porto for as little as €280K or €350K, most applicants preferred buying a Portuguese vacation home as a way to obtain their golden residency status. (Owning a real asset in a rapidly appreciating European market was a no-brainer for the majority of applicants.)

For the past 10 years, property values in Portugal have been growing in the high single digits. And given pre-pandemic tourism demand in the country, Golden Visa holders were able to sweat their residential property assets effectively – so their ROI was good. 

But as of the end of 2021, new program regulations took effect, which initially meant that Lisbon, Porto and the massively popular Algarve region in the South were no longer eligible locations for residential Golden Visa property purchases…. Followed by the Portuguese authorities scrapping ALL real estate options since.

This change effectively reduced the “lifestyle” focus when it comes to Golden Visa property selection: Returns tend to be  inferior in the country’s interior, and most people prefer being closer (or in) the large urban centers of Lisbon, Porto and Faro.)

So for a large percentage of applicants, capital preservation, projected yield and opportunity cost, rather than any associated lifestyle benefits, are now once again the key considerations. 

Combined with the fact that the minimum threshold for fund-based investments went up from €350K – which was on a par with the “standard” property option –  to a whopping €500K, many prospective applicants are now searching for cheaper Golden Visa options. 

Moreover, given that your capital will be locked up for at least 6 years (and possibly more), the opportunity costs on these higher amounts are quite significant.

Another challenge has been the fact that the property based Golden Visa has not been treated as a priority residency category by SEF, which, since the pandemic, has led to processing delays of up to two years for scores of applicants.

So what other options are there then? 

The cheapest Golden Visa option would be to start an active business and create 10 jobs in Portugal – but this option is neither attractive nor viable for the majority of applicants. (There is, however, also the Job Creation Golden Visa to consider.)

Hence, previously, that left only the €250K Cultural Heritage Preservation option, a non-refundable donation that has literally only been used by four GV applicants to date. 

However, the same supporting legislation, namely Law 63/2015 of 30 June 2015, which came into effect on 1 July 2015, also makes provision for a €250K investment “support of artistic production” (see Section VI). This could include, as two simple examples, the funding of a feature film or a touring stage production.

And if the artistic production is based in a low-density area, a 20% discount applies, making the minimum capital investment requirement only €200K. (This is similar to the 20% discount convention that applies to GV properties based on their location.)

So to qualify by funding a movie filmed and produced in Lisbon, you’d need to invest €250K. Whereas for a film set and produced in a low-density part of the Portuguese interior, you’d only need to commit €200K.

The problem was that no productized option leveraging the above legislation previously existed. But that changed around the time of the pandemic, with the introduction of a “Cultural Golden Visa” option, which meets the Golden Visa criteria via an innovative funding mechanism for Portuguese feature films.

Critically, these productions can be pre-sold to media outlets and distribution channels. This significantly mitigates the risk of these productions’ financial under-performance. In fact, some projects of this nature can guarantee the principal amount.

Essentially, the Cultural Golden Visa option is THE most affordable Portuguese GV option on the market, and some non-donation projects are anticipated soon. It’s consequently received significant interest from migrant investors the world over.

(Russian Golden Visa applications are once again being processed, so we encourage prospective Golden Visa investors from Russia to get in touch to discover all of their options.)

What’s more, during the pandemic period, when property based Golden Visa application processing ground to a halt, the Cultural Golden Visa’s application processing at SEF remained unaffected, thanks to this being a priority residency category.