Guide
Golden visas and health insurance: three countries, three different answers
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
Spain: ended by law, not by rumour
Spain's investor route did not fade — it was legislated away. Ley Orgánica 1/2025 carries the clause in its final provisions: «Se dejan sin contenido los artículos 63, 64, 65, 66 y 67» of Ley 14/2013, the articles that created the investor residence visa — the BOE text records the change taking effect from 3 April 2025, with applications filed before that date processed under the old rules and already-granted visas keeping their validity. Anyone selling a "Spain golden visa" today is selling the transitional tail of an abolished route.
Spanish residence for people of means now runs through the routes that survive — the non-lucrative visa above all, whose insurance rule is its own well-documented subject on our Spain hub.
Source: BOE, Ley Orgánica 1/2025 — disposición final vigesimoprimera, read 5 September 2026.
Greece: a private insurance contract, by the ministry's own list
Greece's investor permit (the permanent investor residence permit of article 20 of Law 4251/2014) is alive, and the Ministry of Migration's own golden-visa document list names the cover: “an insurance contract from a private insurance body… which shall cover all health and safety risks and the size of the benefits financed”, as defined under the delegated decision of article 136 of the same law. Not travel insurance, not a bank letter — a private insurance contract sized to the decision's benefit schedule.
The investment thresholds are zoned and have moved in recent years; the ministry's page and its clarifying documents are the running source for the amounts, which is exactly where we point rather than freezing a number that law has already changed once. The insurance line, by contrast, has stayed structural: private cover is part of the permit's file at issue and renewal.
Source: Ministry of Migration and Asylum (Greece), golden visa, read 5 September 2026.
60-second check
Not sure the policy you have meets your destination's written rule? Run it through the policy check now, before you build the rest of the file around it.
Check my policyPortugal: the ARI survives — and its insurance line reads like our checklist
Portugal's ARI (Autorização de Residência para Investimento, article 90.º-A) survived the 2023 housing law with its property routes stripped out: AIMA's page states the capital cannot be destined, directly or indirectly, to real-estate investment. What remains: creating at least 10 jobs (8 in low-density territories), €500,000 into scientific research, €250,000 into cultural heritage, or €500,000 into qualifying non-real-estate investment funds (five-year maturity, 60% invested in Portuguese companies).
And AIMA's document checklist words the health requirement in a way worth reading twice: proof of health protection meaning either coverage by the SNS, or an internationally recognised health insurance policy covering the requested residence period — or carrying the faculty of automatic renewal. An annually renewable international policy is not a workaround for this file; it is one of the two named ways to satisfy it.
Source: AIMA, autorização de residência para investimento — art. 90.º-A, read 5 September 2026.