An Italian investor visa application completed in an average of 3.3 months in the second quarter of 2026, while a Portuguese golden visa application averaged 50.4 months over the same period, according to data from the IMI Processing Times Tool, reported by Investment Migration Insider. Portugal's 50.4-month average is a record for the program, and it sits inside a broader pattern: ten of the twelve golden visa and citizenship by investment programs the tool monitored in the first quarter of 2026 took longer to complete in the second quarter than they had before.
What the data shows
The IMI Processing Times Tool measures how long completed applications actually took, rather than the timelines that governments advertise. On that basis, Italy's investor visa (Visto Investitore) topped the ranking in Q2 2026 at 3.3 months, up from 2.3 months in Q1 2026. Vanuatu followed at 4.5 months — the fastest route to citizenship among the programs tracked — with Nauru, newly added to the tool this quarter, at 5.6 months, Saint Kitts and Nevis at 5.7 months, and Grenada at 6.6 months, the only average in the set that held flat quarter on quarter.
The middle of the ranking held São Tomé and Príncipe at 6.8 months, Dominica at seven months, Turkey's citizenship program at 9.7 months, and Latvia's golden visa at 9.8 months. At the slow end, Greece's golden visa averaged 12 months — down sharply from 18.5 months in the second quarter of 2024 — while Antigua and Barbuda averaged 16.8 months and Saint Lucia 17.5 months, the longest Caribbean wait in the ranking. Portugal's golden visa closed the list at 50.4 months, up from 43.9 months just one quarter earlier and described by IMI as a record for the program.
Where the figures come from
IMI builds the tool from agent reports, crowdsourced investor submissions, and government data, cross-checking agent figures against other sources where possible. Greece's numbers come from official processing data; Portugal's come from the Nomad Gate database. Figures for the remaining programs are estimates drawn from processing times that international investment migration firms report observing. Each average reflects how long ago the most recently completed applications were originally filed, so a program with a sharply falling average — as Greece's is — will likely process a new application faster than the headline figure suggests, while a program with a rising average, like Italy's or Portugal's, may now take longer than its own reported number implies.
Portugal's slowdown has a structural explanation in the source reporting. Portuguese law requires the immigration agency to decide a residence permit application within 90 days, but the actual queue now moves at two speeds. Applicants who filed since January 2025 "follow a fully digital procedure and have their applications processed a bit faster," according to Madalena Monteiro, Founder at Liberty, while applicants who gave biometrics before 2025 followed a paper procedure and represent, in her words, "the delayed cases from 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024." Greece's 12-month average coexists with a pending backlog of 25,970 applications, counting family members and renewals, as of the end of September 2026.
WPF analysis: what the gap implies for applicants
World Property Forum analysis of the reported figures points to three directly supported implications. First, program status does not predict speed: Italy's residence permit cleared faster than every citizenship by investment program in the ranking, while Portugal's residence-based golden visa took longer than every citizenship program listed, including Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Lucia. An applicant choosing between a Caribbean passport and a European residence permit cannot assume residence routes are inherently quicker — Italy is the exception, not the rule, among the programs this tool tracks.
Second, investment size is not a reliable proxy for wait time. The source reporting notes that Dominica's fund route starts at US$200,000 and averaged seven months, Antigua and Barbuda's National Development Fund route asks US$230,000 and averaged 16.8 months, and Saint Lucia asks US$240,000 from an applicant with up to three dependents and averaged 17.5 months — three similarly priced Caribbean programs landing at very different points on the timeline. Readers comparing speed against cost across EU and Caribbean routes may find the Caribbean vs European Golden Visa comparison useful background, though the processing-time figures above come solely from the IMI tool.
Third, trend direction matters as much as the headline average. Because ten of twelve tracked programs slowed between Q1 and Q2 2026, an applicant filing today under most programs should expect a wait at or above the most recent reported average rather than below it. Italy and Portugal illustrate both ends of that pattern: Italy's average rose from 2.3 to 3.3 months and Portugal's from 43.9 to 50.4 months, while Greece moved in the opposite direction, falling from 18.5 months in Q2 2024 to 12 months now.
What drives the spread within a single program
The source reporting also shows that variation inside one program can be as significant as variation between programs. In Portugal, the fastest reported individual file took 36.3 months while the slowest took 78.9 months — a 42-month spread within the same golden visa queue. Joseph Boll, Founder and CEO at Frederick Capital, frames this as a file-quality issue rather than purely a government one: "People always ask which program is the fastest," he said, adding that "the biggest factor in processing time is often not the government. It is the file."
That distinction matters for due diligence. An applicant filing a clean, complete dossier in a program with a rising average may still land closer to the fast end of that program's internal range, while a poorly prepared file in a fast-average program can still stall. The averages reported by IMI describe program-wide experience, not a guarantee for any individual case.
Practical due-diligence questions for applicants
Investors comparing Italy, Portugal, and the other tracked programs should ask their advisers several questions the source data cannot answer on its own: whether the quoted processing estimate reflects the fully digital post-2025 procedure in Portugal or the older paper-based queue described by Monteiro; whether the agency administering a given program has published its own backlog figures, as Greece has with its 25,970-application count at the end of September 2026; and whether the adviser's own recent client files have tracked above or below the program's most recent quarterly average. For general process and documentation standards across golden visa applications, the Golden Visa Programs due diligence and process guide outlines the categories of paperwork that most commonly affect file completeness.
Applicants should also ask which data source underlies any quoted timeline — official government figures, as used for Greece, crowdsourced investor reports, as used for most Caribbean and Pacific programs, or third-party databases, as used for Portugal via Nomad Gate — since the tool's own methodology treats these as different tiers of reliability.
Limitations of the comparison
The figures reported here describe past processing times for completed applications, not advertised government targets. Italy's ministry states its assessment committee issues a result within 30 days, a figure well below the tool's measured 3.3-month average, illustrating the gap between a stated target and observed completion time. Similarly, Portuguese law's 90-day statutory deadline for a decision sits far below the measured 50.4-month average, reflecting the backlog of pre-2025 paper-procedure cases rather than the standard the law sets.
Most figures outside Greece and Portugal are estimates built from agent and investor reports rather than official statistics, and the tool itself was only expanded to include Nauru this quarter. Readers should treat quarter-to-quarter comparisons as directional signals rather than precise measurements, particularly for programs with smaller application volumes where a handful of unusually fast or slow files can shift the average noticeably.
What to watch next
Three data points are worth monitoring in subsequent quarters: whether Italy's average continues rising from its Q1 2026 low of 2.3 months, whether Portugal's digital-procedure cohort — the post-January 2025 applicants Monteiro describes — begins to pull the overall Portuguese average down as paper-procedure backlog cases clear, and whether Greece's falling trend, from 18.5 months in Q2 2024 to 12 months now, continues even as its pending caseload remains near 26,000 applications. Each of these would materially change how Italy and Portugal compare against the rest of the field the next time IMI updates the tool.