Italy Investor Visa Numbers: 899 Applications by Access Request, One Official Report, and No Count of Visas Issued

The only official Italy investor visa count stops at 31 December 2021

The one official publication is titled "Investor Visa for Italy: sintesi delle principali evidenze" and is labeled the first monitoring report. It was produced by MISE's Directorate General for Industrial Policy, Innovation and SMEs, and it gives data to 31 December 2021. The PDF is still online on the ministry's old mise.gov.it domain. A copy also circulates on the immigration portal immigrazione.it.

The report counts 64 applications since the scheme opened in 2017. Fifty received a nulla osta, a rate of 78.1%. The other 14 did not: 11 were rejected for missing requirements or incomplete documents, 2 lapsed through a submission error and 1 was withdrawn by the investor. Formal rejections alone come to 17.2% of applications, by our arithmetic.

It also breaks the 64 down by half-year. There were 7 applications in 2018, 6 in 2019, 11 in 2020 and 40 in 2021, with 21 in the first half of 2021 and 19 in the second. The report links the rise partly to the 2020 Relaunch Decree (D.L. 34/2020), which halved two thresholds. The company route fell from €1 million to €500,000, and the innovative start-up route from €500,000 to €250,000.

By route, 43 applications were for investment in an Italian company, 10 for Italian government bonds, 9 for an innovative start-up and 2 for a philanthropic donation. By nationality, Russia and the United States had 14 each, the United Kingdom 7, Canada 5, Syria 4, and China and Israel 3 each. The text says applicants came from 20 countries. Its table shows 19 distinct nationalities, because India appears twice.

On money, the report says 24 investors had completed their investments, mobilizing €18 million. A further 26 holders of a nulla osta had not yet submitted proof, with €22.1 million expected. The report adds these to a potential €40.1 million. That total mixes money invested with money promised.

The report does not count visas. It does not count residence permits either. It describes the permit's terms, two years and renewable for three-year periods, but gives no figure for how many were issued. So the one official publication measures the committee's work and stops at the consulate door.

Since 2022, the numbers have come from an access request

No second monitoring report has been found. The scheme's application portal, investorvisa.mise.gov.it, explains the procedure in English but holds no statistics and links no reports. MIMIT's own investor visa page could not be read by our tools, because the site blocks automated access. That is not proof the page is empty. It means we could not check it.

Journalists have asked. On 31 January 2024 the Rome daily Domani reported that the only monitoring report had been published under the Draghi government, and quoted the ministry's reply: "Sono informazioni d'interesse pubblico, ma per acquisirle bisogna richiedere un accesso agli atti." In English, the data are of public interest, but obtaining them requires a formal access request.

The Italian Investment Alliance made such a request. IMI Daily, a trade publication for the investment-migration industry, reported the result on 3 November 2026 in an article by Ahmad Abbas. It says MIMIT released the data in response to the Alliance's freedom-of-information request and that the Alliance shared the dataset with IMI. The dataset covers every month from February 2018 to 13 October 2026, broken down by nationality, route and province. IMI does not say the dataset has been published anywhere, and we have not seen it.

The Alliance's president, Dario Montagnese, is also the founder and chief executive of Ariete Capital, an advisory firm in the sector, according to the same article. That does not make the figures wrong. It means they arrived through an interested party, and the original file cannot be checked by readers.

As reported by IMI Daily from the dataset, 899 applications were filed from 2018 to 13 October 2026. Of these, 391 came in 2018 to 2024 and 508 since January 2025. By year, IMI gives 39 for 2021, 92 for 2022, 117 for 2023, 125 for 2024, 229 for 2025 and 279 for 1 January to 13 October 2026. The 2025 figure is 83% above 2024, as IMI reports and our arithmetic confirms. The 340 applications in the twelve months to September 2026 are 2.7 times the 2024 total, which is the basis for IMI's headline that demand nearly tripled in two years.

The route split, as reported, is 703 applications for the company route, 32 for government bonds and 3 for donations. For innovative start-ups IMI gives three separate figures: 50 for 2018 to 2024, 32 for 2025 and 79 for 2026 to date. Together that is 161, and 703 plus 161 plus 32 plus 3 makes 899, so the parts reconcile. The start-up share rose from 14% of applications in 2025 to 28% in 2026.

On nationality, Americans filed 160 of the 279 applications in 2026, or 57%, and 39% of all applications since 2018. British applicants filed 172 since 2018. Russians filed 36 of the 92 applications in 2022, the largest group that year. Applicants came from 48 countries and territories in all. Milan was the elected province for 143 applications in 2026, 51% of that year's total. IMI notes that MIMIT lists only the 15 most popular provinces, so provincial counts are minimums.

Applications, nulla osta, visas and permits are four separate counts

Every published Italian figure so far counts the first step. An application is a file submitted to the committee. A nulla osta is the committee's clearance. It lets the applicant ask an Italian consulate for an entry visa, but it is not a visa. A visa is not a residence permit, which is issued in Italy after arrival.

The dataset reported by IMI gives 782 nulla osta from 899 applications, 87%. The other 117 applications are not broken down. IMI says MIMIT gave no split between refusals, withdrawals and files still pending. So the dataset gives no current rejection rate.

Only two numbers in the public record describe visas issued, and both are press reports of ministry data. IrpiMedia, an Italian investigative outlet, reported on 27 January 2021 that MISE data showed 17 applications from the start of 2018 to mid-June 2020, of which ten had led to a visa being issued and one was still under review. Euronews reported on 10 August 2023 that the Italian magazine Altreconomia, using Business Ministry data, found at least 32 two-year investor visas issued to Russian citizens out of 36 applications in the previous year. Euronews said no data existed on visas issued in 2023.

The IrpiMedia count fits the official half-year series: 18 applications to the end of June 2020 in the 2021 report, against 17 to mid-June in IrpiMedia's data. The Russian figure fits the dataset reported in 2026, which also gives 36 Russian applications in 2022. Neither is a series. No source we found gives the number of investor visas issued in any year since 2022.

The permit count is emptier still. The investor permit lasts two years and can be renewed for three-year periods if the investment is kept, according to the consolidated text of article 26-bis and the 2021 report. We found no published count of first permits "per investitori", of renewals or of revocations. Italy suspended the scheme for Russian and Belarusian citizens in mid-July 2023, Euronews reported, citing Italian media and a notice on the Business Ministry website. We found no published count of what happened to permits already held by those nationals.

This matters for anyone using the word "granted". A headline that says Italy granted 782 golden visas would be counting clearances as visas. The only honest statement is narrower. As reported from the ministry's data, 782 applications were cleared, and we found no published count of how many became visas or permits.

The two public series do not agree

The official report and the dataset reported in 2026 overlap for 2018 to 2021. They should match, and they do not.

For 2021, the official report gives 40 applications and the 2026 dataset gives 39. For 2018 to 2020, the report gives 24 (7, 6 and 11). The dataset's figures imply 18, by our arithmetic: 391 applications for 2018 to 2024, minus 39, 92, 117 and 125 for the later years. Applications to the end of 2021 therefore come to 64 in the official report and to 57 on the dataset as reported. IMI's article itself mentions the first report's 64 applications without reconciling them. It also describes pre-2021 volumes as single digits each year, while the official report gives 11 for 2020.

We cannot say which series is right. The gap could come from date conventions, withdrawn files, the ministry's rebuild of its records or IMI's reading of the file. The dataset is not public, so the question cannot be settled from outside.

A second conflict sits inside IMI's own coverage. On 22 December 2025 IMI Daily reported 209 applications "through December 1, 2025", calling it the most complete data authorities had released since launch, and gave 128 for 2024. The article named no agency. On 3 November 2026, with the dataset attributed to MIMIT, IMI gave 125 for 2024, 229 for 2025 and 899 since 2018. The December figure of 209 is 63.3% above 128, the growth rate that article gives for 2025, which suggests 209 was a count for 2025 to 1 December. IMI's own article confirms the reading: it describes 209 as a compound annual growth rate of 62.6% from seven applications in 2018. CEOWORLD magazine, on 22 December 2025, and My Golden Visa, on 3 February 2026, nonetheless reported 209 as a total since 2018. It cannot be cited as the cumulative number of applicants.

No official figure found for how much money came in

The official record on money ends with the 2021 report: €18 million completed by 24 investors and €22.1 million expected from 26 more. Averaged over the 24 completed investors, the €18 million comes to €750,000 each, by our arithmetic. That average mixes routes with very different thresholds, from €250,000 for a start-up to €2 million for bonds, so it says little about a typical investor.

After 2021, we found no official figure at all. According to IMI Daily's account of the dataset, MIMIT does not record the amounts invested, and does not distinguish listed from unlisted companies. The Alliance estimates about €395 million invested since 2018, including about €216 million in listed shares. That is a self-reported estimate by an association whose president runs an advisory firm, and IMI presents it as the Alliance's own. We do not use it as a fact.

The application counts cannot fill the gap either. Multiplying 703 company applications by €500,000 would produce a number, but applications are not completed investments. Some applicants are refused or withdraw, some cleared applicants never invest, and some invest more than the minimum. The 2021 report showed this directly: of 50 cleared applicants, only 24 had completed their investment by the end of that year.

Italy's position is not unique. Portugal's migration agency AIMA reported 2,685 golden visa authorizations for 2025, a record, but it no longer publishes the amount invested, the type of investment or monthly data, according to the Portuguese business site ECO on 25 September 2026. The predecessor agency SEF had published that 12,718 visas from October 2012 to September 2023 brought in €6,451 million. Portugal still publishes a count of authorizations, if not amounts. Since 2021 Italy has published, as far as we found, neither.

What the law sets out, and what it leaves out

Article 26-bis of Legislative Decree 286/1998 was added by the 2017 Budget Law. We read its consolidated text on Brocardi, a legal database, which marks it as updated to 16 July 2026. The official Normattiva page returned an error. The article lists three routes. The first is at least €2 million in Italian government bonds, held for at least two years. The second is at least €500,000 in the capital of a company set up and operating in Italy, held for at least two years, or €250,000 in an innovative start-up registered in the special section of the companies register. The third is a donation of at least €1 million to a public-interest project in culture, education, immigration management, scientific research or cultural and landscape heritage. Applicants must also show funds of €2 million for bonds or €1 million for the other routes, plus separate means of subsistence.

The routes have changed twice since 2017. The 2020 Relaunch Decree halved the company and start-up thresholds, as the official report confirms. The 2023 annual competition law, Law 193/2024, then amended the company route. A Camera dei deputati page on the bill says the change lets a €500,000 investment in a venture capital fund qualify alongside a company. Brocardi's notes cite article 35 of the law for the amendment, while the Camera page describes it as article 34 of the bill. We did not open the final text in the Gazzetta Ufficiale.

Real estate is not one of the routes. It does not appear in the three letters of the consolidated text. Property has never been a qualifying investment, so there was nothing to restrict; we found no decree on property under the scheme.

The implementing decree of 21 July 2017 sets up the committee, chaired by the ministry's director general for industrial policy, with members from the interior and foreign ministries, the financial intelligence unit, the Guardia di Finanza, the revenue agency and the trade agency ICE. It sets a 30-day deadline for the procedure, in the text of the decree as signed in 2017. Press reports describe longer waits, and we found no official statistic on processing times.

None of the legal texts we read sets a timetable for publishing statistics. The 2021 report was numbered as the first monitoring report, which implies a series. No second edition has been found.

EU statistics have no box for investors

Italy's investor permits could, in principle, show up in European statistics. They do not, at least not in a form anyone can isolate.

Eurostat's dataset of first residence permits, migr_resfirst, classifies permits by four reasons: family, education, employment and other. There is no investor reason. Through the Eurostat API we retrieved Italy's figures. In 2025 Italy issued 433,099 first permits to non-EU citizens: 176,876 for family, 36,358 for education, 57,362 for employment and 162,503 for other reasons. In 2024 the total was 346,411. The dataset was last updated on 22 October 2026.

A second Eurostat table, migr_resoth, splits the other reasons. For Italy in 2025 it gives 8,725 for international protection, 9,292 humanitarian, 1,004 for residence only, 7,664 unaccompanied minors, 142 victims of trafficking and 135,676 not specified. The six add up to 162,503. Investor permits could sit in residence only or in not specified. Eurostat does not say which, and we found no Italian note that does. For the wider picture of who holds Italian permits and why, see our analysis of Italy's foreign residents and Italians abroad.

The foreign ministry's statistical yearbook for 2025, published in August 2026, lists a table of visas issued by purpose. The text layer we could read held only the yearbook's first chapter, so we could not check whether an investor category appears. That remains unverified.

The European dimension has been about citizenship more than residence. On 29 April 2025 the EU Court of Justice ruled in case C-181/23 that Malta's investor citizenship scheme broke EU law, saying the acquisition of Union citizenship "cannot result from a commercial transaction". The Court's press release does not mention residence permits. Italy's scheme grants a residence permit and does not confer nationality. In February 2022 a European Parliament committee backed a report calling for EU rules on residence-by-investment schemes, including mandatory reporting by member states. A Parliament research briefing of September 2024 said the Commission had proposed rules on certain aspects of such schemes. We found no EU act in force that obliges Italy to publish investor visa counts.

How Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain report theirs

Other countries with investor residence schemes publish more, though rarely through a clean official channel. The figures below are all press reports of government data. We did not open the underlying official documents, and the units differ.

Portugal's figures come from AIMA's annual report as relayed by Público and ECO on 25 September 2026: 2,685 authorizations in 2025 and 2,081 in 2024, up 29% by our arithmetic. Ireland's Department of Justice gave RTÉ figures published on 15 April 2025: 2,482 approved applications under its Immigrant Investor Programme from 2012 to the end of 2024, with €1.7 billion invested, although the same article's introduction says 2,472. Ireland closed the program in February 2023. Greece's To Vima reported on 4 December 2024 that nearly 29,400 permits had been issued, tied to about €7.5 billion of property sales. In Spain, the fact-checking site Maldita.es showed on 8 April 2024 that different ministries gave counts ranging from about 6,200 to 14,576 for broadly the same years, depending on whether they counted visas or permits and whether family members were included.

Set against these, Italy's scale is small. Portugal's authorizations in 2025 alone were about three times Italy's cumulative applications since 2018. That comparison mixes units, authorizations against applications. It still shows the order of magnitude. Italy runs a niche scheme and publishes less about it than Portugal, Ireland, Greece or Spain publish about theirs.

The Italian scheme sits alongside other residence routes, from the visa for remote workers covered in our digital nomad visa guide to tax incentives for wealthy movers, and the measurement problem repeats. Our analysis of Italy's flat tax for new residents found tax statistics a year or more behind and no count of arrivals by nationality. The citizenship-by-descent figures showed a similar pattern: rules and court rulings published in full, key counts missing.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers visiting Italy are not affected by the investor visa, which concerns long stays by non-EU investors. For readers weighing a move, the measurement gap has one practical point. Nobody outside the ministry can tell you the current rejection rate, the real processing time or how many cleared applicants obtained a visa, because we found no published figures for them. The 2017 decree sets a 30-day target for the committee's procedure. The only rejection data on record date from 2021, when 14 of 64 applications did not receive a nulla osta. How the visa works is covered in our Italy golden visa guide.

Tourism businesses and investors, and the advisers and journalists who serve them, can know a limited set of things. They can know the legal routes and thresholds, since those are in the consolidated text. They can know the official counts to the end of 2021. They can know what IMI Daily reported from the ministry's dataset: 899 applications and 782 clearances to 13 October 2026, with the 2025 and 2026 totals far above earlier years. They cannot know the number of visas issued, permits granted or renewed, money invested, or outcomes for the 117 applications without a recorded result. Anyone quoting a figure for these should be asked where it comes from. Figures supplied by firms or associations that sell services in the sector are their own estimates unless they publish the underlying data.

Journalists and analysts have a short list of citable figures. The official MISE report gives 64 applications, 50 nulla osta and €18 million completed by 24 investors to 31 December 2021. IMI Daily's account of MIMIT data released by access request gives 899 applications and 782 nulla osta from February 2018 to 13 October 2026, with 125 applications in 2024, 229 in 2025 and 279 in 2026 to 13 October. The only visas-issued numbers are press reports: 10 to mid-June 2020 (IrpiMedia) and at least 32 to Russians in 2022 (Altreconomia via Euronews). Claims not to repeat include 209 as a cumulative total, €40 million as money invested, €395 million as an official figure, and 782 as visas granted. The finding fits a pattern across our insights series. Italy publishes the rules in detail and counts the first administrative step. It has not published, as far as we could find, the outcomes that would show whether the policy works, which here means visas, permits and money.